Ownership
defined Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land or real estate, or intellectual property.
Extending that dictionary definition I would add, most importantly, Self which would include personal beliefs, strategies for living life and ones walk through life. The sovereign ability to determine ones life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (whatever that may be to the individual), and the ownership of property.
Ownership, in my eyes, is such that a person is able to do whatever he/she wishes with whatever it is they 'own' even to the extent of keeping it from others, consuming it until it doesn't exist, lending it to another, or outright destroying it beyond use, This premise does not differentiate between a thing (inanimate object - a plot of land, a rock, a shoe, food, etc.) and an idea (a written text, a picture, a personal creed). Ownership DOES NOT REQUIRE validation by others or even rationality to others and should not subject to the judgement of others, particularly when it come to the Self.
In this contemplative definition the individual, each individual, is the focal point of that persons existence with the absolute authority to shape his/her existence and, as a consequence, reap the benefits and pitfalls of those decisions (be they social or environmental).
Am I missing anything?I am leading to a point but would prefer it come about sequentially.
Extending that dictionary definition I would add, most importantly, Self which would include personal beliefs, strategies for living life and ones walk through life. The sovereign ability to determine ones life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (whatever that may be to the individual), and the ownership of property.
Ownership, in my eyes, is such that a person is able to do whatever he/she wishes with whatever it is they 'own' even to the extent of keeping it from others, consuming it until it doesn't exist, lending it to another, or outright destroying it beyond use, This premise does not differentiate between a thing (inanimate object - a plot of land, a rock, a shoe, food, etc.) and an idea (a written text, a picture, a personal creed). Ownership DOES NOT REQUIRE validation by others or even rationality to others and should not subject to the judgement of others, particularly when it come to the Self.
In this contemplative definition the individual, each individual, is the focal point of that persons existence with the absolute authority to shape his/her existence and, as a consequence, reap the benefits and pitfalls of those decisions (be they social or environmental).
Am I missing anything?I am leading to a point but would prefer it come about sequentially.
There is nothing except a volitionally agreed ethic of mutual respect of "rights", and those don't apply to everyone. One group can collude against another, and the ever increasing brain capacity can justify any atrocity. The notion of a person owning himself or herself is easily compromised. The prehistoric formula of power and conquest still prevails.
What percentage of humanity actually practices Objectivist ethics? What percentage hates rich people and wants to expropriate them to take for their group? There is no respect for ownership rights, nor for owners. Look at the devices the moochers exploit, from victimhood to injustice to group rights and reparations. Having to earn something is passe. And they can never get enough. There is no connection with exchange of values, no recognition of merit. Demand becomes entitlement.
And the Sanders and Warrens feed this envy and cash in. Looters, unite. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Rights can be ignored by brutes and injustices committed; they do not disappear as moral principles based on the nature of man as a rational being.
The foundation of state and their right to act. While a state is not alive to have inherent rights, it is bestowed rights by concensus to act as a body to varying degrees, some most egregious.
The 'consent of the governed' is a prime example.
A right is not "authority"; it is a moral sanction of freedom of action in a social context. Collectives do not and cannot have rights. There is no justification for a 'will of the people' violating the rights of any individual nor can such collectivism "bestow" any such right on a state.
States posses government coercive power whose only moral purpose is to protect the rights of the individual -- that and only that may be done with the "consent of the governed". No collective and no government may morally do whatever it wants to -- i.e., employ freedom of action -- to violate anyone's rights in the name of "rights".
No one has the right to violate the rights of another individual and no one can obtain such a right by ganging up on him in the name of the "will of the people". That is tribalism. No "will of the people" can "bestow" a "right" on anyone or on any group to violate rights. Rejecting collectivist authoritarianism is not circular.
"States posses government coercive power whose only moral purpose is to protect the rights of the individual -- that and only that may be done with the "consent of the governed". No collective and no government may morally do whatever it wants to -- i.e., employ freedom of action -- to violate anyone's rights in the name of "rights"." On this we agree. However no one, particularly me, said they can do whatever they want to.
"No "will of the people" can "bestow" a "right" on anyone or on any group to violate rights. Rejecting collectivist authoritarianism is not circular."
People elect governments. Government employ and train people to enforce the laws. Some break laws. The police come to collect them. Those people a tried and put in jail, their rights are suspended as well as their liberty. My point, Yes, people can absolutely bestow authority on an entity that can restrict rights and liberty, Tribal? No, simply society irregardless of political ideology.
I absolutely do "deny that a State, at least in theory, represents its people and in the context of the larger body (nation) on behalf of the interest of its local population." Nor does it matter as a justification for government. Most governments have not existed to represent the citizens, nor would it justify its violating the rights of the individual on behalf of any collective for "it's" "interests". A collective is not a thing and does not have "interests"; only individuals do and they may not morally use government force to pursue them just because a mob wants to.
Representative government is a means of implementation, not the purpose or justification of government, which is to protect the rights of the individual. Representative government as the "consent of the people" is only proper when the purpose and functions of the government are proper. It is not proper when the backers "consent" and demand authoritarianism and collectivism. Mob action is not moral basis of government. No one has a right to impose his "interests" violating the rights of others, and does not acquire such a "right" by "empowering" government on behalf of a mob.
You did say, emphatically, that a local group can properly do what its members want to:. You defended local government violating the rights of individuals as "the will of the people". You denounced the rights of the individual as the standard as an irrelevant, rhetorical "soap box". You rejected national government doing the same only because of the Constitution, not out of any moral principles.
You have further confused "empowering" government to violate rights with "empowering states with rights to act", and have adopted and appealed to the false premise of "state's rights". You called the distinction between "use of rights and authority" "splitting hairs". And asserted that "the presumption of authority by any state is built on the bestowed right to act authoritatively." There is no such thing as a "bestowed state's right".
Might does not make right. State's do not have "rights", "bestowed" or otherwise. The difference between the rights of the individual and state authority is not "splitting hairs"; it is essential. The distinction is not obliterated by mob action in the name of "the will of the people".
You assert again, "people can absolutely bestow authority on an entity that can restrict rights and liberty, Tribal? No, simply society irregardless of political ideology." Restricting rights and liberty is not "regardless of ideology". What people do depend on what they think. The ideology of the actions you describe is tribalism -- a group of people coercing others on behalf of the group, and endorsing the oppression as a matter of principle because they are collectivists.
The conservative movement has declined even beyond what it was when Ayn Rand denounced it almost 50 years ago. "Populist conservatives" demanding that government impose their "interests" are much worse collectivists and statists than they were then. Conservatives used to understand the difference between the American Revolution and the collectivist French Revolution, though they have never understood or supported the moral basis of American individualism and still don't.
This is not a result of predatory animal instincts. There is no instinctual knowledge at the conceptual level. The collectivist trend is due to bad philosophies of unreason, altruism and statism. Establishment intellectuals are the leaders of the "barbarians" -- the Witch Doctors goading on the Attilas.
Objectivism -- and human civilization -- do have "a long way to go to lift mankind to lofty principles and obtain people's reasoned and volitional cooperation". That can only be done at the level of spreading the right ideas against the establishment intellectuals who monopolize education and the media.
We do not have "animal instincts" or innate ideas. Emotions are the result of values implicitly or explicitly chosen and held. Every individual can choose to be rational or not, and establish that as is habitual character or not. There are no "evolutionary components" or "animal instincts" determined in our thinking. That is a deterministic view of man as inherently irrational.
Acquiring sophisticated brains capable of abstract thought rests on a long chain of building on earlier capabilities. Just as we have residual organs and physical endowments, our brains still carry the messages of our genetic programs. Our capacity for rational thought did not replace in toto what we built on. Our science has not yet progressed enough to be able to analyze how the higher brain functions integrate the earliest with the new, the animal code (heavily intertwined with our emotional equipment) with the abstract, “objective” (meaning detached from emotional influence) functions.
The potential to be a rational animal is not equally exercised by all humans, nor is it the only way humans function. The default setting is the most primitive, just as with the genetic, physical growth from an egg to a complete human being. As a child develops, depending on its stimuli, its cognitive facilities grow but never detach from the original code. Total suppression of all emotions is considered a pathological syndrome.
Emotions, as Ayn Rand correctly identified, are value judgments, part of humans’ diagnostic equipment for evaluating what is good or bad for survival. When you want to reason with someone to persuade them to your views, invariably it requires understanding their emotional bias. The entire craft of salesmanship, marketing, commerce, political campaigning, propaganda, and controlling others’ minds depends on this device. That is why Ayn Rand’s most powerful statement is “Check your premises.” Not just your current opinion, but its deepest roots, the singularity at the start.
Self-awareness, self-reflection, cognitive integration are capacities that humans appear to have to a higher degree than other animals, as far as we can identify. But animals have feelings, too, no matter how cavalierly we treat them, and they also make decisions for their survival. They are just at an earlier level of evolution.
The default setting is automatic. Higher levels of thinking require further development and the recognition, the awareness, that one can exercise it intentionally (the famous “free will” that is so controversial). Historically, individuals are taught from birth to behave a certain way, to believe what they are taught, to obey the rules laid upon them.
Children are predisposed to accept rules from authority figures without proof, thus early indoctrination can be embedded without resistance. It is the rare individual who questions everything, and is considered a rebel, a traitor, a troublemaker and punished in any number of ways, from spankings to beatings, to shunnings, excommunication, exile, or even execution. Under such conditions, a thinking individual will be conditioned to keep quiet about his revolutionary ideas unless he finds enough like-minded associates.
And what are ideas? In an advanced brain, they are the software formed from perceptions into concepts, and reinforced with repeated confirmations from sense data. Like the scientific method on a grander scale, from evidence to experiment to verification and proof. This process is what we call “reasoning”. Once initiated, this process works on its own protocol.
There is no guarantee that there will be no errors. A mind with integrity will not seek to evade evidence of its own errors. Most people, though, want to protect their adopted ideas and beliefs, and will squirm every which way to avoid admitting error. All the self-protective emotions will rise to their defense, reinforced by collective groups that share those ideas. When values conflict, whether in a quarrel between two individuals, or in political opposition, at the extreme it leads nations to war and genocide.
Ideas, like other organic forms, acquire the will to survive, capturing the individual’s emotional reactions into their service. All means at the individual’s disposal, from logic to rage, are activated to rationalize and justify faulty ideas and the destructive actions engaged in to defend them. Philosophers become especially skilled in denouncing, dismissing, condemning, mocking individuals whose ideas are contrary to their own. Facebook aficionados do it simply by name-calling and ad hominems, especially toward a commenter who displays even the slightest opposition to their socialist bilge.
As Ayn Rand also brilliantly observed, there is no conflict of interest between rational men. Likewise, there is no disagreement on essential topics among rational individuals. Differences of taste in food or movies or books or clothes are not a reason to condemn a person as wrong or evil. Creativity and innovation are the most superb qualities of human beings, and the antidote to the totalitarian drive of any system. So long as no one takes violent action or other destructive maneuvers against others, vive la difference.
Galt’s oath is the fundamental golden rule, summarized as “do no harm”. An entire body of ethics and morals can be evolved from that axiom. But so long as people, whether as small groups or as whole nations, are in the grip of cancerous totalitarian ideas, we have our work cut out. Violence begets more violence. And that is rooted in the animal predatory instinct residual in human consciousness. And that is the tool for socialist altruism and all the other variants of political philosophies that justify depriving individuals of their unalienable rights.
Very, very few individuals have the capacity of an Ayn Rand in genuinely rational thought and understanding, of building an Objectivist ethics on their own. Very, very few people are “the rational animal” that humans can be. If everyone were, mankind would have a perfect world, neither would they make war anymore.
One of the barriers to an increase in rationality is the inherent human ability to rationalize, this is the use of intelligence and imagination to justify ideas and actions not reached by the use of rationality but which are preconceived, innate or not.
Rationalization is common, rationality is rare. Perhaps one is gaining over the other, but which? Gulchers post up examples of irrationality such as the use of emotional thinking and animal instincts, sometimes Gulchers description and analysis use good rational thinking, perhaps more here than elsewhere.
Dale Halling and I had discourse on this years ago. I assert that Freedom is an Absolute and that Liberty is a condition of interaction with others.
Otherwise....How G-Rand a statement!
Yes, this was a flashpoint topic for Dale and me as well.
That language is metaphorical for the sensory and emotional states of "Things", perhaps a Definitionary is in order now that humans are interconnected around this world.
The Objectivist's Ethics is the clearest statement of objective values structure ever. Rand has some gaps, yet are easily filled with self-evident metaphysical relationship and choice cycles. Life at simplest is the cycle of relationships and choices. Humans get to choose, subjective or objective, based upon what we learn and what supports our comfort or discomfort. Subjectivity, when challenged, shall always create conflict and discomfort, wether within the individual or between others.
But conservatives are not for capitalism and cannot intellectually defend capitalism as a social system. The populist and religious conservatives are promoting their own statism and collectivism with religious and populist demagoguery, such as more government control violating freedom of speech, anti-immigrant economic protectionism, the usual rabid anti-abortion campaign, and interference in molecular and cell-based medicine. Some of the intellectually worst anti-capitalist propaganda is coming from the likes of Prager who defends European welfare statism and socialism as the answer to the more extreme socialists.
Trump himself does does not support individualism. He is anti-intellectual in general but in policy advocates and has implemented higher taxes for punishment (like his tariffs and his new income tax on money that must be paid to other taxes in order to punish everyone in "blue states"), a government "infrastructure" boondogle, pro-forced unionism in international trade deals, personally pressuring private companies to not move overseas (just like Kennedy against the steel companies), his long standing promotion of eminent domain as "wonderful", national mercantilisim in trade restrictions, economic protectionism as part of his immigration policies, and expanded government controls in health care to "replace" parts of Obamacare.
This is all being falsely equated with capitalism.
This conservativism is part of the general trend towards more statism and collectivism, but the worst conservatives are increasingly emotionally militant in their anti-intellectualism and populist collectivism. now appealing even to the "will of the people" in defense of local oppression they oppose by the Federal government in the name of the Constitution. They are not for capitalism but are tying it to their own nationalist, statist ideology (especially with today's improved economy) and irrationalist religious promotion, creating a false alternative between different brands of collectivism and statism in the name of capitalism.
Trump is intellectually challenged for sure. He should exonerate Snowden, and instead he called for his execution, and he has done the things I noted above to ME personally. I will vote for him in 2020 if he lasts that long, but I wont contribute to his campaign. I think this country is beyond saving actually.
...belief is the absence of reason and logic...conviction is based on facts of reality....
nice article...
"Ownership DOES NOT REQUIRE validation by others or even rationality to others and should not subject to the judgement of others, particularly when it come to the Self."
You are leading to a very dangerous area: e.g. the stripping of the individual of the ownership and control over his/her life, which is what the left is aiming to do.
The difference between having the deed to your house and owning you life is: there is no deed to owning your life. While the left can't take your physical property away, they have and are setting the "society-accepted" rules on the basis of which they can force you to give it up and allow them to own it.
We are on a straight path to that eventuality.
He has confused the self with property. Your right to your life is a fact, based on human nature, but requires "validation" philosophically to grasp that fact. The philosophical principle must in turn be recognized in law for a civilized existence. That in turn makes possible the legal recognition of property rights and a system of deeds to record them. The moral and legal principles of the right to your own life does not require a deed, only the fact that you exist.
Now, will you engage with me on an abstract suvbersion of this principle? I was enjoined in a contract through SSA, by my parents consent, and have never seen a published "Opt Out" of this contract. I was never directed or instructed as to ways or means of extrication. Is this technically and morally enslavement? I think it is.
Still a stretch of land and your person does have a degree of commonality - who can and can't access it, what happens to it or not to it, the condition it remains and whether its allowed to go to waste via deliberate misuse or neglect, and whether its existence will continue forward healthily or be made to ruin (forfeiture of existence for the living being the most extreme).
Eg. you may think you own land, provided others respect that claim.
The only sense in which consent is required is that if people are to live as human beings then you and those around you must recognize the facts of reality and choose to be moral, which is a statement of the importance of philosophy, not a denial of your right to your life or property rights as nothing but a grant by the whims of others.
I'd say this foundational to society in general.
If those around you don't do that and don't respect your rights it doesn't make your rights meaningless, only impossible to live in accordance with because you aren't in civilization.
Gives lots of reason to work in the first place. Might as well hide what you produce and buy guns to protect it.
That is where we are today, with a great risk of losing more of what you produce and the risk becoming greater over time. Without a fundamental change in outlook on fundamental philosophic premises it is only a matter of time. People are still becoming wealthy even in China, but more of them are disappearing there, too.
But there is a limit to what you can "hide" and guns will not help you once you are targeted by either the state or ordinary goons. You can't live that way. Guns are even more hopeless against the state.
If no one else existed there would still be a necessity for moral standards as a basis for your choices; there would be no factual basis for the moral concept of rights, including ownership, because there would be no choices involving other people. In particular there would be no need for and no basis for a concept of ownership. The concept of rights, including the concepts of property rights and "ownership" would not arise.
Concepts of rights, like all concepts, are objective, not intrinsic. They depend on and are a way of mentally organizing facts of reality of which one is aware, not something discovered as intrinsic to reality regardless of the needs of human consciousness.
Loss of ownership rights in your home are due to government restrictions, not the bank. As for the political collectivists seeking control of our live's and property, that isn't restricted to the Federal government. State and local governments are doing the same, especially with taxes (including property taxes on your home) and land use controls, increasingly for nature preservationism over human use.
This is much deeper than a Constitutional issue -- as illustrated in the psychology in Antherm, as you mentioned. You should also know that George Orwell was a socialist, objecting only to the more extreme totalitarian tactics.
You can't separate the physical from the sensory.
A human being can't exist without consciousness (they can but they are not humans).
If the physical property is sold, e.g. as slaves were bought and sold, that does not mean their consciousness was sold, too. The slave owner did not possess the slave's mind.
As for slavery, true but the owner certainly defined the slaves existence and had huge sway over his/her mind and thinking.
Slave 'owners' used brute force to control the slaves. They had no ownership right to the slaves. Owning another human being is a contradiction in terms. Ownership logically requires a human being with rights, which applies to all human beings.
For the record, without external assistance that person wouldn't last very long, even so.
Such a being with no conscious awareness of reality is not, by definition, a rational being. Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses as his means of grasping the facts of reality. The means are his conceptual ability to integrate his perceptions in abstract form (concepts), in accordance with the method of logic.
Man as the "rational animal" means that man must use his reason in order to survive. The being you described has no such faculty; it is cut off at the base with no perceptions of reality to integrate. It is no more conscious, let alone rational, than a celery stalk, whatever else might be going on with some neurons celery does not have.
Rationality is the primary virtue because it is the means of exercising reason on behalf of one's life, which in turn is the basis of morality. That in turn is the basis of rights: morality applied in a social context.
The being you described has no possibility of morality because he is not a rational being -- it does not have a brain capable of making choices required to live, let alone think in principles in order to do it, and therefore the concept of rights does not apply to it. In particular, like a celery stalk it has no right to exist. Morality and rights are concepts inapplicable to it.
Influence, sure, by the sheer fact of circumstances that the owner set for the slave but the owner did not OWN the slave's mind in the sense that it was able to program it how to think.
Otherwise gladiators would not have been able to revolt neither slaves.
I'm just thinking this through for the first time.
The courts could make someone sell assets to cover a contractual obligation, but they couldn't make him sell his body. I can understand the logic behind debtors' prison, although I don't agree with it, for people who could earn money to pay their debts by working but just don't want to. In that case, the people have pledged their bodies as indentured servants. But that requires their minds too.
Maybe the issue is in this life, with the technology we have today, the mind and body are bound together. In the Star Trek episode Return to Tomorrow, they encountered aliens who could move into and out of bodies at will. The aliens were going to make robot bodies for themselves. They borrowed Kirk's two other characters' bodies with permission and were tempted to steal them. They realized this was immoral and relinquished the bodies. At one point the nurse agreed to let Spock's mind share her body. If minds and bodies could disassociate as in that episode, it would make perfect sense to think of bodies and property of the mind.
You don't have a property right in your body, owned by a disembodied consciousness. it is you, with consciousness as one attribute of your self. Your right to your own life is a characteristic of humanity as the rational animal and cannot be surrendered. You can destroy yourself; you can never surrender your nature as a human being with rights.
If you think about a consciousness as separate from the body and the body a possession, it certainly has some profound implications about consciousness itself...
Prostitution is selling a temporary use of one's self, just as any labor is. It is not surrender of one's rights.
Does it provide the option of voluntary irrevocable servitude? Could someone sign an agreement to be a slave for a fixed period or until a project is completed? Our current law doesn't allow it, but do you think it should? I've never thought about it, but it doesn't sit right with me. It just seems like freedom should not be for sale, even if there's a willing buyer and seller.
Beating violates the law..In this country equal force is allowed by the police and anyone else. Beating someone to coerce or intimidate or another reason which isn't reciprocation in kind is illegal (and immoral).
I'm no lawyer but that's my understanding.
I think in the past there was debtors’ prison in which people were forced to work until the debtor worked off his obligation through work or someone on the outside paid it. This practice seems more consistent with someone owning his body. Just as if someone owing money can have a rental property taken to pay a debt, the court could take someone’s body, which like a rental property is capable of generating income.
“Beating violates the law”
This is a good point. Under current law, contracts involving illegal acts are unenforceable. So even if there were gov’t-run debtors’ prison, you couldn’t make a private contract to become someone’s slave.
I read ewv’s comments about the mind and body being inseparable, and that rings true to me. Maybe I’m on the wrong track thinking of debtors’ prison to understand body ownership.