Name: Anjelo Louies C.

Principio Date: February 26, 2023

Strand, Grade, and Section: HUMSS 11-D
I. Summaries of Social Contract Theory
This first summary of the first chosen field, political science, will summarize Timothy M.
Weber’s “Examining of Social Contract Theory” (2014). Social Contract Theory, according to
Weber, is where humans give in particular rights that they would have in a state of nature. A
state of nature is essentially where people can do whatever they want. In exchange, they would
gain the rights and securities only found in civil society, a place that the majority of the people in
the world are living in. The first example of Social Contract Theory by Weber is the Constitution
of the United States of America, particularly the 9th and 10th amendments. These amendments,
represent the ideas that the rights of the people extend into places where society should be
careful but also that the extent of the sovereignty of society’s governing entity is not as broad as
an individual in a state of nature. He concluded that the amendments are not given the
significance it was intended to have and that the judicial system of the U.S. should put
importance on them when there are rights that would be examined that are not included in the
Constitution. Weber also gave another example and claimed that the United Nations represents
a new tier of the social contract and is not a true sovereign as it relies on the charity or goodwill
of its members. Weber stated that the only situation where the organization should have
sovereignty over countries is when those countries are in a “Race to the Bottom” situation,
meaning that there is a scenario that escalates that there is no motivation for any nation to do
an action despite it being for the better of humanity and the nation. Weber further added that it
damages the legitimacy of the United Nations when for example, it fails to protect human rights.
Weber concluded that Social Contract Theory would continue to provide a strong debate for
bodily autonomy rights for the people, especially the ones in marginalized groups. He stated,
“bodily autonomy is the heart of individual liberty, of freedom, and its protection from
infringement is a primary purpose of the society we live in, wherever we may live.” (p. 8). To
conclude, Weber stated that self-governance of our bodies is detrimentaland the main purpose
of the society that we all reside in is to protect it.

In this second article, related to the field of political science, contains a summarization of
Manzoor E. Laskar’s “Summary of Contract Theory by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.” (2014).
According to Laskar, the concept of Social Contract Theory was that at the beginning, there was
no law and government to administer the people; hence they lived in a state of nature. Because
of that, some problems face society. To surpass these problems, Laskar revealed that people
agreed to the pactum unionis and pactum subjectionis. Pactum Unionis was a pact where
people looked for protection for themselves and their properties. In turn, it formed a society
where its inhabitants would respect each other and live together peacefully. In the second pact
pactum subjectionis, people were guaranteed to have their lives and property protected and
have liberty to a certain extent, in exchange for their assurance that they would obey the
authority and give their freedom, either fully or some part of it, to the authority. These two pacts
contributed to the creation of a civil society. Laskar summarized the analyses of Hobbes, Locke,
and Rousseau. The analysis of Thomas Hobbes for the theory was that prior to the theory, man
lived in a state of nature where it was a bad state to be in. He further added in order to avoid the
misery and pain that the state of nature brought, and in order to achieve self-protection and
self-preservation, man entered into a contract as man had the instinctive desire for order and
security. He also clarified that in order to achieve this, man should surrender all the freedom and
rights that they have to the authority. This in turn concludes that for Hobbes, absolutism is
necessary. For the analysis of John Locke, his understanding of the theory is different from
Hobbes. He believed that man should only surrender the rights that would compromise the civil
society. Locke firmly believed that the purpose of the government is to enforce the laws and
protect the natural rights of man. He supported the principle of “a state of liberty; not of license.”
For Jean Jacques Rousseau, during the state of nature, life was quite happy and equality was
prominent there. Rousseau argued that because of property, it made state of nature to be not as
effective as it was. Due to this, people surrendered their rights to the community as a whole
which Rousseau called “general will.” Rousseau also argued that because of modern
civilization, the so-called original “freedom, happiness, equality and liberty” that existed before
the theory was, in turn, lost. Rousseau essentially based his theory of social contract on the
“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” principle, and he favored people’s
sovereignty.

II. Summaries of Bounded Rationality

In the second summary, the field chosen is economics. The first article selected is
Herbert A. Simon’s “Bounded Rationality in Social Science: Today and Tomorrow.” According to
Simon, the idea of bounded rationality is that all the decisions that humans make are not limited
to things, such as the decision maker's goal, the events in the external world–where the mind
has no control of but is felt by the person, but also other things, notably, the ability of a person to
think about the consequences of a certain action and the ability to create possible actions.
Simon has twelve events regarding bounded rationality in his article. In all of the events that he
had enumerated, he claimed that human rationality being bounded is not a new concept as it
has been studied since classical times. The theory of rational decision making under dynamic
uncertainty was something not quite known but the events of the probability theory, the theory of
games, and the rational expectations turned the situation dramatically. Simon also included
experimental economics, where economists paid attention to the limits of market traders’
rationality because of the phenomena that was happening in experimental markets where some
people who were involved in experimental economics developed computer programs that would
participate in the market as traders and they would be slower in switching to competitive prices
compared to traders who are much more complex. Other trends that Simon had pointed out are
the revival of bounded rationality, rationality that does not fall under psychology and economics,
the appearance of rationality in the field of cognitive psychology, the overview of bounded
rationality, the systemization of the bounded rationality theory where it would be categorized in
four different headings which are, the tools for finding the empirical phenomena, tools for
building theories, tools for testing theories, and dealing with uncertainty. He also included tools
for finding the phenomena, tools for building theories, tools for trying out the theories, and of
course, dealing with uncertainty.

For the second article regarding the field of economics, particularly bounded rationality,
“Bounded Rationality” by Reinhard Selten where it pointed out the history and progression of
bounded rationality. The idea of bounded rationality was conceived to replace the idea of
maximizing resources and utilizing it but instead should satisfy and adapt to certain situations
that involves success and failure. The article points out that it is important to understand that
cognitive alone is not the limit of rationality but also the motivation.It also tackles the concepts of
bounded rationality but not all of them. It also pointed out that the theory of bounded rationality
needs factual or empirical basis which can be only attained through experimental researching. It
also stated that the decision processes aspects should be learned which was the main subject
of the third and fourth section of the article while the second section handled the limitations of
bounded rationality.

III. Analysis and Comparison

Analyzing Social Contract Theory and bounded rationality is that for Social Contract
Theory is that there is an agreement between the people and the authorities wherein they would
give up particular rights that would be in a state of nature. For example Weber (2014) stated,
“Each individual in the state of nature could, for example, murder another human being without
fear that a leviathan would impose a penalty for the murder.” Leviathan in this context means
sovereign or authority. While for bounded rationality, it is where individuals will choose a
satisfactory decision instead of a optimal one because there are limitations to their rationality. To
further clarify, bounded rationality is where an individual would rather pick a decision that would
satisfy for example, the group that the individual is in rather than picking a decision that would
be optimal for the individual and does not benefit the group. Comparing Social Contract Theory
of Weber and Simon’s bounded rationality, it can be concluded that the Social Contract Theory’s
relationship with bounded rationality is that it has parallelism particularly with the limitations.
Limitations in this context is regarding the actions an individual can do. For Social Contract
Theory, there are limits to a civil society compared to a state of nature where there is bodily
autonomy in every individual.

IV. Application
Applying both Social Contract Theory and bounded rationality into Philippine society is
something that is not that difficult to implement. An example of Social Contract Theory being
applied into the society is the legal system. To give an example to further elaborate, if someone
commits theft and they deny of committing the crime, instead of trying to find the evidence by
the victim whether it is forcefully or not, it will be an invasion of privacy as the victim does not
have permission for that action. Instead, both parties will rely on the legal system to settle this
conflict. The legal system was created to prevent actions that are allowed in a state of nature, in
order for it to be implemented, it is imperative to surrender the rights that one would retain in a
state of nature. An example of bounded rationality in our society is the 2020 Tarlac shooting that
was involving Jonel Nuezca, a police officer at that time, Sonya and Frank Gregorio. The murder
of Sonya and Frank Gregorio was a product of Nuezca’s inability to control his emotion after
Sonya Gregorio replied “I don’t care” to Nuezca’s daughter “My father is a police man.” Emotion
is an example of bounded rationality as it is a limitation to individuals regarding rational
decisions. Nuezca chose to murder Sonya and Frank just to satisfy himself and not sort it out in
a logical way by talking to the other party by civilized means.
V. Recommendation
In order to understand the Social Contract Theory and bounded rationality, it is
imperative to understand that for Social Contract Theory is where individuals give up certain
rights to the authority and in exchange, the other rights that they have retained would be
protected by the authority. An example of this is the aforementioned legal system in the fourth
section of this review essay. For bounded rationality, it is essentially where individuals choose to
take decisions that would satisfy and not to utilize. Another example of this apart from the 2020
Tarlac incident is an individual that would choose to buy something at a store for an
unreasonable expensive price than go and look for another store that would offer a cheaper
price compared to the unreasonable one.

VI. References

Weber, T. M. (2014, December 10). IUPUI. Examining Social Contract Theory.

https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/5538

Laskar, M. E. (2013). Summary of Social Contract Theory by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2410525

Simon, H. A. (2000). Bounded rationality in social science: Today and tomorrow. Mind & Society,

1(1), 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02512227

Selten, R. S. & Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG. (1990). Bounded Rationality. Journal of

Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) / Zeitschrift Für Die Gesamte

Staatswissenschaft, 146(4), 649–658.

Staff, C. N. N. P. (n.d.). Cop Who Shot Mother and Son in Tarlac to Face Murder Charges. CNN.

from,

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/12/21/Paniqui-Tarlac-police-shooting-Jonel-N

uezca-Sonya-Frank-Gregorio.html