DPMartin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:55 pm
anyway, this very thing mentioned makes it important to understand what it is that requires us to have agreements, things like betrayal and unfulfilled expectations realistic or not and just about every interaction between humans is based on presumptions and assumptions of some sort of agreement or agreed behavior and actions.
Yes, that's fair to say.
Now, the problem is this: what's
binding about an agreement merely between people? Why should one not
pretend to agree, then break the agreement in order to obtain advantage of some kind? That's a problem.
The mere
existence of an agreement doesn't provide its
objective moral justification or attach any
duty-to-obey to it, you see. The duty to keep one's agreements has to come from somewhere, if it exists: but from where, since it is necessary to believe in it
prior to any good-faith agreement?
...for if one knew not to trust so and so one wouldn't enter into a contract with that person in the first place.
True: but notice that that is exactly what the agreement-betrayer counts on. Most people will, as a matter of fact, tend to keep their agreements more often than not. The agreement-betrayer counts on this, and preys on people by the very means of it.
So it seems that contracts will exist if MANY people are reliable, even if some are not. But what tells us that the unfaithful ones are actually "wrong" or "evil," or "doing a bad thing" in some sense? After all, what they're doing seems to "work" for them, and doesn't completely disrupt the practice of agreement-making. So there's no obvious downside for them.