Conventionalism as a distinct approach to the social contract received significant attention in the game-theoretic literature on social contract theory. Peter Vanderschraaf’s sophisticated and innovative theory of conventional justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of this tradition. In this article, I focus primarily on Vanderschraaf’s defense of the egalitarian bargaining solution as a principle of justice. I argue that one particular formal feature of this bargaining solution, the (...) baseline consistency requirement, may stand in tension with other features of conventionalism as an approach to the social contract and limit the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory to societies in which de facto an egalitarian sense of justice evolves. It limits the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory in the face of moral diversity. A similar limitation applies to Vanderschraaf’s theory of democratic political authority. Despite these minor limitations, Vanderschraaf’s theory can only be seen as a major success and significant contribution to social contract theory. (shrink)

The practical phenomenon of moral diversity is a central feature of many contemporary societies and poses a distinct problem to moral theory building. Because of its goal to settle the moral question fully and exclusively and/or to provide better understanding of moral disagreement, traditional first-order moral theory often does not provide sufficient guidance to address this phenomenon and moral agency in deeply morally diverse societies. In this article, I move beyond traditional first-order moral theorizing and, based on multilevel social contract (...) theory (Moehler 2018, 2020a), develop a practically sound notion of moral agency for morally diverse societies. The interrelational and dynamic notion of integrated moral agency developed in this article demands that agents actively exercise their rational and affective capacities, are receptive to the capacities of others, and are aware of the type of moral interaction in which they engage with others. The notion of integrated moral agency helps agents to reconcile conflicting first-order moral directives and to maximally protect agents’ autonomy in morally diverse societies. (shrink)

This work aligns James Buchanan’s theory of social contract with the structure of Michael Moehler’s multilevel social contract. Most importantly, this work develops Buchanan’s notions of moral community and moral order. It identifies moral community as the vehicle of escape from moral anarchy, where community is established upon a system of rules akin to James Buchanan’s first-stage social contract. Moral order establishes the baseline treatment of non-members by members of a moral community and also provides a minimum standard for resolving (...) disputes that are not resolved by the more robust social contract shared among community members. This work links the multilevel contract to polycentric social order, noting that polycentric systems may promote development of the moral order by enabling experimentation with and emulation of rules and rule systems made available by overlapping and adjacent institutions. (shrink)