The Methodology of Contractarianism in Economics

The paper explores the methodology of hypotheticalcontractarianism as a means of justifyingrules of social conduct. Formally, thecontractarian argument has the logicalstructure of a familiardeductive-nomological (rational choice)explanation. It necessarily requires,however, that at least some premises usedin its explanans be empiricallyfalse. It is argued that, in contrast toordinary explanatory arguments, thecontractarian thought experiment would bepointless if all assumptions wereempirically true. As a consequence, even inthe case that a given contract theory canbe proven to be logically consistent, itfails to justify binding obligations ofreal individuals due to an insurmountablelogical problem of induction.