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Ethical contractarians. Ethical contractarians assert that freely made personal assent gives credence to ethical and social philosophical principles. These advocates point to the advantage of the participants being happy/contented with a given outcome. The assumption is that within a context of competing personal interests in a free and fair interchange of values those principles that are intersubjectively agreed upon are sufficient for creating a moral “ought.” The “ought” comes from the contract and extends from two people to a social group. Others universalize this, by thought experiments, to anyone entering such contracts. Because the theory does not assert that the basis of the contract is a proposition that has natural existence as such, the theory is anti-realist. Proponents of the theory tout its connection to notions of personal autonomy that most people support. Detractors cite the fact that the theory rests upon the supposition that the keeping of contracts is a good thing; but why is this so? Does the theory presuppose a meta-moral theory validating the primacy of contracts? If not, then the question remains: “What about making a contract with another creates normative value?”