Contractualism

First published Thu Aug 30, 2007; substantive revision Fri Apr 20, 2018

The term ‘contractualism’ can be used in a broadsense—to indicate the view that morality is based on contract oragreement—or in a narrow sense—to refer to a particularview developed in recent years by the Harvard philosopher T. M.Scanlon, especially in his bookWhat We Owe to Each Other.This essay takes ‘contractualism’ in the narrower sense.We begin with a brief summary of Scanlon’s contractualism, andthen situate his view in relation both to other social contracttheories and to its main rival among impartial accounts ofmorality—namely, utilitarianism. Our discussion is thenorganised around a series of challenges to the contractualistaccount.

There is already a huge literature surrounding Scanlon’scontractualism. Our aim is not to summarise thatliterature—still less to contribute anything novel to it.Rather, we seek to explain the distinctive appeal of contractualism,as well as highlighting the challenges it faces from othertheories.

1. What is contractualism?

Scanlon introduces contractualism as a distinctive account of moralreasoning. He summarises his account thus:

An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would bedisallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation ofbehaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed,unforced, general agreement. (Scanlon 1998, p. 153).

But Scanlon’s version of contractualism is not just concernedwith determining which acts are right and wrong. It is also concernedwith what reasons and forms of reasoning are justifiable. Whether ornot a principle is one that cannot be reasonably rejected is to beassessed by appeal to the implications of individuals or agents beingeither licensed or directed to reason in the way required by theprinciple. Scanlon’s version offers an account both of (1) theauthority of moral standards and of (2) what constitutes rightness andwrongness. As to the first, the substantive value that is realised bymoral behaviour consists in a relation of “mutualrecognition”. As to the second, wrongness consists inunjustifiability: wrongnessis the property of beingunjustifiable. The wrongness of an action is not to be equated withthe properties that make it unjustifiable. Rather, it is to be equatedwith its being unjustifiable; the character of wrongness is capturedby the higher order fact that wrong acts are unjustifiable. What wrongacts have in common is that they cannot be justified to others. Thusthe various moral considerations that guide our substantive moralreflection are unified by a single normative subject matter. In thisway, contractualism guides our substantive reflection about wrongness.Wrong is the primary moral predicate; right is defined as “notwrong”. One reason for focusing on wrong is to draw attention tothe domain that contractualism is concerned to map, concerning what itis for one person to have beenwronged by another.

Moral requirements determine what it is to respond properly to thevalue of persons as rational agents. The distinctive value of humanlife lies in the human capacity to assess reasons and justifications.Therefore, appreciating the value of a person involves recognising hercapacity to appreciate and act on reasons. The way to value thiscapacity is to treat persons in accord with principles they could notreasonably reject. In doing so, the agent is guided by a principlethat can rightly be characterised as one that the person herselfauthorised that agent to be guided by, in thinking about theappropriate way to relate to her. Contractualism illuminates thecompelling Kantian insight that we ought to treat persons never asmere means but always as ends in themselves. It interprets this astreating them according to principles they could not reasonablyreject.

2. How does contractualism differ from other social contract theories?

Contractualism appeals to the idea of a social contract. It attemptsto derive the content of morality (and, in some versions, also thejustification for holding that we are obligated to follow morality)from the notion of an agreement between all those in the moral domain.Contemporary moral philosophy offers several other interpretations ofthe social contract tradition. It is useful to distinguishcontractualism from these alternatives.

Contractarianism has its roots in Hobbes, whose account isbased on mutual self-interest. Morality consists in those forms ofcooperative behaviour that it is mutually advantageous forself-interested agents to engage in. (The most prominent modernexponent is David Gauthier. See Gauthier 1986.)

By contrast, any form ofcontractualism is grounded on theequal moral status of persons. It interprets this moral status asbased on their capacity for rational autonomous agency. According tocontractualism, morality consists in what would result if we were tomake binding agreements from a point of view that respects our equalmoral importance as rational autonomous agents. Contractualism has itsroots in Rousseau, rather than Hobbes: the general will is what wewould jointly will if we adopted the perspective of free and equalcitizens. Contractualism offers an alternative to contractarianism.Under contractarianism, I seek to maximise my own interests in abargain with others. Under contractualism, I seek to pursue myinterests in a way that I can justify to others who have their owninterests to pursue.

We next distinguish contractualism from the specific moral theory ofKant. Kantian moral philosophers seek principles to which all rationalagents would agree, under certain idealised conditions. In order toreach such an agreement, Kant notoriously needs to abstract away frommany (some would say too many) concrete features of our moral lives.(See Onora O’Neill’s gloss on the notion of agreement inKantian ethics; O’Neill 2003.)

Contractualism departs from Kant in various respects. In particular,it offers a substantive account of the normative force of morality,based on the value of a relation of mutual respect. Reasonableness isnot taken to be something that can be demonstrated outside the moralpoint of view. Another difference is that contractualism seeksprinciples that no one can reasonably reject, rather than principlesall would agree to.

However, Scanlon’s contractualism has Kantian elements, as itseeks a free agreement that elucidates both freedom and equality. Wemight say that contractualism gives expression to ideas latent inKant’s discussions of the Categorical Imperative (especially inthe Formula of Humanity and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends, ratherthan the more familiar Formula of Universal Law). Indeed, as we shallsee insection 5, Derek Parfit argues that, despite their differences, contractualismdoes coincide with the best interpretation of Kant’s moraltheory.

The most influential recent social contract theorist is John Rawls.Rawls’s contract differs from Scanlonian contractualism in twokey ways. (1) Rawls’s contract is more Kantian, as he seeksprinciples everyonewould agree to, rather than principlesno-onecould reasonably reject. (This contrast is especiallymarked if we consider Rawls’s Dewey Lectures (Rawls 1980), wherehis work is at its most Kantian.) (2) Rawls’s contract ispolitical—it aims to set the general social framework for aliberal society, rather than determining moral principles. As aresult, Rawls places the parties to his agreement behind aveil ofignorance, where they do not know many key facts about their ownidentity. This is to ensure that the resulting principles of justiceembody Rawls’s commitment to liberal neutrality. For Rawls, weought to follow the principles that it would be rational for everyoneto choose, if they had to choose those principles without knowinganything about themselves or their circumstances. Because each personknows that they could end up being anyone, each must have concern forall. In essence, Rawls uses self-interest behind a veil of ignoranceto represent a commitment to justice, construed as fairness toall.

Contractualism, by contrast, invokes no veil of ignorance. I know myown circumstances. It is not self-interest combined with ignorance ofself that makes me take account of everyone’s interests, butrather my concern to justify myself to everyone else. This motivationis a key feature of Scanlon’s contractualism. All socialcontract theorists—even contractarians—agree that agentswant to justify themselves to others. However, for the contractarian,such a desire is merely strategic—justification isinstrumentally useful because it enables me to get others to do whatserves my interests. For the contractualist, by contrast, agents aremorally motivated by an intrinsic desire to justify themselves toothers. Having this desire is part of what itis to be amoral agent.

Despite these differences, contractualism does have several points incommon with other social contract theories. In particular,contractualism aspires to provide a non-utilitarian theory thatgrounds moral status on a universal trait of persons—rationalmoral agency—and thus provides general principles whose scope isglobal. It is to this contrast with utilitarianism that we now turn.

3. How does contractualism differ from utilitarianism?

Contractualism is an impartial moral theory. In contemporary moralphilosophy, the main impartial moral theory outside the socialcontract tradition is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism takespersons’ moral status to be grounded on their capacity forwell-being and suffering, and takes well-being to be the sole moralvalue. It takes the appropriate response to this value to be topromote it. Utilitarianism is thus aconsequentialist moraltheory—morality is concerned with bringing about valuableoutcomes.

There are three fundamental contrasts between contractualism andutilitarianism. The first difference is one of scope. (1)Utilitarianism applies to every area of morality, while contractualismcovers only the realm of what we owe to one another. Scanlon himselfacknowledges that this is not the whole of morality. We return to thisdifference in sections12 and13.

The remaining two differences between contractualism andutilitarianism relate to content. (2) Contractualism does notaggregate, but rather focuses on the standpoint of individualpersons. (3) Contractualism does not regard well-being as a basicmoral concept, but instead allows a variety of personal reasons.

The only reasons for and against a principle that count when we arejudging whether or not it can be reasonably rejected are“various individuals’ reasons for objecting to thatprinciple and alternatives to it” (Scanlon 1998, p. 229). Theacceptability of a principle depends on a one-by-one assessment of thestrength of the reasons that individuals would have for rejecting theprinciple, compared to the alternatives to it. Since individuals mustbe objecting on their own behalf and not on behalf of a group, thisrestriction to single individuals’ reasons bars theinterpersonal aggregation of complaints; it does not allow a number oflesser complaints to outweigh one person’s weightiercomplaint.

Unlike utilitarianism, therefore, contractualism rejects theinterpersonal aggregation of burdens. (We discuss some importantexceptions below.) This is one of the main respects in which itdiffers from utilitarianism. Contractualism thus captures a keyfeature of our moral life that, as Rawls famously argues,utilitarianism ignores: the feature he calls “the separatenessof persons” (Rawls 1971). Instead of lumping everyone togetherand allowing one person’s rights to be trampled to providegreater aggregate benefits to others, contractualism recognises thateach of us has a unique life to live. Contractualism therefore seeksprinciples that benefit each person individually and that command eachperson’s free assent.

Aggregation (in some form) is essential to utilitarianism. Situationsfrequently arise where one person’s pleasure is in conflict withanother’s, or where the only way to secure one person’spleasure is to cause someone else pain, or where we must choose whichperson suffers which pain. We must find a way to balance the moralreasons generated by different people’s pleasures and pains. Ifwe retain a utilitarian perspective, then it is hard to see how we cando this without some kind of aggregation—adding differentpleasures and pains together.

By contrast, contractualism seems able to avoid aggregation, becauseit begins, not with individual pleasure and pain, but with the moreflexible concept of reasons. Unlike my pleasures and pains, my reasonscan be responsive to the situation of others. To see this, we exploretwo features of Scanlon’s use of reasons: rejection must bereasonable, and reasons are not limited to well-being.

3.1 Reasonable Rejection

In order to reasonably reject a principle, I must have some objectionto it. This objection may begin with some direct harm I suffer as aresult of the principle. So far, if the harm involved is pain orsuffering, contractualism mirrors utilitarianism. However, the factthat a principle impacts negatively on me is notsufficient.To know whether I canreasonably reject the principle, I mustalso ask how it impacts on others. If a principle imposes a certainburden (b1) on me, but every alternative imposes a greaterburden (b2) on someone else, thenb1 does not giveme a reason to reject the principle. If I am reasonable, then Iwithdraw my objection when I see that your reason is more pressing.(By contrast, it would make no sense to say that a utilitarian has‘withdrawn her pain’ because she has noticed that someoneelse’s pain is greater.) So we conclude that the principleimposingb1 on me cannot be reasonably rejected. And we reachthis conclusion without having to aggregate anything.

In contractualism, individuals are motivated both by self-regard andby respect for others. Since each person is partly motivated byconcern for her own interests, contractualism can groundconsequentialist reasons. Part of what we owe others is to promotetheir interests. Contractualism can therefore accommodate importantconsequentialist aspects of the structure of moral thought.

Unlike utilitarianism, however, the account of value underlyingcontractualism does not claim that there is only one rational attitudeto have towards value. So contractualism can accommodateconsequentialist aspects without being a completely consequentialisttheory. (This represents an advantage of contractualism overnaïve versions of Kantian ethics, which reject allconsequentialist reasons and thus make it very difficult to explainwhy the consequences of our actions have any moral significance atall.) In contrast to an outcome ethics (such as utilitarianism), whatis foundational for contractualism isnot minimising what isundesirable, but considering what principles no-one could reasonablyreject. Moral principles are grounded in the idea of living withothers on terms of mutual respect. This means that as well asaccommodating some consequentialist aspects, contractualism can alsoaccommodate certain deontological intuitions: commonsense prohibitionsagainst treating persons in certain ways even in circumstances inwhich the aggregate value of the consequences of doing so is verygreat. Which prohibitions are justified? This question “is bestanswered by considering what principles licensing others to take ourlives could be reasonably rejected” (Scanlon 1998, p. 85). Amongthese principles might be ones that involve “accepting a certainview of the reasons one has: that the positive value of saving othersdoes not justify killing someone” (Scanlon 1998, p. 84).

3.2 Reasons beyond well-being

A further resource available to contractualism that is not availableto utilitarianism is that my reasons for rejecting a principle are notlimited to my well-being—however broadly that notion isconstrued. For ease of exposition, let us for the moment follow theutilitarian, and think of ‘burdens’ solely in terms ofnegative impact on my well-being. My reason for rejecting a principlemight be, not so much that it imposes a certain burden on me, but theway in which it imposes that burden—and what the principle thussays about me. For instance, consider a principle that allocatesbenefits and burdens on the basis of race, and contrast this with aprinciple that allocates the same benefits and burdens randomly. Icannot reject the racist principle simply because of the burden itimposes on me—after all, the random principle imposes anidentical burden on someone else. Rather, I reject the racistprinciple because, by regarding my race as a relevant ground for thedistribution of benefits, it imposes that burden in a way thatconstitutes a failure to respect my status as a person.

If we abandon the utilitarian link between burdens and well-being,then we might say that the method of distribution of burdens itselfimposes an additional burden of a different kind—the burden ofnot being respected. Similarly, I might reject a principle thatarbitrarily exempts some people from a burden borne by everyone else,on the grounds that such a principle treats me unfairly—even ifthe alternative is a principle that places that burden on everyone.For instance, imagine a situation where, in order to preserve thegrass, we need at least 90% of the people to avoid walking on thegrass, but it doesn’t do any harm if 10% do walk on the grass. Imight object to a principle that allows the members of a privilegedracial minority to walk on the grass, even if my preferred principleis one where no-one gets to enjoy grass-walking. My rejection is notbased on envy, but on the disrespect this principle shows by regardingrace as a legitimate ground for distribution.

Contractualistreasons are more flexible thanaggregation, as they allow us to respond directly to morallyrelevant considerations, rather than having to rely upon some complexutilitarian calculation. (Think of the artificial epicycles autilitarian needs to go through to reject a principle that efficientlymaximises happiness, but happens to be racist or arbitrary.) By movingstraight to the moral heart of the matter, contractualism also seemsto offer a more satisfying explanation ofwhy certainbehaviour is wrong.

Contractualism can thus produce principles that balance the interestsof different people against one another, without explicit appeal toaggregation. This is a significant development in moral philosophy, asit enables us to separate arguments against utilitarianism into twoclasses: arguments againstimpartiality and arguments againstaggregation. Objections in the first class also apply tocontractualism, while those in the second class do not. We return toaggregation insection 8; and consider one common objection to impartiality insection 9. Once contractualism has entered the field, we cannot treat argumentsfor impartiality as if they were arguments for utilitarianismitself.

4. How does contractualism differ from other non-consequentialist ethical theories?

Although it is not solely devoted to contractualism, Scanlon’s2008 bookMoral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame.addresses several issues of relevance to Scanlonian contractualism,notably the irrelevance of intent for judgements of permissibility,the distinction between two kinds of responsibility, and the analysisof blame. These issues help to differentiate contractualism from someof its non-consequentialist rivals.

4.1. The irrelevance of intent to permissibility

Many theorists distinguish non-consequentialist moral theories fromconsequentialist rivals such as utilitarianism by emphasising thesignificance of agents’intentions. Otherwisepermissible acts become impermissible when done for the wrong reasonor in pursuit of the wrong aim. For instance, thedoctrine ofdouble effect forbids actions that aim at the death of aninnocent person either as an end or as a means to an end, even whenthe same result could be permissible as a side-effect. Consider twofamiliar examples:

Drug: “If the limited amount of a drug that isavailable could be used either to save one patient or to save fiveothers, it is permissible to give it to the five, even though the onewill die. But it would not be permissible to withhold the same drugfrom the same person in order to save the five others by transplantinghis organs into them after he is dead.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 1)

Military Target: “Many people believe that in war itcan be permissible to bomb a military target even though this willalso cause the deaths of some noncombatants living nearby, but that itwould not be permissible to bomb the same number of noncombatants inorder to hasten the end of the war by demoralizing thepopulation.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 2)

Despite its intuitive appeal, Scanlon rejects the doctrine of doubleeffect, arguing that intention is notdirectly relevant topermissibility. Scanlon concedes that intentions havepredictive significance – they help predicthow an agent will perform an action, and whether she islikely to succeed in performing the action or in implementing anylarger plan of which this action might be a part. But such predictionsare only indirectly relevant to judgements of permissibility. Scanlonalso agrees that intentions matter when assessing how an agent hasdeliberated on a given occasion. But they are not relevant tojudgements ofpermissibility, which ask instead“whether an agent may perform an action of a certainkind.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 2.)

Drawing on the work of Judith Thomson (Thomson 1986, pp.101–102), Scanlon argues that a focus on intention can lead toimplausible conclusions about permissibility. Consider two familiarthought experiments.

Loop: “In the well-known trolley-problem case it seemspermissible to switch a runaway trolley onto a sidetrack on which itwill hit only one person rather than allow it to continue straightahead and hit five. But it also seems permissible to switch thetrolley in [Thomson’s] Loop case … in which the sidetrackloops around and rejoins the main line, so that if the trolley doesnot hit the one person and thereby come to a stop, it will continuearound the loop and hit the five.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 18.)

Doctor:“Suppose that a patient is fatally ill and ingreat pain. The only course of medication that will relieve this painwill also cause the patient’s death. Suppose that the patientwants to be given this drug. Does the permissibility of administeringit depend on the doctor’s intention in doing so?” (Scanlon2008, p. 19.)

Most people agree that switching the trolley is permissible in Loopeven though “one switches the trolley only because it will, byhitting the one person, be prevented from hitting the five”.(Scanlon 2008, p. 18) But this verdict clearly violates the doctrineof double effect. Most also agree that it is permissible for thedoctor to administer the drug whatever his intention – whetherto relieve the patient’s pain, to hasten her death and thus endher suffering, or even to hasten the patient’s death in order toinherit her wealth. This last intention affects our evaluation of thedoctor’s character and deliberation. But it does not render hisaction impermissible. “What makes an action wrong isthe consideration or considerations that count decisively against it,not the agent’s failure to give these considerations the properweight.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 23)

For the contractualist, justification to others provides the standardthat determines which considerations count decisively againstparticular actions. In transplant cases, the contractualist questionis whether the possibility of saving lives via transplant justifies anexception to the general duty to aid one’s patients. Scanlonargues that it does not do so, because a principle permitting such anexception could reasonably be rejected by prospective patients. Ifdoctors withhold treatment because they intend to transplant theirpatients’ organs, then this intention is wrongful because theact intended is wrong, and not vice versa.

It is worth noting that, while most philosophers who discuss Thomson’sLoop share Scanlon’s intuition that switching the trolley ispermissible, this agreement is not unanimous. For instance, Liao et al.2012 argue that actual intuitions about Loop cases are highly variableand dependent on the context of presentation, and therefore that moraltheorists should be wary of putting too much weight on suchintuitions. Scanlon could take this criticism on board, as hiscontractualist framework is not wedded to any specific conclusionabout Loop. But he would then need to find other cases to illustratehis general claims about the significance of intention.

4.2. Blame and responsibility

While they are not relevant for permissibility, intentions do affectthe meaning of actions, and thereby affect the ways that it isappropriate for others to respond to the agent. This brings us toScanlon’s discussions of blame and responsibility. Scanlondistinguishes two forms of responsibility.

(1)Moral reaction responsibility is relevant when we askcertain positive or negative moral reactions to a person – suchas blame, resentment, praise, or gratitude – are appropriate.Intuitively, “what a person has done makes such reactionsappropriate only if the person was responsible for behaving in thisway” (Scanlon 2015, pp. 89–90). Scanlon originally calledthis “responsibility as attribution”, but he has come toprefer the label “moral reaction responsibility”.

(2)Substantive responsibility is relevant when we askwhether a person’s actions change her obligations to others, andtheir obligations to him or her. “Making a promise, handing oversome money, taking a risk, or choosing not to avail oneself of anopportunity can change a person’s obligations to others, andtheirs to him or her, if the person is responsible for doing thesethings.” (Scanlon 2015, pp. 89–90) We return to thecontractualist account of substantive responsibility in section10.

The central question for the contractualist account of moral reactionresponsibility is “what must be true for an agent to beidentified with a particular attitude, and thus eligible for moralresponses such as praise and blame”. (Kumar 2015, p. 251) In thebackground, of course, lie traditional puzzles about free-will anddeterminism. Can agents fairly be blamed for actions or attitudeswhose ultimate causes lie beyond their control? It seems unfair toevaluate someone negatively for something she could not control. Forthe contractualist, however, blame goes beyond mere evaluation. Blameis intimately linked to both themeaning of actions and ourrelationships with others. “The meaning of ourinteractions with others depends on what they see as the reasonsgoverning those interactions. … we have reasons not to haveattitudes of friendship or trust toward people whose attitudes towardus make these attitudes inappropriate.” (Scanlon 2015, p.93)

For Scanlon, a person isblameworthy if her action showssomething about her attitudes toward others that impairs the relationsthey can have with her. Iblame you if both (a) I judge youto be blameworthy, and (b) I take my relationship with you to bemodified in a way that this judgement of impaired relations holds tobe appropriate. (Scanlon 2008, pp. 128–9) Appropriate blamereactions include withdrawal of trust and decreased readiness to enterinto special relationships such as friendship or to help the personwith his projects. (Scanlon 2015, p. 92)

Suppose I discover that my close friend Joe laughed at cruel jokes atmy expense at last week’s party. (Scanlon 2008, pp.129–30) Joe’s behaviour clearly reveals attitudes that areinconsistent with friendship. I may therefore conclude that myrelationship with Joe is impaired, and adjust my own attitudes orbehaviour accordingly.

Contractualist blame thus only makes sense within a relationship, suchas friendship or family relationships. Impairment must be judgedagainst the standard of what is appropriatewithin thatrelationship. This raises an obvious problem. Whatrelationship could possibly ground judgements ofblameworthiness and reactions of blame in the general moral case?Suppose a stranger steals my bag as I walk down the street.Intuitively, I can blame her. But what is my relationship to her?“Do we have a relationship with every total stranger whom itmakes sense to blame?” (Scanlon 2008, p. 138) Scanlon repliesthat we do.

“The contractualist claim is that all persons stand in aparticular kind of relationship to one another, the ideal form ofwhich realizes a distinct value, that of mutual recognition.”(Kumar 2015, p. 258) This idea sounds odd if we imagine a moralrelationship that is analogous toactual relationships suchas a particular friendship. Contractualists instead treat the moralrelationship as “a normative ideal, like a normative ideal offriendship that specifies attitudes and expectations that we shouldhave regarding one another. … morality requires that we holdcertain attitudes toward one another simply in virtue of the fact thatwe stand in the relation of ‘fellow rationalbeings’.” (Scanlon 2008, pp. 139–40) There are somebasic attitudes that we expect even from total strangers,and we areentitled to blame them if their behaviour demonstrates a lack of thoseattitudes.

Within contractualism, the idea of a universal moral relationshipunifies the impersonal judgement that someone has failed to act onprinciples that no-one could reasonably reject with the personalreactions that characterise blame. Suppose I witness your bag beingstolen. We both judge that you have been wronged. These judgementsrest on “the general claim that it is impermissible for oneperson to relate to another in the way she has in the type ofsituation we find ourselves in.” (Kumar 2015, p. 260) But whenyou blame the perpetrator, you do something much morepersonal, by also raising “an objection to her attitudes towardyou in particular, and what they say about your relationship.”(Kumar 2015, p. 260)

Some betrayals are so severe that they bring a friendship to an end.The relationship cannot survive. Similarly, moral retributivists arguethat some horrendous actions can sever the moral relationship itself,casting the person out of the sphere of mutual recognition thatcharacterises morality. Contractualists disagree. “Even thosewho have no regard for the justifiability of their actions towardothers retain their basic moral rights … not to be hurt orkilled, to be helped when they are in dire need, and to have us honourpromises we have made to them.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 142)Instead,“blame … involves a suspension … ofone’s readiness to enter into … the range of interactionswith others that are morally important but not owed unconditionally toeveryone”. (Scanlon 2008, pp. 142–3) For instance, I mightrefuse to make agreements with an untrustworthy person, to enter intoother specific relations that involve trust and reliance, or tovoluntarily assist her pursuit of her projects even when I can do soat little cost to myself.

Scanlon’s contractualist account of blame sets aside issues offreewill and determinism. Because blame is a reaction to the attitudesa person actually has, it is not undermined by the discovery that he“had no control over the factors that made him the kind ofperson that he is.” (Scanlon 2008, p. 178) Even if you cannothelp being callous, unreliable, and untrustworthy, I cannot beexpected to continue to treat you as if you had not revealed that, forwhatever reason,that is the kind of person you are.

5. The convergence argument

Before turning to problems for contractualism, we first address achallenge to its distinctiveness. InOn What Matters, DerekParfit argues that rule consequentialism, contractualism, and the bestinterpretation of Kant’s moral theory all coincide. The resultis a triple theory, according to which “an act is wrong justwhen such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific,uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable”(Parfit 2011, volume 1, p. 413). As contractualism presents itself asan alternative to both consequentialism and Kant, this would be a verysignificant result.

The convergence argument explicitly deals, not with Scanlon’sown theory, but with “what I believe to be the best version ofScanlonian contractualism” (Parfit 2011, volume 1, p. 412).Parfit defends two key ‘improvements’, by rejecting tworestrictions that Scanlon places on the reasons that can be offeredfor rejecting a moral principle, namely:

“Individualist Restriction: In rejecting some moralprinciple, we must appeal to this principle’s implications onlyfor ourselves and for othersingle people” (Parfit2011, volume 2, p. 193). Or, in Scanlon’s own words: “thejustifiability of a moral principle depends only on individuals’reasons for objecting to that principle and alternatives to it”(Scanlon 1999, p. 229).
“Impersonalist Restriction: In rejecting some moralprinciple, we cannot appeal to claims about the impersonal goodness orbadness of outcomes” (Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 214). Or, inScanlon’s own words: “impersonal values are not themselvesgrounds for reasonable rejection” (Scanlon 1999, p. 222).

In other words, the convergence argument replaces Scanlon’soriginal formulation of contractualism, where all reasons forrejection must be the personal complaints of specific individuals,with a more impersonal version.

Insection 2, we noted a number of differences between Kantian and Scanloniancontractualism. Despite these differences, Parfit argues thatScanlonian contractualism coincides with the best interpretation ofKant. In a cumulative argument spread over several chapters, Parfitargues that the best interpretation of Kant’s moral ideas yieldsthe following claim:

Kantian rule consequentialism: Everyone ought to follow the optimificprinciples, because these are the only principles that everyone couldrationally will to be universal laws. (Parfit 2011, volume 1, p. 411)

Even if we accept the convergence of Kant and rule consequentialism,it still remains to be shown that these optimific and uniquelyuniversally willable principles are the only set of principles thatno-one could reasonably reject. The key step in this second prong ofthe convergence argument is the claim that “when there is onlyone relevant principle that everyone could rationally choose, noone’s objection to this principle could be as strong as thestrongest objection to every alternative” (Parfit 2011, volume2, p. 245).

This key claim seems open to obvious counter-examples—caseswhere contractualism seems to diverge from rule consequentialism. Moststriking are those cases where “we can either save one personfrom some great burden, or give much smaller benefits to many otherpeople, who are all much better-off” (Parfit 2011, volume 2, p.246).

Proponents of the convergence argument must somehow explain away theseapparent counter-examples. Following Parfit, they will first willdivide such cases into two classes. In some cases, the optimific ruleconsequentialist principles instruct us to favour the individual.Consider Scanlon’s own example where we must choose betweenelectrifying an innocent person and disrupting millions ofpeople’s enjoyment of a televised sporting event (Scanlon 1998,p. 235). Here, many rule consequentialists will argue that theoptimific rules do instruct us to save the innocent person. If so, theconvergence between rule consequentialism and contractualism isstraightforward. In its contest with rule consequentialism,contractualism cannot draw its intuitive appeal from such cases.

We must turn, then, to those cases where the optimific ruleconsequentialist principles do instruct us to provide the smallerbenefits to many others. Here, the convergence argument must deny thatthe solitary individual can reasonably reject the optimificprinciples. This is where Parfit’s ‘improvements’ oncontractualism are vital to the convergence argument. As originallyformulated, contractualism departs from utilitarianism by allowing theindividual to reject the optimific principles whenever they place agreater burdenon her than her favoured principle places onany other single individual. Proponents of the convergence argumentwill favour instead a more impersonal formulation. While theindividual’s own complaint is left undiminished, other peoplecan now reject her principle onimpersonalgrounds—precisely because it fails to maximise everyone’swell-being. Faced with these impersonal reasons, the single individualcannot reasonably reject the optimific principles.

Despite its provocative claims, the convergence argument is, in onerespect, quite modest. It does not set out to prove that ruleconsequentialism, Kantian ethics and contractualism necessarilycoincide. Rather, the conclusion is merely that plausible versions ofthe three theories do notnecessarily conflict. For thismodest purpose, it would be sufficient to construct one plausibleversion of contractualism on which the optimific principles cannotreasonably be rejected.

There is a methodological issue here. In his presentation of theconvergence argument, Parfit tests competing versions ofcontractualism against intuitions regarding specific idealised cases.This is not a peculiarity of Parfit’s own presentation. Withoutintuitions of this kind, the convergence argument cannot get off theground. Proponents of individualist formulations of contractualismmight reply that, in some key cases, Parfit’s intuitions are notneutral benchmarks, but rather reflect the considered moral judgementsof a consequentialist mind. This leaves it open to Contractualists tosimply stick to their guns—and argue that their view isdistinctive at the normative level, as well as the meta-ethicallevel.

Commenting on Parfit’s earlier claim that the bestinterpretation of Kant coincides with the best form of ruleconsequentialism, Scanlon observes that “the degree to whichParfit’s conclusion should seem surprising depends to a certainextent on how close the theories he is discussing are toKant’s” (Scanlon 2011, p. 117). Similar remarks apply tothe convergence argument. The appeal of contractualism is that itpresents a genuine alternative to both consequentialism and Kantianethics. Those who are attracted to contractualism because, in certainkey cases, it coheres with distinctively non-utilitarian intuitions,are likely to regard the impersonal contractualism deployed in theconvergence argument as an abandonment of the core commitments ofcontractualism. The convergence argument would then be of limitedrelevance. We return to these issues below, when we consider theIndividual and Impersonal Restrictions in more detail. (See sections8,9, and13.)

Parfit’s convergence argument has not attracted as muchattention as other aspects of either his work or Scanlon’s. (Oneexception is Kumar 2011.) However, the general issue of therelationship between contractualism and consequentialism is veryrelevant to a number of objections to contractualism. It is alwaysworth arking whether contractualism can cope adequately with newchallenges (such as aggregation, substantive responsibility, risk, orfuture people) without collapsing into rule consequentialism.

6. Is contractualism circular or redundant?

The remainder of this entry examines problem cases for contractualism.The first two concern the logical structure ofcontractualism—asking whether its account of wrongness is eithercircular or incomplete. The next four are puzzle cases where the mostobvious interpretation of contractualism seems to yield implausibleresults. The last two are groups who should be included in the scopeof morality, but who seem to be left out by contractualism: animalsand future people.

As we saw in section 3.2, contractualism allows for the reasonablerejection of principles on grounds other than their direct impact onthe individual’s well-being. However, this appeal to reasonsbeyond well-being brings out a common objection tocontractualism—that the whole apparatus of reasonable rejectionis redundant. The objection is as follows. Contractualism saysx is wrong if and only ifx is forbidden byprinciples no-one can reasonably reject. Anyone can reasonably rejecta principle on the grounds that it permits actions that are wrong. Soa principle that no-one can reasonably reject is a principle thatpermits no actions that are wrong. If we don’t already knowwhich actions are wrong, then we cannot use the contractualistapparatus. But if we do already know which actions are wrong, then wedon’t need to use it.

There is a related objection using ‘unfair’ instead of‘wrong’. Suppose, following our previous discussion insection 3, we agree that contractualism allows ‘because it treats meunfairly’ to count as a reason for rejecting a principle. Wethen face the challenge that our judgments of unfairness are doing allthe real moral work, as contractualism now says that a principle iswrong if and only if it treats someone unfairly.

To respond to this objection, contractualists must explain why‘x is wrong’ and ‘x isunfair’ are not the sort of claims that can feature as a reasonfor rejecting a principle. They must also demonstrate that admittingreasons not based directly on well-being does not commit us toadmitting ‘x is wrong’ and ‘x isunfair’.

The Contractualist answer appeals to the conceptual link betweenwrongness and justification. Whether an act is wrong depends, not onlyon its direct impact on individuals, but also on whether a principlepermitting it can be justified to all concerned. ‘Because it iswrong’ is not the kind of reason that can be fed into thecontractualist apparatus, since it is not something that happens toindividuals. Instead, wrongness is something that is constructed outof individuals’ reasons using that very apparatus. The same goesfor ‘because it is unfair’. In the example of the racistprinciple introduced in section 3.2, I reject the principle, notbecause it treats me unfairly overall, but because it illicitly placesweight on an inappropriate moral distinction. Mycomplaintconcerns how a principle treatsme. To know whether an actionis wrong, we must compare different people’s complaints, whichwe do by comparing one principle’s treatment of me with the wayalternative principles treat others.

7. Is contractualism too tidy? (The pluralist challenge)

An advantage of contractualism is that it can capture the wide rangeof considerations that are relevant to moral deliberation. All theconsiderations that provide individuals with reasonable grounds forobjecting to a proposed principle are relevant. As we saw in section3.2, these considerations include more than the direct (and even theindirect) impact of a proposed principle on individual well-being.This plurality of considerations is neverthelessunified by asingle normative domain or subject matter: unjustifiability.

Some opponents of contractualism will object that contractualism isnot pluralist enough. They will object to the unified account ofwrongness. Is it plausible that all the considerations relevant towhat we owe to each other are unified by their relevance to whetherthe principle permitting the conduct could be reasonably rejected? Inour moral deliberation about right and wrong actions, are all moralconsiderations only relevant in virtue of how they affect whether ornot a principle licensing the proposed action is justifiable?

Take for example, the claim that it is wrong to inflict gratuitoussuffering on persons, and sentient beings in general. Imagine someonetorturing someone else. A utilitarian will object that, in our graspof the wrongness of the action, the most salient fact is that thebehaviour would inflict gratuitous suffering. This is much moresalient than the fact that the person could reasonably reject aprinciple permitting such conduct. The utilitarian concludes thatmorality is fundamentally about the avoidance of suffering. Apluralist will conclude instead that morality is irreduciblyplural—some moral reasons are grounded on justifiability, butothers are grounded directly on suffering or pleasure.

The contractualist replies that what is most morally relevant in thecase of torture is that suffering is brought aboutthrough theagency of another—not just that suffering occurs. This iswhy being tortured is morally much worse than suffering similarinjuries through a lightning strike—the former is an affront tomy human dignity in a way that the latter is not. If we agree thatthis is the really significant fact, then the advantage now lies withthe contractualist, whose moral theory explicitly gives a centralplace to the notion of agency. (As ever, the dialectic can continue,as utilitarians can reply that torture is morally worse than alightning strike because it involves a gross failure of benevolence).For a foundational consequentialist account of morality (such asutilitarianism), the wrongness of the action is based solely anddirectly on the suffering it would cause. Against such an account, thecontractualist argues that the moral importance of promotingwell-being is always mediated via its effect on the justifiability ofthe relevant principle: if an action fails to show sufficient concernfor someone’s well-being then that person has strong grounds forobjecting to the principle.

It is, furthermore, important to recall that contractualism deals in‘could reasonably reject’ not in ‘doesreject’. Contractualism does not say that gratuitously causingsuffering is not wronguntil someone objects to it, or thatgratuitously causing suffering would not be wrong at allifno-one happened to object to it. There is nothing accidental about thefact that a particular act of gratuitously causing suffering is wrong.Rather, gratuitously causing suffering is always intrinsicallywrong—because it is (always and everywhere) the kind of thingthat provides grounds for reasonable rejection.

Contractualism and consequentialism thus gloss what is objectionableabout the same conduct in different ways. Instead of a decisiveintuition that counts against contractualism, we have a case ofdistinctive intuitions, where different theorists, beginning fromdifferent intuitive starting points, end up with different theoreticalpriorities.

8. Can contractualism really avoid aggregation?

We saw earlier that, unlike utilitarianism, contractualism rejectsaggregation. However, there are some cases wherecontractualism’s aversion to aggregation seems to lead toundesirable results. (For a variety of contractualist responses toaggregation, see Reibetanz 1998, Norcross 2002, Kumar 2011, Fried2012a. See also sections 9 and 12, as contractualists and theiropponents often discuss aggregation alongside either demandingness orrisk.)

Consider the following situation, drawn from afamous article by John Taurek (Taurek 1977).

The Rocks. Six innocent swimmers have become trapped on tworocks by the incoming tide. Five of the swimmers are on one rock,while the last swimmer is on the second rock. Each swimmer will drownunless they are rescued. You are the sole life-guard on duty. You havetime to get to one rock in your patrol-boat and save everyone on it.Because of the distance between the rocks, and the speed of the tide,you cannot get to both rocks in time. What should you do?

Suppose you decide to save the lone swimmer on the second rock.Intuitively, this seems wrong. Surely you should have saved fivepeople instead of one. The challenge for contractualism is to explainwhy what you did is wrong. Utilitarians have a straightforward answer,based on aggregation. You should save the five people instead of theone simply because five deaths is a worse result than one death. Thiscase is tricky for contractualism because it rejects aggregation. Thefive people willeach want to reject the principle thatallows you to save the one, by appealing to the fact that such aprinciple leaves them to die. But the lone person on the second rockwill want to reject any principle that allows you to save the five.And the reason for objecting to the principle is exactly the same ineach case—this principle leavesthat person to die. Thefive people cannot appeal to the fact that there are more ofthem—because this is not an individual reason. (Suppose you areone of the five. The fact that four other people will die is notsomething you can object to, as it is not something that happens toyou.) It therefore looks as if we have reached a stalemate—andperhaps the best solution (the principle that no-one can reasonablyreject) is to toss a coin. That way, each of the six people gets afifty-fifty chance of survival. No-one can reasonably rejectthis principle on the grounds that itonly givesthem a fifty-fifty chance of survival, because any alternative givessomeone even less chance. Tossing a coin is the only principle thatguarantees everyoneat least a fifty-fifty chance. So it isthe only principle that no-one can reasonably reject.

One contractualist response is to bite the bullet, and accept thatcoin tossing is the right answer. Many contractualists, however, wishto capture the intuition that you ought to save the five. Recall thatan agent’s reason for rejecting a principle can be based, not onits effect on her well-being, but on what that principle says abouther or how it treats her. Imagine one of the five swimmers on thefirst rock arguing as follows: “Coin tossing is clearly theright principle if there is one person on each rock, as it balancestheir competing reasons. If you apply the same principle when thereare five on this rock, you are saying it makes no difference thatthere are five rather than one. So you are acting exactly as if Iwasn’t here, facing this life and death situation. A principlethat allows you—in effect—to ignore my plight in this waydoesn’t show respect for me. If there were one person on eachrock, their claims to be rescued would cancel out. So we then look tosee whether there are other people on either rock. There are severalsuch people, and I am one of them. My claim to be rescued remainsun-trumped. So you should rescue the five.” (For a critique ofthis argument, see Otsuka 2001.)

A further difficult kind of case for contractualism is where theburdens that different persons stand to suffer are unequal—andso cannot balance each other and cancel each other out—but arestill very severe in each case. The following example is suggested byDerek Parfit’s discussion of contractualism and aggregation(Parfit 2003). Consider a choice between two scenarios. In the first,one person suffers agony for a hundred years; while in the second amillion people suffer agony for a hundred years minus a day. Anadditional day of agony is a considerable burden. Therefore if weconsider the situation from the perspective of the single individualsinvolved, it would seem that the first person’s complaint(‘I will suffer for a hundred years’) outweighs thecomplaint of any other single individual (‘I will suffer for ahundred years minus a day’). However, a utilitarian would arguethat, in this case, the second scenario is worse.

A utilitarian might conclude that, while this ideal of choosing ascenario that is acceptable to each person from his or her personalpoint of view is extremely appealing, it is not always attainable. Inparticular, this ideal is not practical when we cannot avoid placing asevere burden on at least one person. Contractualism focuses eachperson’s mind on the burdens imposed on himself or herself, andon other individuals—and invites us to withdraw our burdens ifwe see other individuals suffering much more under a competingprinciple. However, in our present example, each of the individuals inthe second scenario would find the situation unacceptable from theirpersonal point of view, simply because of the magnitude of thesuffering it involves. It is not plausible that they would withdrawtheir complaint because the person in the first scenario stands tosuffer a slightly greater burden. It can be argued that in such caseswe should give intrinsic moral weight to the number of persons whosuffer a severe burden and so minimise the number of persons for whomthe situation is unacceptable.

The contractualist has several possible replies. They could simplydeny the utilitarian’s intuition. Perhaps it is wrong to imposea greater burden on a single person, even to save many others from aslightly worse burden. Contractualists who want to capture theutilitarian’s intuition might argue that, just as complaints arenot always tied to well-being, the strength of an individual’scomplaint need not be proportional to the loss of well-being. Perhapsa principle that allows me to suffer for a century minus a day is justas objectionable to me as one that allows me to suffer for a century.Once the complaints are on a par, we can then appeal to our earliertie-breaking method, and conclude that it is wrong to favour the oneover the many. (A utilitarian will reply that in any context a day ofagony is an enormous moral burden—it is no less bad if theperson has already suffered for almost a century—so that thecomplaint of the individual in the first scenario has to be seen assignificantly greater than that of any individual in the secondscenario.)

In chapter 21 ofOn What Matters, Parfit presents furtherarguments that can be deployed against the individualistrestriction—which limits the grounds for rejecting a principleto its implications forsingle people. First, Parfit presentsa series of cases where, he argues, “any contractualism thatincorporates the individualist restriction must conflict with allplausible views about the distribution of benefits and burdens”(Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 198). One representative case is thefollowing (Parfit 2011, volume 2, pp. 199–200):

Case Six: The only possible alternatives are these:
Blue will live to the ageof: Each of some number ofother people will live to:
We do nothing 30 30
We doA 70 30
We doB 35 35

	Blue will live to the ageof:	Each of some number ofother people will live to:
We do nothing	30	30
We doA	70	30
We doB	35	35

Following Parfit, utilitarians will object that, if we endorse theindividualist restriction, then “we ought to give Blue her 40more years of life rather than giving 5 more years to Blue and to asmany as amillion of these other people. … this isclearly false” (Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 200).

Second, Parfit offers a new argument that, when the individualistrestriction does enable the contractualist to reach the rightconclusions, it cannot do so for the right reasons. Consider thefollowing case (Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 196):

Case Three: The only possible alternatives are these:
Future days of pain
for Blue: for each of some number ofother people:
We do nothing 100 10
We treat Blue 0 10
We treat the others 100 0

	Future days of pain
	for Blue:	for each of some number ofother people:
We do nothing	100	10
We treat Blue	0	10
We treat the others	100	0

Here, the utilitarian says that, if the number of other people exceedsten, then we should treat the others, as this maximises totalwell-being. Parfit argues that “most of us would reject thisutilitarian claim, believing instead that we ought to save Blue fromher great ordeal. We might even believe that we ought to save Bluefrom her 100 days of pain rather than savingany number ofsuch other people from their much smaller burden of 10 days ofpain” (Parfit 2011, volume 2, pp. 196–7).

The individualist restriction enables contractualism to diverge fromutilitarianism in this case. Because the other people’s reasonscannot be aggregated, they cannot ever outweigh Blue’s reason.But opponents of the individualist restriction will object that thisis a coincidence. The real reason we should treat Blue is not becauseBlue’s burden would otherwise be greater, but because Blue wouldotherwise be so much worse-off. For instance, suppose instead that, ifwe do nothing, everyone (Blue included) will suffer 100 days of pain[This is Parfit’sCase Four]. We must now choosebetween relieving Blue ofall of her 100 days, or relievingeveryone (Blue included) of 10 of their 100 days of pain. Those whofavour a more impersonal formulation of contractualism will objectthat the individualist restriction must instruct us to do the former.“And [this conclusion] is clearly false” (Parfit 2011,volume 2, p. 202).

In Cases Four and Six, opponents of the individualist restriction willargue that we can only get the right result by allowing the otherpeople to pool their individual complaints—otherwise, theycannot hope to overrule Blue. Those who find this intuition compellingmay conclude that contractualists must drop the individualistrestriction, and instead accommodate Case Three by saying that“people have stronger moral claims, and stronger grounds toreject some principle, the worse off these people are” (Parfit2011, volume 2, p. 202). Other contractualists may be prepared to bitethe bullet here, or to seek alternative ways to accommodate theseintuitions, on the grounds that the individualist restriction is anessential feature of contractualism, without which contractualismcannot hope to escape the extreme and alienating demands ofutilitarianism—the topic of the next section.

9. What does contractualism demand?

Impartial theories are often accused of being unreasonably demanding.For instance, consider the fact that there are very many very needypeople in the world. A variety of aid agencies, which currently relyon donations from private individuals, can alleviate these needs. Nodoubt governments, multinationals, and others could do far more thanthey do. But the question still remains: faced with such urgent needs,at least some of which I could meet at comparatively little cost tomyself, how should I as an individual act?

Impartial moral theories often seem to give very demanding answers tothis question. This is easiest to see for utilitarianism.Utilitarianism tells me to put my dollars wherever they will do themost good. In the hands of a reputable aid agency, my dollar couldsave a child from a crippling illness, and so I am obligated to donateit to the aid agency. I should give my next dollar to an aid agency,and I must keep donating till I reach the point where my own basicneeds, or my ability to keep earning dollars, are in jeopardy. Most ofmy current activities will have to go. Nor will my sacrifice be onlyfinancial. According to utilitarianism, I should also spend my timewhere it will do most good. I should devote all my energies to aidwork, as well as all my money.

Perhaps we would admire someone who behaved in this way. But is itplausible to claim that those of us who do not are guilty ofwrongdoing; or that we have a moral obligation to devote all ourresources to charity? Such conclusions strike many people as absurd.This leads to the common objection that utilitarianism is unreasonablydemanding, as it leaves the agent too little room (time, resources,energy) for her own projects or interests.

This is a serious objection to utilitarianism. If contractualism canavoid a similar fate, then this will be a significant advantage. Butis contractualism less demanding than utilitarianism? It certainlyseems possible that contractualism will generate very demandingprinciples, as it seems reasonable for those who are starving toreject any principle permitting me to retain inessential resourcesrather than meeting their most basic needs. I would then be doingsomething wrong unless I do all that I can to save otherpeople’s lives—at least until I reach the level belowwhich I would be giving up necessary components of my ownwell-being.

A similar problem for contractualism is presented by Thomas Nagel, whoargues that, in the present state of the world, it may be impossibleto constructany set of principles which no-one canreasonably reject. Any possible principle of aid will either makeunreasonable demands on the affluent (from their point of view), orpay inadequate attention to the basic needs of the destitute (fromtheir point of view). If the notion of reasonable rejection is atleast partly determined by the agent’s own perspective, then anyprinciple will be reasonably rejected by someone. (Nagel 1991 and1999).

Contractualists might reply that principles of aid presuppose somebackground set of entitlements, guaranteeing me the free use of my ownresources. This raises two problems. The first is that, from the factthat I own something, it does not follow that I do not have anobligation to give it away. The most that might follow is that othersmay not force me to do so. The second problem is that, if our overalltheory is Contractualist, then the property rights themselves must begiven a Contractualist justification. We need a system of propertyrights no-one can reasonably reject. Any system where property rightsare very unequally distributed will be rejected by those who missout.

How might contractualism reply to this demandingness objection? Likeany impartial moral theory, contractualism can bite the bullet, andargue that morality is very demanding. The contractualist apparatusexplainswhy morality is demanding—if we seek to act ina way that we could justify to others, then we must adopt principlesthat no-one can reasonably reject. Given the state of the world, theseprinciples will seem very demanding to those who areaffluent—but the alternative would be principles that place aneven greater burden on those who are worst-off.

For instance, Scanlon himself reaches the following principle throughcontractualist reasoning:

The Rescue Principle:: If we can prevent something very bad from happening to someone bymaking a slight or even moderate sacrifice, it would be wrong not todo so (Scanlon 1998, p. 224).

This principle could make very significant demands, especially if wewere continually facing situations where a slight sacrifice would savesomeone’s life. If my sacrifice is much less than the very badthing I prevent, it is hard to see how I can reasonably reject thisprinciple.

More controversially, one of us has argued previously that analogousreasoning leads to an even more demanding principle.

The Stringent Principle:: If we can prevent something very bad from happening to someone bymaking a great sacrifice (e.g., giving most of our income to aidagencies and spending a lot of our spare time on campaigning andfund-raising), it would be wrong not to do so (Ashford 2003, p.287).

If the ‘great sacrifice’ is nevertheless significantlyless bad than the ‘very bad thing’ that might happen, itis hard to see how I can reasonably reject this principle. If the‘very bad thing’ is an agonising death, this principle canbe very demanding indeed.

It may be argued that even if this stringent principle follows fromcontractualism, that is not a problem for the theory. Perhaps, in thecurrent state of the world, we should expect any moral theory groundedon each person’s equal moral status to be extremely demanding,given the drastic and irrevocable impact on those in need if they arenot helped, and the fact that there are constantly so many in thisposition (Ashford 2003, p. 292–2).

However, many moral philosophers—contractualistsincluded—seek a more moderate moral theory. If contractualism isto avoid being extremely demanding, the challenge is to stop short ofthe stringent principle. We need to find a principle that allows me tochoose my own lesser good over a (significantly) greater good forsomeone else—and then to show that this principle cannot bereasonably rejected. For instance, suppose I spend my spare evening(and spare income) going to the movies rather than donating the timeand money to a charity which could thus have saved someone’slife. We need an explanation of why those who die as a result cannotreasonably reject the principle that permits this behaviour.

The most promising answer lies, once again, in the possibility that mygrounds for rejecting a principle are not necessarily confined to itsdirect impact on my well-being. I might reject a principle requiringme to devote all my time and energy to charity, not simply because ofthe burdens it imposes on me but because, in leaving me no room for myown personal projects, it fails to respect me as a person. (Thedestitute person will reply that a principle allowing me to leave herto starve fails to respect her as a person. The challenge for thecontractualist is to distinguish these two complaints. For oneattempt, see Kumar 2000.)

Responding to Parfit’s presentation of the convergence argument,and his critique of the individualist and impersonal restrictions,Scanlon notes that, because it rejects those restrictions, anyimpersonal reformulation of contractualism is much more demanding thanthe original formulation of contractualism (Scanlon 2011). This chargehas a particular dialectical significance, as rule consequentialistsoften present their theory as a more moderate alternative to theextreme demands of act consequentialism. If it retains thoserestrictions, contractualism will always be less demanding than thesealternative theories—even if its demands are greater thancommonsense morality might normally expect.

10. The contractualist account of substantive responsibility

Questions of substantive responsibility arise when we must decide whowill bear what burdens. “To hold a person who has ended upburdened to be substantively responsible for that burden is to hold itto be hers to bear, ceteris paribus. No one owes it to her to share oralleviate it.” (Kumar 2015, p. 252) Kumar explains thecontractualist account of substantive responsibility as follows.“A person who ends up burdened is substantively responsible forit if no one owed it to her to do more to enable her to avert it. Tohold her not to be wronged in ending up burdened just is to hold herto be substantively responsible for it. The reasons that are relevantto the justification of why she is not wronged are those thatestablish that she has good reason to want what happens to her in thattype of situation to depend on how she responds to alternatives, andthat enough was done to secure that dependence.” (Kumar 2015, p.253)

Contractualism claims to offer an intuitive account of when agents canreasonably be expected to bear burdens. Critics argue that thispromise is illusory and that contractualism fails to respect ourintuitive judgements of substantive responsibility. (Williams 2006,Voorhoeve 2008.)

Discussion often focuses on the following example:

Hazardous Waste: A city’s officials need to remove anddispose of hazardous waste found near a residential area. This removalwill release some hazardous chemicals, but it is much less dangerousthan leaving the waste where it is. Even if the officials take allreasonable precautions, some hazardous material will be released– enough to cause lung damage to anyone directly exposed but notenough to pose a serious threat to anyone who stays indoors and awayfrom the excavation site. (Scanlon 1998, p. 257; Kumar 2015, p.264)

Intuitively, so long as they warn people to stay indoors while thewaste is being removed, the city officials can legitimately remove thehazardous waste. This does expose some people to a risk of seriousharm. But all available alternatives are worse: the waste cannot beleft where it is, and evacuating the city is not feasible. A principlepermitting officials to expose some people to a risk of harm in orderto protect public health is one that no one can reasonably reject.

Suppose the officials have done enough to reduce the risk. Leafletshave been delivered to all households, announcements made on radio,television, and social media, advertisements placed in newspapers,barriers erected around the excavation site, warnings posted at allentrances, and so on. But now consider one citizen of the city (callher Curious), who is counter-suggestible. Warnings and barriers merelyserve to pique her curiosity. Curious had no prior interest inhazardous waste. But she now develops a desire to see what all thefuss is about. Ignoring the warnings, Curious climbs over the barriersand exposes herself to a dangerous dose of hazardous chemicals.

Curious’s burden results, in a fairly predictable way, from herown reckless choice. Intuitively, this renders her substantivelyresponsible for that burden. Curious cannot hold others responsiblefor her burden. For instance, she cannot sue the city (or itsofficials) to cover her medical costs. One natural explanation forthis intuition is theForfeiture View: by disregardingwarnings, Curious has forfeited her right to expect others either toavoid exposing her to harm or to alleviate her burden if she isharmed.

Scanlon rejects the Forfeiture View in favour of aValue ofChoice account, which emphasises: “the reasons thatindividuals have to want what happens to them, and their obligationsto others and others’ obligations to them, to depend on how theyrespond.” (Scanlon 2015, p. 106) On this view, it is theavailability of choice that matters, not whether the agenthas made anyactual choice. If I am told that I must collectmy theatre tickets by a certain time and I then absentmindedly fail tocollect them in time, then I am responsible for the fact that I missthe performance. What matters is that I had the opportunity to avoidthis situation, even though I made no conscious decision. (Scanlon2015, p. 108)

Contractualist principles must be justified to each person. Thisjustification must cite some reason why a given principle makes senseto that person. In the Hazardous Waste case, contractualists arguethat each person has reason to value living in a society where herfate depends (in part) on her own choices, even if the result is thatshe sometimes finds herself responsible for burdens that she couldhave avoided and has not conscious chosen.

Critics argue that contractualists who cite the Value of Choice cannotjustify intuitive principles in the Hazardous Waste case. Theopportunity to choose isnot valuable for Curious. On thecontrary, that opportunity clearly makes her worse-off! Consider thefollowing variant of the original case.

Cautionary vs Covert: Officials have two options for dealingwith hazardous waste. Under aCautionary Policy, officialsissue public warnings, erect barriers, and so on. Under aCovertPolicy, officials remove the waste in secret, depriving thepublic of any knowledge of the risk. Suppose officials know that,while the Cautionary Policy will result in a larger number of lungdamage cases, every afflicted person will be someone who heard thewarnings and failed to heed them. By contrast, while the Covert Policywill result in a smaller number of lung damage cases, none ofthose people will have had any opportunity to avoid harm.Which policy should the officials choose? (Williams 2006, p. 253;Kumar 2015, p. 269)

Intuitively, the officials should choose the Cautionary Policy insteadof the Covert one, even though more people will suffer harm. Criticsobject that contractualists using the Value of Choice cannot capturethis result. (Williams 2006). Consider Curious. The Covert Policyoffers her greater protection from harm than the Cautionary Policy,because her chance of suffering harm is higher under the latter thanunder the former. And because she is impetuously curious, warnings andother information have negative value for Curious. The opportunity tochoose only makes her worse-off. Therefore, Curious can reasonablyreject the Cautionary Policy.

Contractualists agree that the Cautionary Policy is “the onlymorally defensible choice” (Kumar 2015, p. 269). However, theyargue that contractualism can deliver this result, for two reasons.First, even if the covert policy isinstrumentally superior,all moral agents have strongsymbolic reasons for “notwanting it to be permissible for public officials to hide importantinformation because they decide that members of the public are notcompetent to assess it and respond appropriately” (Kumar 2015,p. 270). Covert paternalism clearly fails to treat people asresponsible adults, and therefore everyone has reason to reject it.Second, Contractualists will appeal to the need to evaluate principlesagainst generic standpoints, rather than against the eccentricpreferences of particular individuals.“Our assessment cannot bebased on the particular aims, preferences, and other characteristicsof specific individuals. We must rely instead on commonly availableinformation about what people have reason to want … aboutgeneric reasons.” (Scanlon 1998, p. 203) What matters is notwhatCurious wants, but what arepresentative personin her situation would have reason to want. And people in general havereason to want control over their exposure to risk. Generic reasonsalso play a key role in contractualist accounts of risk (section 11)and our obligations to future people (section 13).

11. How does contractualism deal with risk?

Moral philosophers often discuss artificial examples involvingcertainty. In particular, discussion of the ethics of harm focuses oncases where each action will definitely harm some particular person.But real-life ethics invariably involves widespread uncertainty. Mostactual “harmful” activities are socially productive onesthat impose some risk of harm on others. (Fried 2012a, 2012b) CanContractualists provide a plausible and distinctive account of whenand why such activities are permitted? (For more detailed discussionof a variety of Contractualist accounts of risk, see Frick 2015, Fried2012a, Horton 2017, Kumar 2015.)

We begin with a simple example:

Driving: Bob lives in a large city in the developed world.His daily life is greatly enhanced by the fact that he and others areable to drive cars. Bob drives to work, drives out of town for theweekend, drives to the local shopping mall, enjoys goods and servicesthat are only available because others can drive, and so on. Onemorning, while walking his dog along the street, Bob is killed in atraffic accident. The driver was not at fault – she was notspeeding or drunk or otherwise irresponsible. Bob is just unlucky. Ina large city where millions of people drive every day, faultless fatalaccidents like this are bound to happen from time to time.

Over the course of his life, Bob received many benefits from his andothers’ driving. But suppose these are outweighed by the cost ofhis untimely death. As things turned out, Bob would have beenbetter-off if driving had not been permitted. This seems to give Bob areason to reject any principle that permits driving. And this reasonseems to outweigh other people’s reasons to want driving to bepermitted. (After all, any inconvenience they suffered would not be asbad as an early death.) It therefore seems that contractualism cannotpermit driving. Indeed, contractualism must prohibitallsocially useful activities that carryany risk of harm– on the grounds that, in a large population, over the course ofa lifetime, any such activity is virtually certain to lead to at leastone death.

Utilitarians have an easy solution. Driving should be permitted if itmaximises expected aggregate welfare. A small risk of death isoutweighed by a large number of individual benefits. If Contractualismcannot permit any risky activities, then this places it at a distinctdisadvantage against utilitarianism.

One simple solution is to restrict the scope of contractualism. Ifcontractualism deals only with cases where harm is certain, then itneed not address risk at all. We could then combine a contractualistaccount of certain harm with a utilitarian account of risks of harm.Unfortunately, this solution has a high cost. Given the ubiquity ofrisk, and the comparative rarity of cases of certain harm, thispluralist option effectively sidelines contractualism.

A second simple solution is to bite the bullet, and insist that riskysocial activities are never permitted. Few contractualists embracethis extreme revisionism. And it too threatens irrelevance. Peoplewill never abandon risk altogether, and we naturally turn to ethicaltheory to guide us through our risky activities. If contractualism issilent in this crucial area, then it loses any claim to be ofpractical relevance.

The challenge for contractualism is to steer a middle-way betweenbanning risk altogether and collapsing into utilitarianism.

One central question is whether our contractualist evaluation of riskshould be ex post or ex ante. Contractualism tells us to justify ourmoral principles to each person. A principle permitting driving mustbe justified to Bob. But when do we imagine this justificationoccurring? Suppose we were to offer Bob a choice between twoprinciples: one permits driving and the other forbids it. When doesBob make this choice? Does he choose in advance – perhaps beforehe moves to the city or before his life begins? Or does he choose inretrospect – after he knows how his life has actually gone?

In cases involving risk and uncertainty, these two temporalperspectives represent very different epistemological standpoints. Exante, Bob knows that living in a city where driving is permittedexposes him to a very small risk of death in a car accident where noone is at fault. Ex post, Bob knows that living in a city wheredriving is permitted has in fact resulted inhis death.

Some forms of contractualism explicitly favour ex ante rather than expost evaluation. Rawls, for instance, asks his parties to chooseprinciples to govern their society on the basis of general knowledgeabout how their lives might go, rather than particular informationabout their specific circumstances. Scanlonian contractualism, bycontrast, usually requires justification to actual people who areaware of their own situation. In his 1998 book, Scanlon explicitlyfavours ex post justification. However, most contractualists(including Scanlon himself) now favour either ex ante contractualismor some hybrid view combining both ex ante and ex post evaluations.(Scanlon 2013, Kumar 2015, Frick 2015.)

In our original Driving case, ex ante justification seems to deliversthe intuitively correct result. When he views the prospects inadvance, Bob may well conclude that the very small risk of death isoutweighed – from his own perspective – by the largenumber of benefits he is almost certain to enjoy. If the imbalance issufficiently great, we might conclude that it would not be reasonablefor Bob to reject a principle that permits driving. (Some extremelyrisk-averse individuals will perhaps still object to driving, butcontractualists can reply that this rejection is not reasonable.)

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this contractualistresponse. First, if all citizens face the same pattern of risks andbenefits, then this ex ante justification threatens to collapse intoutilitarianism in practice. Contractualism thus risks losing itsdistinctiveness. Second, if citizens face different risk profiles,then even ex ante contractualism may still find itself unable tojustify any risky behaviour. Consider a new example:

Flying: Commercial air travel brings many benefits to manypeople. However, it also brings small risks of death. Some of thisrisk falls on people who benefit from air travel – notablypassengers. But some people exposed to the same risks enjoy nobenefits. Jeb is an Amish farmer who completely eschews all the‘benefits’ of modern life. Jeb lives under the flightpathof air traffic between two major cities. (Jeb was not consulted aboutthis flightpath.) One day, debris from a passing airplane falls on Jeband kills him. (This example is adapted from Kumar 2015, which drawson Ashford 2003.)

Jeb obviously has a strong ex post complaint against any principlepermitting flying. But he also has an ex ante complaint. Even beforehe knows that he will be killed by falling debris, Jeb expects nobenefit whatsoever from flying. (Indeed, he does not regard flying astruly beneficial to anyone!) Jeb will want to reject in advance anyprinciple that imposes on him a risk of death without any compensatingbenefits. From a contractualist perspective, this rejection seemsreasonable.

The two challenges for ex ante contractualists are (a) to offer aprincipled justification for rejecting Jeb’s complaint; and (b)to ensure that that justification does not collapse intoutilitarianism. One possibility is to argue that, like Curious, Jeb istoo eccentric for contractualist purposes. We should be asking whatpeople in general have reason to reject, rather than examining thestrange predilections of singular individuals. However, unlikeCurious’s counter-suggestible risk-seeking, Jeb’srejection of modern life is considered and (prima facie) reasonable.If contractualism rejects Jeb’s considered worldview as“unreasonable”, then he might object that contractualismthereby fails to treat him with the respect due to a rationalagent.

A better alternative for the contractualist is to focus on broaderprinciples that apply to all risky activities, rather than artificialprinciples relating only to flying. Jeb gains no benefit from airtravel. But he, along with everyone else, does benefit from living ina society where everyone is free to pursue their own goals accordingto their own values. Jeb thus has reason to reject any principle thatprevents people in general from pursuing reasonable lifestyle options,even if some of those options impose small risks of death onothers.

Another problem for ex ante contractualism is that, in some otherpossible cases, it is ex post evaluation that seems most appropriate.Contrast two scenarios introduced by Frances Kamm (Kamm 2007, p. 273;Fried 2012a, p. 47):

Ambulance I: Should our city authorize its ambulances tospeed on the way to the hospital whenever it is the case that doing sowill save five sick passengers for every one pedestrian who is killedas a result of the speeding?

Ambulance II: Should our city also prohibit its ambulancedrivers from braking to save an identifiable pedestrian’s lifewhenever it is the case that the time lost by braking will cause thefive passengers inside the ambulance to die?

Many people judge that the first policy is permissible while thesecond is not. (Kamm 2007, Lenman 2008) This leads somecontractualists to favour hybrid view that combine ex post and ex anteevaluation. (e.g., Lenman 2008) It is one thing to ask everyone toagree in advance to a policy that will predictably result in thedeaths of some pedestrians, but another thing altogether to askthis particular pedestrian to lay down her life for thegreater good!

Unfortunately, critics of contractualism allege that hybrid viewsproduce implausible results of their own in cases where the partieshave asymmetric information about their fate. (Fried 2012a, pp.53–54) Consider a final case introduced by Sophia Reibetanz(Reibetanz 1998):

Unexploded Mines: One hundred workers are working in a fieldknown to contain an unexploded mine. Another person, Z, is the onlyone who could disarm the mine. If Z disarms the mine, then Z iscertain to get pneumonia. If Z doesn’t disarm the mine, then itis certain that 1 of the 100 workers will be seriously injured. Thisserious injury is ten times worse than suffering pneumonia.

Z faces a certainty of (minor) harm, while each worker faces a 1%chance of (greater) harm. If Z is allowed to appeal to thisinformation asymmetry, then Z’s complaint trumps the complaintof any individual worker. Z can thus reasonably reject any principlethat requires Z to disarm the mine. But this seems counter-intuitive,as the certain result is a much greater harm for someone else. Thechallenge for hybrid contractualists is either to avoid this result orto explain why it is justified. (Ostuka 2011, Reibetanz 1998. For anargument that contractualism cannot solve this problem, see Fried2012a, p. 54)

12. Can contractualism protect animals?

Social contract theories notoriously leave out non-human animals. Ifall moral obligations are between parties to the social contract, thenwe have no obligations regarding animals who cannot be parties to thecontract. So (for instance) torturing non-rational animals cannot bewrong. By contrast, utilitarians have no difficulty explaining why itis wrong to torture animals. This seems to place contractualism at acomparative disadvantage. Can contractualism provide an adequateaccount of our moral obligations to animals? Does it need to?

Scanlon offers two solutions. The first is to limit the scope of hisaccount. Contractualism is not an account of the whole of morality,but only an account of the morality of what we owe to other persons.This leaves open the possibility that our obligations to animals falloutside this part of morality. Scanlon also explicitly puts aside anymoral obligations we might have in regard to the natural environment(Scanlon 1998, p. 179).

Scanlon also suggests a possible way that obligations to animals couldbe accommodated within contractualism. This is via the notion oftrustees, to whom justifications of proposed principles can beoffered, on behalf of the animals they represent (Scanlon 1998, p.183).

Utilitarians will object that this second solution provides tooindirect an account of what ultimately grounds our obligations toanimals. The fact that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary pain onanimals is not most plausibly explained via the notion of whether thisbehaviour could be justified to a trustee of the animals. Rather, itis wrong simply because of the suffering the animal feels. Autilitarian will add that, once we realise that this is what is wrongin the case of animal suffering, we should draw the same conclusionabout human suffering. It is their capacity for suffering rather thantheir capacity for rational agency that plays the most salient role inexplaining the wrongness of torturing humans.

A contractualist can reply as follows. Contractualism captures thecentral sense of wrongness, one that plays a role in how individualsunderstand what they are accountable to one another for. The case ofanimals shows that this is not the only notion of wrongness. But, oncewe reflect on the differences between the two cases, we see why ourobligations to one another are so different from any obligations wemight have to animals—precisely because we cannot meaningfullyjustify ourselvesto them. Animals are not a special problemfor the contractualist, but rather an opportunity to explore what isdistinctive about the contractualist approach.

13. Can contractualism protect future people?

Another problem facing any social contract theory concerns ourobligations to future people. It is hard to see how we can have anyobligations to such people, as they cannot be parties to our contract.This is principally because of the absence of any possibility ofmutually advantageousinteraction between distantgenerations. The quality of life of future generations depends to avery large extent on the decisions of the present generation. Bycontrast, our quality of life is not affected at all by theirdecisions. We can do a great deal to (or for) posterity but posteritycannot do anything to (or for) us. This power imbalance is oftencharacterised in terms of the absence of Hume’s“circumstances of justice”. (The phrase is borrowed fromRawls 1971, pp. 126–130.)

For contractarians, for whom moralityis an agreement formutual advantage, it follows that we have no obligations to futurepeople with whom we cannot interact. A similar problem arises forthose like Rawls who seek to base the social contract on somemodification of self-interested behaviour—such as self-interestbehind the veil of ignorance.

Contractualism, by contrast, easily avoids this particular problem, asit begins by assuming that moral agents are motivated by a desire tojustify themselves to others. There is no reason why those others mustbe currently existing people. When deciding how to act, I can askmyself whether future people who are affected by my actions mightreasonably reject a principle permitting those actions. For instance,if I want to construct a power plant that will leak radiation in thefuture, it makes perfect sense to ask whether those who will suffer asa result might reasonably object to my behaviour. Because it workswith the possibility of reasonable rejection—rather than actualbargaining—contractualism can accommodate obligations to futurepeople. This is a significant advantage over other social contracttheories.

However, there is a second problem regarding future people—onethat does seem to apply to contractualism. This problem owes itsprominence in recent philosophical debate to the work of Derek Parfit,to whom we owe the following example (Parfit 1984, pp.351–379):

The Summer or Winter Child. Mary is deciding when to have achild. She could have one in summer or in winter. Mary suffers from arare condition which means that, if she has her child in winter, itwill suffer serious ailments which will reduce the quality of itslife. However, a child born in winter would still have a life worthliving, and, if Mary decides to have a child in summer, then analtogether different child will be born. It is mildly inconvenient forMary to have a child in summer. (Perhaps she doesn’t fancy beingheavily pregnant during hot weather.) Therefore, she opts for a winterbirth.

Mary’s behaviour seems morally wrong. Utilitarians have a simpleaccount of why Mary’s behaviour is wrong, as she brings aboutless human happiness than she could have done. Yet it seems thatcontractualism cannot capture this intuition. Consider a principlepermitting Mary’s behaviour. If Mary’s behaviour is wrong,then this principle must be one that someone can reasonably reject.But who? Not the Winter Child—because he would otherwise neverhave existed at all. And not the Summer Child—because hedoesn’t exist.

Perhaps the most promising contractualist defence lies, once again, inthe possibility that my grounds for rejecting a principle are notnecessarily confined to its direct impact on my well-being. We mightseparate two moves the contractualist can make here. They might argue(1) that the grounds for rejecting a principle need not be its impacton mywell-being; or (2) that it need not be its impact onmy well-being. Intuitively, what is objectionable aboutMary’s behaviour is not anything to do with well-being, or withthe identity of future individuals. What is wrong is rather that Maryfails to show adequate respect for ‘her futurechild’—whoever that child may turn out to be. Even thoughthere is no particular individual who can be said to have been harmed,there is still legitimate ground for a complaint that a principlepermitting Mary’s behaviour shows inadequate respect to futurepeople. The challenge for the Contractualist is to translate thiscomplaint into one that can be made on behalf of the Winter Child.(For one recent attempt at such a translation, see Kumar 2003a, 2009.For a critique, see Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 235)

In chapter 22 ofOn What Matters, Parfit argues that theimpersonalist restriction—which rules out appeals to theimpersonal goodness or badness of outcomes—leaves any form ofcontractualism that incorporates the individualist restriction unableto respond to the non-identity problem.

Instead, Parfit argues that contractualists should permit bothpersonal andimpartial reasons as grounds forreasonable rejection. Impartial reasons, here,are groundedin the moral claims or the well-being of individuals. “We havesuch impartial reasons to care about the well-being of everyindividual or person” (Parfit 2011, volume 2, p. 238). Thecrucial feature of impartial reasons is that they are not narrowlyperson-affecting. In a different people choice, we have an impartialreason to maximise the well-being of future people—even thoughdifferent possible futures include different groups of possiblepeople. “Since [because of the non-identity problem] we cannotappeal to thepersonal reasons that are had by people whonever exist, we should appeal to theimpartialreasons that are had by people whodo exist” (Parfit2011, volume 2, p. 240).

As with the individualist restriction, we might wonder whether theadmission of impartial reasons effectively abandons the spirit ofcontractualism. If every present person has the same impartialreasons, and if those reasons cannot outweigh any individual’spersonal reasons, then the resulting more impartial formulation ofcontractualism will converge with rule consequentialism. But does thisresult tell us anything interesting aboutScanlon’scontractualism? More generally, will the resulting theory retain thedistinctive features of contractualism that appeal to those who areunsatisfied with familiar alternatives such as Kantian ethics or ruleconsequentialism?

Debates about future people also connect to other recent controversieswithin contractualism, especially the literature on risk. The dividebetween ex post and ex ante justification is especially significant innon-identity cases, where ex post justification can be offered toparticular individuals while ex ante justification can only deal withperson types. Should contractualists give their person-affectingprinciples an ex post or ex ante interpretation? (Weinberg 2003 and2015 defends an ex post interpretation, albeit within a Rawlsianframework rather than a Scanlonian one; while Parfit 2017 clearly setsout the ex ante alternative.)

Another emerging debate is whether contractualism can deliverplausible verdicts in cases involving risks of human extinction. Theprima facie problem for contractualism here is that, because theoutcome where we fail to avoid imminent extinction contains no futurepeople at all, there is no (particular or representative) futureperson who has the standing to reasonably reject principlesinstructing present people to ignore extinction risks and focusentirely on meeting present needs. (Finneron-Burns 2017, Frick2017.)

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