So I’ve been thinking about when someone is justified to owning something, and this is my thought process (sorry if this is not the intended use of this community):
Imagine a person who finds a rock on the ground, when he picks it up & uses it to hurt another person they are morally culpable. Comparably, that same person has a body & if they use that body to hurt someone, they are morally culpable as well. It’s hard to say that people don’t own their body, as in they have the moral right to keep & use something (the body), since it’s an extension of their consciousness. How & when someone owns something is important, since the right of property is seen as a fundamental right & is the bedrock of our capitalist society. So using something we fundamentally agree is something that someone owns, we can to understand why & apply it to other things. When comparing these two examples, we’ll understand that what makes ownership exist is if it is used as a tool. Simply because the ownership of the body can be compared to an ownership of an item, which is especially explicit in a moral example in isolation.
Let’s say there’s someone named Elthri, and they will painlessly separate the arm of someone named Kral — which Kral does not want, however would be extremely useful for Elthri to use. This is to avoid other variables, such consequentialist thought of net harm; we’ll treat this as a net-zero in positive or negative outcomes. Everyone agrees, unless someone prescribes to an esoteric philosophy, that Elthri does not have any moral right to take away Kral’s arm for one reason: he has ownership of that arm; it’s his arm. The reason it’s his arm is that it’s connected to his consciousness, it’s a part of his moral weight — it’s an extension of his consciousness. That’s the same reason we can prescribe moral weight to his body, it’s an extension of his consciousness — if not that means if he punches someone he cannot be morally culpable. Since a disagreement of this premise necessarily means his hand hitting someone is not connected to his consciousness, meaning they are not morally capable. Him, as a person, cannot be blamed.
Items work the same way: when someone picks up a rock & hits someone with it, they are still morally culpable. The rock becomes an extension of the person’s consciousness. The only real difference is that the body gives sensory details to our experience, while we can only externally feel the rock. However, in the scenario Elthri & Kral scenario pain (or senses in general) is not the reason for why Elthri cannot keep Kral’s arm — meaning we must conclude that the extension to our consciousness is the actual reason something becomes owned. Kral owns his arm because it’s an extension of him, the same way a rock can be.
However, when does something become an extension of another person is still a standing question. Hurting someone is an obvious example, since there is moral weight, it’s easy to see the extension, but in the input, process, or result of hurting someone when does it become owned? The only answer is that it’s used as a tool, our body is inherently a tool because we must necessarily use it.
A rock is used, it becomes a tool, which means it becomes owned. In the rock-hurting example, it cannot be the outcome (as in hurting someone) in of itself, since someone can have a body but never have a moral outcome in a vacuum but still own their body. It cannot be the person’s effect on the rock, since a person who cannot feel, move, essentially cannot affect their body still owns it. However, the use of the body as a vessel means it is used meaning it’s a tool, meaning it’s explainable through tool-ownership.
I coin this as thinking as tool-ownership, unless it’s already an established philosophy that already has a name. Which is, in a vacuum, the use of a thing as a tool means the person owns the thing.
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I disagree that the rock becomes owned in this instance. I think there’s value in distinguishing between ownership and possession.
Here’s how I see the difference:
- possession - a thing I’m actively using, and I have every right to resist parting with it
- ownership - social construct to meditate differences in opinion regarding possession
If I own something, that means others recognize my claim to it, and perhaps a third party would be willing to meditate if there’s a disagreement. If I merely possess something, I only have a claim until I no longer possess it.
Nothing in your scenario implies that others recognize the claim to the rock. If merely possessing something translated to ownership, polite society couldn’t realistically exist because everything would devolve into a game of he said/she said.
Moral ownership isn’t about how other’s can recognize their claim to the rock, merely that they have the moral right to posses or keep something.
I never said the possesion itself translates to ownership. I have been pretty explicit that the first use is what determines ownership. *Sorry, I thought I was responding to someone else.
If you actually believe that, what about someone who puts their name on a axe they use? It no longer becomes a he/she says, even in a societless society.
What if that axe belonged to someone else before they put their name on it? It’s not as simple as “I put my name on it, it’s mine.” The US put a flag on that moon, but that doesn’t mean the moon belongs to the US. I would expect others to agree that the US owns that flag though.
Ownership is about common consent, possession is about where something is, and personal property is something in between (I.e. my claim to ownership). I’d say that if you put your name on an axe but it’s not in your possession, it’s your “personal property,” but you’d only actually own it if others generally agree that you own it. By modifying something, you have a much stronger claim than by merely using something. But ownership is not a thing unless we start discussing the society around it.
Moral ownership & how someone actually ends up possesing something are two different things. Someone has a moral right to own their body, but slavery has happened, but we would never say slavery was amoral or moral - it just happens they don’t recognize ownership of the body of the slaves. If someone else uses the axe beforehand they have the moral right to own that axe, it just happens another has put their name on it after-the-fact. The second still don’t have the moral right to own it.
If ownership depends on society, can someone own a slave and have it amoral? I consider ownership of the body as a right, and that ownership concludes an extension to other things.
Oh I absolutely agree that ownership of your body is a right. If people have natural rights, surely they’re the only ones who could claim their own body, no?
But once you get to communal goods like natural resources, multiple people could have a claim, and you need society to step in to recognize and protect ownership. Without society, you merely go by the rules of possession. If I find a walking stick on the side of a trail and nobody is around to claim it, I can take it and use it. If I find a walking stick next to someone’s house, that’s a separate thing altogether. The only difference here is how society assigns ownership.
Everything you said is agreeable, everything you said I completely agree with. Assuming the house scenario has laws to protect ownership, correct.
I am not saying this thought of moral ownership is viable through wilderness most of the time. Merely what is moral or immoral in respect to ownership.
I don’t think you can say something is owned because it is an extension of one’s consciousness. A stolen object can still be used as an extension of the thief’s consciousness, yet the thief does not have a valid claim. Your theory is able to explain what is able to be owned, but it is not capable of establishing who the proper owner is.
You could say that the proper owner is the first person to use an object as a tool, but by doing so your theory is essentially a restated version of the homesteading principle:
[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by his labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to. . .
He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then when did they begin to be his? . . .And 'tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? . . . If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that 'tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use.1
Once an item becomes property, the owner may transfer the ownership to another person. therefore there are two legitimate ways of obtaining property: either by homesteading it, or by mutual exchange. If a dispute arises between two people, the burden of proof is on the accuser; if the accuser cannot prove that they have a legitimate claim to the item, then they may not use force to repossess it.
I recommend you read The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard (or at least the first two parts) for an introduction to this theory of property as well as an introduction to natural rights. I would also recommend Against Intellectual Property by N. Stephan Kinsella, who states that what makes something ownable is its scarcity, and explains how this effects the idea of intellectual property.
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Origin, Extent, and End of Civil Government, V. pp. 27-28, in Two Treatises of Government, P. Laslett ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 305-7. Quoted in Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp. 21ff.
Thank you for the recommendations. I agree with everything you said, except for the use of something which is simply restating what Locke has already said.
As I understand it, Locke establishes ownership not by extrapolating from the ownership of the body, but by assuming that individuals own their own bodies and using that as a premise for why they also own other things. While ethical systems may have some overlapping agreements, I believe there are enough differences between my perspective and Locke’s that it is not simply a restatement of his ideas. I apologize if I have misinterpreted or misrepresented his views.
I don’t understand why people assume that I am suggesting this as a factual means of establishing ownership. I am simply stating what creates a situation where individuals should have the moral right to own something.
I will definitely read the recommendations you’ve provided, as my previous thoughts on ownership were just the result of casual reflection over a few days. I’m certain I will look into them.
Two people are fighting over the rock, who owns it?
The person who uses it as a tool first.
What if they use it, and leave it on the ground for a minute while they go do something, and come back to find another had grabbed it?
Well, the point of ownership is that you gain the right to own something. The person who left the item still owns the rock.
While the one who left the rock and the one who found the rock are arguing, a third comes along and claims it themselves, saying they used the rock first last week. Then a fourth notices the commotion, figures if everyone wants the rock so bad it must be worth having, claims they used the rock before the other 3 a month ago; it’s a lie, but there’s no way to prove it. Who holds an enforceable claim to the rock, and by what authority?
Alternatively, I walk into the hardware store, pick up a brand new never-been-used hammer. I use it to drive a nail into the wall, I’m now the first person to use the hammer as a tool, and thus the owner, and the store has no right to charge me for the hammer. I then go down to the car dealership, test drive a new car, and claim ownership by the same rights. I take my car to a new subdivision, and squat overnight in a brand new constructed home, using it as a tool to protect me from the elements.
I am assuming the third party did actually use the rock since you differentiated the third & fourth person.
The third person would still holds the right to actually keep the rock, it’s just unknown to all parties. Which means that none hold authority over the rock, ownership must be shared. In the same way where two people were born in the same body but cannot tell who was concious first. It’s just there is four beings in this example, and they both have a moral right to share the body.
I would argue that the hammer is being currently used as something to sell. For example, if someone never uses their body to do something doesn’t mean they don’t own their body. However, the state of the body being a vessel necessarily means that someone, who doesn’t use to do something with their body, still uses body.
Just because inaction exists doesn’t mean it cannot be used. For example, Kral can carve a message onto a tree to give love advice. He still uses the part of the tree as a means to give out a message, same way the store owner uses the hammer as a means to get money. Same goes for the car dealership & home.
Idk why you used three thought experiments with the same variables of tool-ownership, unless I miss something in which case sorry.
Your definition of “tool use” is so vague I’m not sure what, ironically, its use is. In the rock example, once things get complicated or you start viewing the situation from a non-omniscient perspective, the concept goes out the window and they have to share. Practical situations are like this.
If you follow custody of objects with intent to sell backwards through their owners, eventually someone just called dibs on natural resources and beat up anyone who disagreed. That hammer was once a tree and ores, squabbled over like the rock in the earlier example. Shouldn’t it be shared then? If everyone’s using a lake to drink from, how can one person bottle it and sell it? Shouldn’t it be shared like the rock?
If I climb a mountain and take pictures of the landscape to print into postcards, do I own the land? Someone developing the land destroys the view, which I was using to get money. Therefore, since I was using it it’s mine.
It just seems like this tool-use perspective is either so vague as to not really solve anything (possession=tool use), or immediately discarded as soon as it’s applied to a situation where it could make a distinction (the initial rock).
The most explicit definition I can think of is: “when something is forced upon by someone’s will.” Selling can be applicable since the will would be to put it up to be sold.
Well, all of ownership-deciding methodology would fall under a non-omniscient view unless there are records of some kind. Our government operates off a different mythology yet if they do not keep records they are unable to actually establish who owns something. Yet ownership under government is still practical in general. Even in a vacumm using this system can be used for personal decision making, even if others are dishonest.
I actually thought about this beforehand, first nobody can own a drink or food since it’s use is the end of their existence. Unless they use drinks or food in a unorthodox way or sell it. If people drink water that water is theirs, however they can’t own the rest of the lake since they haven’t used the rest of the water.
The picture point I have never considered, so my answer might change in the future. Hopefully we agree that someone who punches another person in a vacumm is immoral. Same thing with the rock. People are blamed for their action that their concious, their will, causes. There’s an extension to their concious identity. However, if someone shoots a gun in the air & hits someone there is a sense a lesser moral culpability. It’s kinda present in law too, where the intentional & the unintentional (or more apt negligence) are different in moral culpability. Someone being underaged & an adult are treated different for moral culpability.
You use a camera, and you use the land as a picture. One has a obvious, more explicit, extension while the other one not so much. However if you find a cave and you use it there is a more explicit extension, the land is theirs. I think a line of explicit extension, however vague, that exists enough to differentiate when someone has the right to own something. Hope that makes sense.
I don’t think there is a definition that establishes who has the moral right to own something that isn’t vague. Some think it’s when you find something, finders keepers. What if two people find the same thing at the same time? What if a store owner finds a product at the same time as a stranger (somehow.) What if someone find a land first? A river first? If someone goes up a montain & on the other side there is land, he found that land. Do they own the land?
It’s not like people don’t prescribe to this, if people find a dollar on the street they keep it. No questions if it’s immoral to keep the dollar even though it’s likely it was owned by someone else, they found it. Which can be questioned even further.
Finally, I don’t understand the your hammer question. If someone was hired to make the hammer, they can make the hammer but still own it. Since they are the rightful owner they can transfer ownership; it doesn’t have to be shared. If multiple people were hired to make one hammer then they would all, correct, share the hammer’s ownership - while possibly allowing the ownership to tranfer due to all of them being hired.
