When Someone Owns Something
When Someone Owns Something
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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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.
Your concept sounds a lot like finders keepers, at its core. All this means is whoever gets to a resource first claims it. Might makes right, the first person to chop down all the trees robs the rest of the world of their shade
Your development on the hammer idea is intriguing. By that logic, it's not the possession of a tool that gives ownership, but rather the labor that transforms the raw materials into something of greater value. Of course, the raw natural materials are only obtained for transformation by hoarding away from shared ownership. Perhaps the only logical thing anyone owns is, as you said, the extension of their will: their labor.
Morally, once you peel away the layers of transference all land and raw materials are logically shared by all, with the only actual ownership being over the personal extension of will, the tool use not the tool itself, which by consent of those who share the materials, transforms those materials into valuable forms. Certainly, something to consider.
I disagree that my tool-ownership & finders keepers thought process would be the same in it's core. Under finders keepers, I think, is a more intuitive thought cliche rather than a reasoned through ethical lens. For example, I don't think someone who believes in finders keepers can reason out that two people who find a thing at once ought to share the thing.
The tool-ownership decides who morally has the right to posses something, not who gains the upperhand in actually getting something.
If the conclusion of finders keepers is that "might makes right," it is not only different in it's outcomes or core but the fundamental idea that people can even have the moral right to own things is non-existent. Might makes right cannot coincide with the idea of ownership, since the moral right to own something cannot be a right, since taking something someone owned through might that they owned - through might - is morally right, or at least, neutral. Essentially: the right to own things cannot exist because you never had the right in the first place. At worse it's morally good to rip things away from people if taken literally.
Also, the hammer is not owned through labor but rather the use of it being something to sell to the store owner. You're right that the the mere fact it's being possessed does not make them have the moral right to have ownership, but it isn't the labor put into make the thing that makes it owned either. If I were to prescribe to that I would need justification of how someone can put labor into making their own body, since that's what tool-ownership is based on. If labor includes upkeep, what about people who are concious but cannot move? They don't maintain themselves.
That last paragraph is completely agreeable, practically. In the start of humanity tool-ownership cannot be determined very well except for a small portion of things that an individual can concretly use (like a small hut). Land? How can one individual prove that they stepped, therefore own, on a piece of land. Making it shared. However, where tribes are formed there is a more concrete extension of communal use of land, while some sections people have full ownership of their homes or huts. Which makes it evident that they communally own that land to others who have not consent of ownership. The ownership becomes evident, the "people don't know therefore people share," isn't a problem anymore.
That's still finders keepers. Someone got to a resource first and claimed it (or got to a resource later and wrenched it from whoever claimed it before them). All the use and records and trade and sales and legal distinctions made after that point rest, fundamentally, on the bedrock of "someone years ago called dibs and beat up anyone who challenged them". Every country has been claimed and colonized and fought over, who is the moral owner?
It just seems like your definition of tool use is extremely arbitrary and subjective, as is what point you decide an initial claim is valid. Why are food and water exceptions? Does that mean it's immoral to sell food? What if instead of bottling the water for consumption, I decide to use it all up for concrete, or cleaning chemicals, or pump it into swimming pools? What if I want to use it to store the toxic runoff from my factory? What happens any time two people lay claim to the same resource? They share? What if they want to use it for mutually exclusive purposes? Who has the moral claim?
You either come to the moral conclusion that whoever can start "using" the most resources the fastest gets to own everything, or that no one can own anything material because everything ultimately belongs to everyone. You can't just arbitrarily decide that the hardware store owner has claim to the hammer, even if he purchased it by consent of the manufacturer. Where did the manufacturer get the raw materials? Who laid claim to the mines and the forest where the wood and ore originated? Who was using that land before them? And before them? If I steal your shoes and sell them, I used them by your definition. Do the shoes now morally belong to my customer? If they're sold a dozen more times, each seller purchased them fairly and used them as a "tool" to make money.
That's what I mean when I say your concept is "might makes right" at it's core. Even if everything is done fairly and morally after a point, before that point it relies on someone claiming something by force.