Birthday Pony,
I can understand the Christian perspective, due to the theological presupposition of a “soul”, i.e., a consciousness independent of the physical world, which controls some portion of matter for some portion of time. Since the mind/body duality is already considered a fact, it follows that one would consider the soul “owning” the body.
James,
Great post. Just to be clear, your position is that the concept of “self-ownership”, while a myth, is of vital necessity to the progress of society. Is that close? Would it suffice to instead just claim “I am”? Would that be enough?
JJ,
I wasn’t aware that you presuppose that things can exist outside the physical world. Are you claiming the existence of some supra-physical realm in which the “mind” exists?
Autolykos,
Very interesting post. I also treat the concept of “ownership” as an ethical/moral issue. How do you reach the conclusion that the mind body duality is necessary for reasoning?
Ah yes, why bother doing anything? I’m not really sure. I don’t think there’s really any reason. Welcome to the depressing world of Absurdism! I also agree that contemplation, as we are currently practicing it, does require an ego which classifies phenomena in an attempt to recognize patterns, and “make sense” of our experience. That being said, I believe that it isn’t the only way to practice consciousness:
z1235,
OK, I think I’m with you now. It’s more a “battle of the memes”. This society’s memes were what allowed poulations possessed by those memes to outcompete others. I would argue that we have reached these norms over a very long period of time, during which the memes themselves have mutated drastically. How does your position account for this? Since we are saying that our zeitgeist is clearly the most competitive, does that assume that the Austrian ideology is unfit, since it is so relatively unsuccessful in capturing hearts and minds?
Steven Douglas,
I would disagree that the concept of “property” is meaningful without a normative underpinning. Rental is a good example of why. I do agree that “property” removed from these normative assertions, would entirely equate to “possession”, rendering “property” itself meaningless as a concept. This is probably just a difference in semantics, rather than a difference in opinion. I’ve fallen into that mire before!
That second post was great!
“Concepts like ethics, morals and legitimacy can be every bit as real (“what is”) as property and ownership - but only because we said so, and then acted upon it to make it so.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1.1