I think you mean to say that any given definition for “self-ownership” is always and everywhere an assumption. In my case, it’s not an assumption as to whether nerve signals from my own motor cortex (i.e. not someone else’s) are being sent to my muscles.
I think the concept of self-ownership is irrelevant to and ultimately unecessary for a libertarian political theory. It’s often used in a way that switches between metaphysical and normative contexts, but the normative sense can’t follow as a direct inference from the metaphysical sense and the metaphysical sense begs all of the questions that philosophers of mind have been conflicting over for centuries. It’s sometimes unclear whether the libertarian advocate thinks that self-ownership is some normative principle of individual/personal autonomy or a metaphysical necessity or free will or the action axiom.
BPolice,
I believe you are absolutely correct. Every ounce of my being wishes that self-ownership could be proven to be a self-evident truth but it is not and it never will be. We have no choice but to accept that.
That is good enough because the motives of a libertarian (or anybody for that matter) can never be known. As long as our opponents promote and act in violation of the non-aggression principle (which incorporates our libertarian definition of self-ownership) then it does not matter. We can still condemn non-libertarianism action and we have a lot of solid economic theory to defend our position. All we need to do is start by convincing folks that they rightfully SHOULD own themselves and that they SHOULD be left free.
<< I think you mean to say that any given definition for “self-ownership” is always and everywhere an assumption. >>
Correct. That is exatly what I mean and it is what we libertarianarchists should accept as the limitation in our theory.
Whereas any theory which assumes self-ownership to be true will always and rightfully be demolished as soon as our opponents ask us to prove self-ownership.
<< In my case, it’s not an assumption as to whether nerve signals from my own motor cortex (i.e. not someone else’s) are being sent to my muscles. >>
What fact – either assumed or proven – is irrelevent. The never impulses that control the behavior of any plants, animals or microbes are under their direct control but that does not prove any definition of self-ownership to be a self-evident truth. Thus it is with the behavior of any humans.
That has always bothered me about the idea of ownership. I think ownership of physical property is just a social norm.
I’m missing the logic or causality in the notion of “This is mine because I’m the first to touch it”
Given the definitions of ownership thrown around here, I understand the concept of self-ownership.
‘I’m missing the logic or causality in the notion of “This is mine because I’m the first to touch it”’
The question is: what are the possible and consistent alternatives?
Aristippus,
Consistent with what???
You are asking a misleading question because the answer is irrelevent. Your question is also very circular unless you define what you expect of consistency.
Just because there are no possible and consistent (with your assumptions, perhaps?) alternatives to your assertion, that does not prove your assertion to be true. It might be a good rhetorical device to convince folks to blindly assume your assertion to be true, mind you but it is not proof. That is all we libertarians have.
What? I didn’t say anything like that. All I did was ask the question - I might learn something if people try to answer, so it’s not necessarily irrelevant to me.
EDIT: By consistent I mean consistent with its own assertions.
I fail to see how a theory is demolished, let alone rightfully so, when its founding assumptions are pointed out.
I worded that somewhat poorly, I think. I shouldn’t have started out with “In my case”, because it’s not actually a matter of my (or anyone else’s) case at all. My point was to highlight the fact that, for example, my own motor cortex sends nerve signals to my own muscles. Whatever word(s) one chooses to label this fact are the irrelevant part. Definition (i.e. labelling) is arbitrary; facts are not.
Travis, I think a step-by-step argument can now be made to show how self-ownership leads to owning resources.
We begin with defining “legitimate” recursively as “not interfering with that which is already legitimate”. Thus, nothing is inherently legitimate or illegitimate, but can be either. In the base case, or null state, there is no pre-existing legitimacy. Note that this is different from saying that there is pre-existing illegitimacy, as the absence of legitimacy is not the same as its converse.
Any action or condition executed or established upon this null state must therefore be legitimate. Following this, control of something, as an action or condition, can be regarded as either legitimate or illegitimate. Any control is therefore legitimate in the prior absence of control. At this point, let’s define “own” as “legitimately control”.
In the case of human bodies, we can consider control to be established by nerve signals sent from a brain to muscles. In the natural world, the brains sending the signals and the muscles receiving them are always correlated in the same bodies (barring Siamese-twin situations). Given the co-location of these brains and muscles in the same bodies, it can be said that the body as a whole controls itself, or has self-control.
Now is this self-control legitimate? Well, no signals are sent to the muscles before the brain in the same body starts sending them. Hence, the control of a body’s muscles by the brain it contains must be considered legitimate per the definition given above. Given our definition of “own”, we can say that the body owns itself or has self-ownership.
For a body to establish control over other things, it must perform actions. To do this, it must send signals from its brain to its muscles. While a body’s ownership of itself (shorthand for the brain’s control of the rest) is always legitimate, it does not follow that the control the body establishes over other things is always legitimate. Such control is only legitimate if it does not interfere with pre-existing legitimate control. Another way to put it is that ownership cannot, by definition, be established over something that is already owned. This means that legitimate control (ownership) can be established over anything which has heretofore been uncontrolled, as is the case in the null state (save for bodies, which already own themselves). We can call this the homesteading principle.
Since it takes action both to establish control over something and to refrain from doing so, it also takes action to relinquish control over it (i.e. refrain from continuing control after it has already been established). Furthermore, only the body that established the control can subsequently relinquish it. As ownership has been defined as a kind of control (namely the legitimate kind), these things must be true for ownership as well. Hence when a body establishes ownership over something, it remains with that body until the body relinquishes it. At that point, another body can establish ownership over the thing in question.
So following the definition provided for “legitimate”, along with facts about human bodies, we can establish self-ownership and, through that, establish the ownership of other things.
I’d like to know, if I don’t “own my self” or my property then who does?..The “collective”?“Society”.
On what grounds do they have more authority over me and my property? If we all own it democratically, what does it lead to? Why am I forced to share things with others, is it because we are all “one human family” crap, or the believe that we are the children of a fictious deity and we should all share the fruits of “mother nature” and “father sky”?
Regarding “Self ownership”, I believe it is an “axiom”, I believe I control myself(whatever that is), I believe I have a right to my labour and my savings and my property. I have an obligation to defend my rights, otherwise they are meaningless.
Now, “Self Ownership” is a belief, until it can be proven. But how can you prove it? The main question should be, what type of proof do we need? What is it we’re looking for?
If I can’t prove(what type of proof) that my property belongs to me, does that mean that anyone can come to my house and “rob” me, because it doesn’t belong to me? Does it mean that you can knock my door over and arrange yourself in my living room and empty my refrigerator?
If so why, and doesn’t that mean that the aggressor “owns” me and my property? Clearly someone is owning someone, and someone else’s stuff, what does it mean to own?
“I’d like to know, if I don’t “own my self” or my property then who does?..The “collective”?“Society”.”
What if nobody owns anything?
“What if nobody owns anything?”
If nobody owns anything, nobody exists.
No, they would not be meaningless.
If your beliefs were all false, those things (i.e., your self-control, your claim over your labor and your savings and your property along with ther defense) are still marketable.
I recommend that you change your frame of reference in these matters. Just be content that your beliefs in self-ownership are morally correct. If you had irrefutable proof that The Flying Spaghetti Monster owned everything in the universe but just did not tell any of us about that nor did he tell us how we should govern ourselves, you could still act as if your beliefs of self-ownership were true and that would not make much of a difference.
That’s interesting.
The mixing or reformulation kind of lockeanism fails in a number of scenarios most prominently ‘self ownership’.