ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4, I developed a procedure for the selection of a social contract without requiring shared perspectives. Our work is not yet done, for two reasons. First, we need to both offer a picture of how stability in such a diverse society might be achieved, despite the tremendous sources of disagreement present in the population. Second, we also need to look at how social experimentation remains compatible with this account of stability. Since contracts are not set for all time, but are open to revision as conditions change and we learn more, there must be some means of generating evidence that we can rely on as we make further changes to the social contract. I aim to show that these two goals are intertwined – diverse societies have good reason to ensure that realized institutions that help manage what Rawls calls the basic structure of society are designed in such a way as to demonstrate to people that they gain from participating in the social contract. But there are many potential ways of designing such institutions. Further, in a diverse, multi-perspectival society, there will be a great deal of disagreement about what kinds of social arrangements best promote social flourishing, and which arrangements cause harm. We thus have strong reasons to try things out – to engage in experiments – while remaining sensitive to the fact that we must balance the benefits and burdens of such experiments such that everyone remains committed to the social contract.
