We now turn to six problem cases for contractualism.
There is still room for contractualism here, but not "constructivism".
Before turning to problems for contractualism, we first address a challenge to its distinctiveness.
The challenge for contractualism is to explain why what you did is wrong.
A further difficult kind of case for contractualism is where the burdens that different persons stand to suffer are unequal and so cannot balance each other and cancel each other out but are still very severe in each case.
In contrast to an outcome ethics (such as utilitarianism), what is foundational for contractualism is not minimising what is undesirable, but considering what principles no-one could reasonably reject.
A similar problem for contractualism is presented by Thomas Nagel, who argues that, in the present state of the world, it may be impossible to construct any set of principles which no-one can reasonably reject.
Those who are attracted to contractualism because, in certain key cases, it coheres with distinctively non-utilitarian intuitions, are likely to regard the impersonal contractualism deployed in the convergence argument as an abandonment of the core commitments of contractualism.
The continuing problem for Hobbesian contractualism is the apparent rationality of free-riding: if everyone (or enough) complies with the terms of the contract, and so social order is achieved, it would seem rational to defect, and act immorally when one can gain by doing so.
Thomas Scanlon's contractualism, for example, which posits at its core those norms of action that we can justify to each other, is best construed as an ontological and epistemological account of moral notions.
