Being able to convince others you own this thing (Aka Power as Maw said)

Ownership also depends on the agreement of others. — Brett

Only an agreement between me and another person with which I am trading things I own for things that they own. No one else gets to have a say in what we own. They can try to take it, but then that doesn't mean that I never owned it.

But what determines what others own, if “ability to defend it” determines ownership and all defense is done collectively through the state? If the state (with your input, but not your exclusive input) decides not to defend your ownership of something and instead to defend someone else’s ownership of it, doesn’t that make it then rightfully theirs on this account of might makes right? — Pfhorrest

It's really easy to grasp. You just have to take in everything that I have said, which really isn't all that much. The state would only decide to not defend my ownership of something if I acquired it by infringing on the rights of others.

Exactly what does that mean? Single word ‘answers’ are not even slightly convincing. How do you know Maw means the same thing as you? Does ‘power’ always mean the same thing to everyone anymore than ‘ownership’ does? Why/ why not? What are the possible applications and uses of analysing these concepts?

Anyway, I’m curious what people think about the origins of inequality in terms of ‘property’ and ‘property rights’? How did this arise? Has ‘ownership’ always been a function of social bodies (tribes, hunter gatherers, etc.,.)?

The state doesn't own anything except the power to defend what others own. — Harry Hindu

The ruling elite cannot be trusted.

In theory, the ruling elite protects your property rights. In practice, they are also the worst threat to them. The more you trust them, the more likely you will sooner or later lose what you have.

The ruling elite must never be trusted, and everything they say, must be treated with utmost suspicion. They are liars and manipulators. They will try to make you believe that they act in your interest, but in reality, they are only looking for an opportunity to strip your clean.

The state would only decide to not defend my ownership of something if I acquired it by infringing on the rights of others. — Harry Hindu

But the question was "what makes something yours" not "how is your claim currently protected". We're looking for a property attached to the object you claim is yours which makes it yours. If you say that property is {having acquired it without infringing the legal rights of others} then it would be impossible to ever aquire the first possession - legal rights came after property ownership. Also, your criteria doesn't account for ownership between countries - whose law would the 'rights' be considered from?

Most importantly though, the argument is circular. If you are going to claim that the right to property is derived from a lack of infringement of rights in acquisition, then one of those rights must surely be the right to property. A right can't be established on the basis of its own existence.

If you look at the OP the question is far more delicate than this. Do you ‘own’ your body? Is it okay for me to ‘claim’ your body? Are your actions yours? Do you, in this sense, ‘own’ your actions?

Arguing over what some given law dictates doesn’t seem to do a great deal if we’re to get to the heart of what ‘ownership’ means. The issue of ‘rights’ is another part of this problem alongside the ‘social contract’.

Arguing over what some given law dictates doesn’t seem to do a great deal if we’re to get to the heart of what ‘ownership’ means. — I like sushi

If I say "I own that", I'm most of the time talking about legal ownership. There's no 'heart' of what ownership means. It means whatever it is used for in an expression, and most of the time it is used to assert a legal right.

With regards to the other questions, I admit they're interesting to a point, but rare. I rarely have to claim I own my body, or my actions, these seem very unusual language uses to me. Even with something like organ donation after death, the claim of ownership would still be a legal one.

I'm honestly struggling to think of examples where the word might be used in a non-legal sense, perhaps you have some?

Prior to the existence of written law. That is why I mentioned ‘origin of inequality’ - a long running anthropological question.

But where do those others get those rights to it? Initially you said by being able to defend it. Then you’re saying that that defense is by the state. So if the state chooses not to defend their property, by this logic they have no rights to it; if the state just lets you take it then that’s perfectly okay for you to do, on this account.

Now it sounds like you think there are some other reasons why the state should or should not defend someone’s preexisting rights to things. Which is a fine position, but it’s counter to the “ability to defend it makes it yours” principle you started with.

Alas, I am indeed a voice in the wilderness of philosophy, crying out "Make straight the way of the Law!"

In this, as in so much else, the Law rules. What is the difference between "I have" and "I own"? Merely the difference between having something and having the legal right to something. Note that I say "legal right." That is to say an enforceable claim to it, not some feeble claim of entitlement which is hopelessly mewed by those who dream of having a legal right but instead have a vague, fuzzy belief in a "right" somehow existent outside the law, like God is said to exist outside the universe.

Yes, I know the old saying "Possession is nine-tenths of the law." And in fact possession over a period of years, open and obvious and unchallenged, may result in ownership, by operation of law, i.e. because that's what the law says. Otherwise, the saying at most is an acknowledgement of the fact that it can be difficult, and expensive, to establish legal ownership, and that often discourages someone from claiming it.

Laws were developed so those who want property and can get it can keep it.

This is the Word of the Law!

Ownership is inextricably linked to property, which is an extension of our faculties. Property does exist whether it is abolished or not, because property is primary to laws and governments.

Prior to the existence of written law. That is why I mentioned ‘origin of inequality’ - a long running anthropological question. — I like sushi

Do you have any examples of 'ownership' being used prior to written law? My etymological dictionary has it as being from ""one who owns, one who has legal or rightful title," first used in the mid 14th century.

In this, as in so much else, the Law rules. What is the difference between "I have" and "I own"? Merely the difference between having something and having the legal right to something. — Ciceronianus the White

Exactly.

That’s not what I meant. Prior to all written law there was still some concept of ‘ownership’. I’m asking about the initial circumstances for ownership and, in day-to-day speech, what it means to ‘own your thoughts/actions’. Prior to socially decreed laws people still have a sense of ‘having’ and ‘not having’.

That is why I referred to a sense of ownership being about our personal reach of control, perceived or actual, as the possible heart of the issue as put forward by the OP regarding ‘owning’ your body. If you want me to make this more concrete then think of levels of labour where I may own you, partially as decreed by a labour contract, or fully as a slave - I only ‘own’ you in such a sense as you’re willing/able to play along dependent upon your own sense of ‘control’ under the influence of some law.

I can make a law that says it is illegal for you to die whilst you’re working fir me ... meaningless law. The ‘laws’/‘rules’ merely fit around our sense of limited control, which are effectively where a sense of ownership lays in part. I’m not suggesting this is all there is to it, but it seems hard to deny it is a significant point right?

Prior to all written law there was still some concept of ‘ownership — I like sushi

That seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Hadn't we better establish if there was such a concept prior to all written law? I can see how, logically, there must have been immediately prior to written law (in order for said law to write about it) but that's still influenced by the intent to make a law.

in day-to-day speech, what it means to ‘own your thoughts/actions’. — I like sushi

I never say such a thing in day-to-day speech, nor have I ever heard anyone do so, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about that.

Prior to socially decreed laws people still have a sense of ‘having’ and ‘not having’. — I like sushi

Probably, but I don't think that's the same as 'owning'. I might 'have' a library book. I don't 'own' it.

I only ‘own’ you in such a sense as you’re willing/able to play along dependent upon your own sense of ‘control’ under the influence of some law. — I like sushi

Well, that's one way of looking at it, but we could equally say (if slavery were legal) that you continue to 'own' me even if I don't play along. You just now 'own' a very recalcitrant slave.

The ‘laws’/‘rules’ merely fit around our sense of limited control, which are effectively where a sense of ownership lays in part. I’m not suggesting this is all there is to it, but it seems hard to deny it is a significant point right? — I like sushi

So you're saying that the limits of our powers must constrain what we can make law and so examining those limits tells us something about those laws? OK, I can see that being a useful exercise.

I agree, in that respect, the extent to which we can 'control' something is the maximum extent to which we can make a law conferring ownership. Is there any more fine-grained constraint than that? The extent to which others in our community are prepared to allow the exercise of such control perhaps? Maybe that's why we no longer have slavery.

But where do those others get those rights to it? Initially you said by being able to defend it. Then you’re saying that that defense is by the state. So if the state chooses not to defend their property, by this logic they have no rights to it; if the state just lets you take it then that’s perfectly okay for you to do, on this account.

Now it sounds like you think there are some other reasons why the state should or should not defend someone’s preexisting rights to things. Which is a fine position, but it’s counter to the “ability to defend it makes it yours” principle you started with. — Pfhorrest

It occurs to me that this is perfectly analogous to the Euthyphro Dilemma:
"God commands it" : "It is good"
::
"The State defends your possession of it" : "It is your property"

And then we ask "so if God commanded [thing we normally think of as bad] then it would be good?" and the Divine Command Theorist replies "God wouldn't command things that are bad", which then suggests that what is good or bad is independent of God's commandments; at best, if God is perfectly good, he would just never command things that are (independently) bad.

Meanwhile we ask "so if the State defended or allowed [thing we'd normally think of as theft] then it would be a legitimate exchange of property?" and if the might-makes-right proponent then replies "the State shouldn't defend or allow theft", that suggests that what is or isn't someone's property (and so what is or isn't theft) is independent of the State's defense of it; at best, if the State were perfectly just, it would never defend or allow any change of possession that was (independently) theft.

In other words, "Should the state defend your possession of it because it's yours, or is it yours because the state defends your possession of it?"

So you're saying that the limits of our powers must constrain what we can make law and so examining those limits tells us something about those laws?(1) OK, I can see that being a useful exercise.

I agree, in that respect, the extent to which we can 'control' something is the maximum extent to which we can make a law conferring ownership. Is there any more fine-grained constraint than that? The extent to which others in our community are prepared to allow the exercise of such control perhaps?(2) Maybe that's why we no longer have slavery. — Isaac

1) I never said ‘power’ as far as I recall? I said something along the lines of being limited, having limited control in all aspects of life, yet our primary sense of control being felt strongest in our own thoughts and actions - both of which can fool us into believing our ‘control’ is greater or lesser than what it appears to be.

2) Yes, and individuals in a community act upon the their perceptions of their own reach of control and the limited effects of their thought/action. A slave owner can take your life but they cannot prevent your death - the limit of control plays into the use and effect of ownership. Ownership requires upkeep, just as we’re to blame, to some degree (depending on control), if we put on weight, drink too much or smoke.

Other items to think about is whether something can be owned yet never given away or loaned out? I cannot cut my arm off and lend it to you for a week then get it back again whilst I can lend you a hammer and have it returned without serious change - in fact it would be better for me to be your slave for a week than cut away part of my body. This ties into ownership in regards to items that a ‘whole’ rather than ‘parts’ - in terms of time and/or space.

These may seem like quite silly examples on the surface but if you consider ‘ownership’ only as a legal tern and you own a loaded gun it doesn’t matter if the law says it’s your gun when I pick it up and shoot your with it. Legal ownership is relative to where you live, or even nonexistent, but human behavior is pretty ubiquitous regardless of its various manifestations of dealing with the appropriation of material resources.

But where do those others get those rights to it? Initially you said by being able to defend it. Then you’re saying that that defense is by the state. So if the state chooses not to defend their property, by this logic they have no rights to it; if the state just lets you take it then that’s perfectly okay for you to do, on this account.

Now it sounds like you think there are some other reasons why the state should or should not defend someone’s preexisting rights to things. Which is a fine position, but it’s counter to the “ability to defend it makes it yours” principle you started with. — Pfhorrest

If no one was around to take your stuff it wouldn't mean that you own everything and you can only defend what you own, not what you don't, so being able to defend what you own doesn't exhaust what it means to own something.

You can own something and it be taken away, but that doesn't mean that you never owned it. How can someone take something from you if you didn't own it in the first place? What would they be doing, if not taking what you own? If you never owned it, then how does it even make sense to say that someone is taking it by force?

There is also interesting legal precedent around gaining ownership of someone else's property by virtue of making improvements to it.

If you never owned it, then how does it even make sense to say that someone is taking it by force? — Harry Hindu

There is some house that Alice is living in. Bob walks into it and starts living there too. Alice says "no, get out, this is my house". Bob doesn't obey her commands -- he doesn't use any violence against her, he just continues hanging out living in the house that Alice says is hers. Alice wants to force Bob out of that house -- or preferably, have the state come and force Bob out of the house for her, using violence if necessary. Bob is getting tired of this disturbance in the place he lives and would like the state to remove Alice instead, or maybe he'd like to remove her himself if they won't, though he hasn't tried that yet, nor has she tried to remove him by force yet. They're both just asking the state to make the other leave, so as to defend their exclusive right (they each claim) to this piece of property.

Under what circumstances should the state decide in Alice's favor or Bob's favor? What makes the house really Alice's or really Bob's? Is it just whoever the state happens to decide to favor? Or are there independent reasons that the state should consider in deciding whose rights are legitimate and deserve defending? If the latter, are those reasons simply "whoever succeeds at forcing the other out themselves gets to stay"? If not that (or the "whoever the state decides for whatever reason to force out" answer), then the "whoever can defend it owns it" principle is not being adhered to, but instead something else determines ownership, and the state just enforces (or ought to enforce) those independent rights.

Should the state defend your possession of something because it's yours, or is it yours because the state defends your possession of it?

(Consider all the possible circumstances that could lie behind Alice and Bob's conundrum. Did Bob used to live there before Alice? How long ago? Is this Bob's vacation home and Alice is squatting in it when Bob arrives for his vacation? Or is this Alice's family home since childhood and Bob is some vagrant who wandered in off the street? Does Bob usually live there, and just went to work this morning, and came home to find Alice had moved in while he was away? Did Alice just buy this place from someone who claimed to be the owner, and now Bob shows up acting like it's actually his? Do any of these things matter or not, and if so why?)

There is some house that Alice is living in. Bob walks into it and starts living there too — Pfhorrest

An impossible scenario. How does someone walk into a house and start living there? Who owns the keys to the house? Alice's dog doesn't like Bob and bites him everyday he tries to come into the house. Is it the dog's house?

Who owns them, or who has them? Maybe someone forgot to lock the door. Maybe someone else picked the lock. Picking a lock isn't always wrong, such as if you lost your keys, or they were pick-pocketed off of you, or if someone else changed the locks on your house while you were out. Or maybe Alice was just at home with the doors unlocked for whatever reason, and then Bob walked in and started acting like it's his home.

There's lot of ways you could flesh out this scenario (read the entire post please, I listed a bunch in the last paragraph). The important question for you is, what if any difference do those different circumstances make?

mine wasn't a single word answer. I said "being able to convince others you own this thing" which is pretty straightforward.

Who owns them, or who has them? — Pfhorrest

So owning something entails having something and defending your having it. If your defense makes it not worth trying to take what you have from you, then you own it by default.

Bob is tired of Alice's constant nagging in taking out the garbage. Its not worth the effort to live there. A defense doesnt necessarily entail violence. Ownership is often equated to who wants it more and is willing to put more work into posessing it than others.

If your defense makes it not worth trying to take what you have from you, then you own it by default. — Harry Hindu

So if I can convince the state to help me keep you out of the house you live in, and keep anyone else besides me from living there, then it's my house, totally legit? (Or, if the state doing it is somehow wrong: if they just don't stop me from driving you out of the house myself?)

I'm pretty sure you'll say no, of course not, because it's your house and that would be stealing. But why is it your house if you can't defend your possession of it from the state (or from me)? Why is it wrong for the state (or me) to dispossess you of it, if your ability to maintain possession of it were all that made it yours, so your failure to do so would make it not yours anymore?

Should the state defend your possession of it because it's yours, or is it yours because the state defends your possession of it?

So if I can convince the state to help me keep you out of the house you live in, and keep anyone else besides me from living there, then it's my house, totally legit? (Or, if the state doing it is somehow wrong: if they just don't stop me from driving you out of the house myself?) — Pfhorrest

The state is going to want something in return, and the state isnt going to do something that would cause its members to lose faith in the fairness of the system. How are you going to convince others that what I worked hard for is yours and how will that be consistent with how the state makes others decisions in regards to ownership? I think you're just making up unrealistic scenarios with taking into consideration the implications of your thought experiments.

Obviously, cooperation is a strategy that works or else human beings wouldnt be as successful as they are. Most of us are intelligent enough to understand that there might be an easier way to gain access to the things others own that don't involve violence where the thief risks their life for something that he doesnt need to in order to use the resource they want.

The state is going to want something in return, and the state isnt going to do something that would cause its members to lose faith in the fairness of the system. How are you going to convince others that what I worked hard for is yours and how will that be consistent with how the state makes others decisions in regards to ownership? I think you're just making up unrealistic scenarios with taking into consideration the implications of your thought experiments. — Harry Hindu

The point of thought experiments it to tease out what you're really saying or thinking. Regardless of whether or not something would happen, I want to know what you think in the hypothetical circumstance where it does.

I'm trying specifically to avoid concrete real-world issues, but if you really want something like that, here's an easy scenario: the public, losing faith in the way the system works now, decides that it's not fair that there are more unoccupied homes than there are homeless people, and so ownership of those homes should be assigned to the homeless people. So the state, directed by the majority, who elect people to represent that view for them, stops keeping homeless people out of unoccupied homes, and instead keeps those homes previously-assigned "owners" from kicking the homeless people out. The state just starts acting like the homes rightly belong to the newly-assigned owners.

In your view of might makes right, does that then make those homes legitimately the property of the newly-assigned owners, and no theft have happened?

Or on a larger picture: if a state-socialist regime comes into power in a state and does start taking things from people and giving them to other people, on what grounds would you say (or wouldn't you say?) that that was wrong? So far, all you've said to similar questions is "that wouldn't happen". But this has happened, and I gather that you think that it was bad. Why is it bad, if might makes right, i.e. power is ownership?

Under what circumstances should the state decide in Alice's favor or Bob's favor? What makes the house really Alice's or really Bob's? Is it just whoever the state happens to decide to favor? Or are there independent reasons that the state should consider in deciding whose rights are legitimate and deserve defending? If the latter, are those reasons simply "whoever succeeds at forcing the other out themselves gets to stay"? If not that (or the "whoever the state decides for whatever reason to force out" answer), then the "whoever can defend it owns it" principle is not being adhered to, but instead something else determines ownership, and the state just enforces (or ought to enforce) those independent rights.

Should the state defend your possession of something because it's yours, or is it yours because the state defends your possession of it?

The house is “really Alice’s” because the house is her property, meaning it was justly acquired by her own faculties and production, whether she built it or purchased it. Bob would be engaging in some form or other of stealing from Alice.

The state ought to defend Alice’s property because it is hers.

I’m channeling Bastiat’s formulation here:

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

There are many words that defy a clear definition, eg species, yet this does not mean that they are not useful terms. — A Seagull

Not only are there many words that defy a clear definition, most words do. (Even very simple words. What’s the exact difference between a shoe and a boot, for example)

The special problem with “ownership” is that it has a very clear legal definition. It is artificially clear, in fact, since legal language has to make up clear definitions that don’t necessarily exist in natural languages. The legal definition of ownership has then been transferred back to the natural language and we now tend to believe that that is its real meaning.

The definition would be something like: “Ownership is the legal right to control an object.” That is also probably what we mean in daily language when we say we own something. “I own my car” means I (and no one else) has the legal right to control this car. I can’t say “I own my wife” since I have no legal right to control her.

But if there were no state and government this definition would be meaningless, and the question was what ownership really means. Would there be no ownership if there were no state? Well, there is no definition of ownership at all outside of the state, so that means that ownership doesn’t really exist as a natural quality.

So you are rejecting the might-makes-right principle that ownership = power? This subthread is challenging Harry about his acceptance of that.

(Also, note the last paragraph of the post you responded to, it might not be Alice's legitimately acquired property after all).