The state of nature

The chapter assumes that the state of nature is the state of the world prior to the existence of social rules, and then goes on to argue for the following claims. (1) We have reasons for action in the state of nature. (2) In those state of nature worlds in which we all know what reasons for action we have and are motivated to act on them—for short, those worlds in which we are ideal—these reasons for action would support our exiting the state of nature, that is, our creating and maintaining certain social rules. (3) The social rules we have reasons to create would include social rules telling us what to do in both worlds in which we are ideal and nearby worlds in which we are non-ideal. (4) These need not be rules that we have any reason to abide by in the actual world in which we are non-ideal. (5) Thinking about the role of social rules in fixing what we have reason to do in those states of nature in which we are ideal and non-ideal suggests a complicated and novel story about what we have knowledge of, insofar as we have knowledge of what we have reason to do in the actual world in which social rules exist willy-nilly.