Delivering on Science's Social Contract

Agency, Cyberspace, and Social Contract

The social contract has been about rights and responsibilities in human societies. Facebook and its role in manufacturing and sustaining a global social contract, a new “we” is clearly one of the research areas that needs more attention. A new “we” is coming of age in the new age of connectivity and communication with a new outlook toward responsibility and rights at individual and collective l...

Social Yes; Contract No

Social contract theory is incoherent and it does not work as desired. Among the most obvious disanalogies is that contracts are enforced by a third party, commonly the state. There is no such external enforcer for a constitution. Contractarian theorists typically ignore all such issues and use the metaphor of contract very loosely to ground a claim that citizens are morally obligated to defer t...

A Philosopher’s Perspective on the Social Sciences

On Foundations Research In The Social Sciences

Among the hallmarks of a mature science are a concern with foundations and an effort to secure those foundations as firmly as possible. Even for the youngest of social sciences, a conceptual foundations study should prove worthwhile. After a brief exposition of foundations issues, the authors illustrate a foundations study in marketing through a semantic analysis of the expression 'market', as ...

Conflict and the Social Contract

We consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other’s fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation, and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then any contract must assign a positive probability of conflict. We show how the likelihood of conf...