The beginning of private property

[shkrobius]

Private property is the right to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath property. An owner of property can consume, sell, rent, transfer, exchange or destroy her property, excluding the others from the decision concerning this property. One's own body is an example of property (Locke). A man may be in need for a kidney transplant,

Comments

[nagunak]

The example with kidneys is a pure Reductio ad absurdum. Let's turn the argument on its head, how far are you willing to go to protect your property, not your body, but actual property that belongs to you?

[shkrobius]

Like a pacemaker, for example? I'll protect it to my dying breath...

On a broader note, you can look at your property as the extension of your body. Writes Locke:

Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.By this theory, magnetotactic bacteria certainly have property rights for their magnetite: they remove iron in the state nature hath provided and use the labor of their body and work of their hands (Msm6 proteins) on crystallizing this iron in the magnetosomes, making them their own and annexing it from the common

[nagunak]

OK, your whole argument is based on treating your body as property and equating your property to your body parts. Can we agree to separate your body parts and whatever mechanism you inserted INSIDE your body from the "work of his hands"? Again how far are you willing to go to protect your "work of your hands" that is not inside or part of your body? Are you willing to kill another human being to deter the repossession of the work of your hands?

[shkrobius]

It is 300 year old argument and it is not mine, but I do not see the fundamental division between INSIDE and OUTSIDE, as far as the property rights are concerned. Your body takes things from the environment and makes these your own. So is your labor. Your body passes itself to your children. So is the product of your labor. You will protect your body. So will you protect your property. I do not see what do you specifically object to in this well-known labor theory of property doctrine

[chaource]

These discussions - how one would protect their own body, or "extensions" thereof, - prove only one thing: Property is not a right but a behavior. We observe behavior that suggests that one is defending certain objects as zealously as one is defending one's body. I find it misleading to talk about "rights" here. If a bacterium has a characteristic behavior, such as hoarding minerals that it does not normally need, we could say that this behavior is an expression of the "natural right" of the bacterium. In other words, we are saying that we are not going to punish the bacterium for doing this, because the bacterium acts within its rights. This sounds ludicrous; but talking about natural rights of humans is the same.

[shkrobius]

Why is it ludicrous? Surely, other bacteria can punish the hoarding bacterium for taking the excessive amount of iron. I am not aware of such "punishment" but wrestling for iron is part of microbial life

[chaource]

I would like to keep separate the notion of "rights", i.e., an agreement between people as to which behaviors will be admissible and which will be punishable, and the notion of "natural behavior" or the "state of nature", which is merely an observation about an existing state of affairs and behaviors without any attempt to regulate those behaviors

[shkrobius]

Natural law presumes that law is not written on paper but in the nature of things. E.g., the right to disagree means that you cannot control my mind, and this lack of ability on your part does not depend on any kind of agreement between us, it is in the nature of things. The reality of law is that people enter in some agreements and do not feel compelled to enter other types of compacts and they also rank these agreements. The "intuition" you mention is that such compacts are not arbitrary but reflecting deeper principles of organization. One way of expressing these principles is through the doctrine of natural rights. Historically, it is the modern idea. More traditional approach is to express natural law in the language of obligation, like in physical law. It does not strike you illogical to generalize your observations of gas in terms of laws governing its behavior. Ditto for human affairs. Either one can be expressed in terms of positive or negative rights. You find it ludicrous, but such a possibility always existed, albeit not

Information storing by biomagnetites

[anonymous]

Just happened to see this within ten minutes of reading your exposition:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/5026h504w8t83248/fulltext.html

--bks

[shkrobius]

If you want a Judaic perspective, it is, on principle, inconsistent with body ownership. Body is viewed as a rental. It is one's duty to take care of it and guard it, as it sustains the soul. The relation of property to the proprietor is not derivied by extension of body, and the only "right" explicitly mentioned is the "right" (kinyan geneivah) to suffer the consequences of the property loss. Property is a metaphysical quality: objects are attached to human beings, it a spiritual relationship, like matrimony. Property is the ultimate responsibility for objects, and only in this sense body is owned: you are the one responsible for it. The language of positive rights does not exist; the law is formulated in terms of duties, obligations, and compulsions. Translating it into rights is the modern rather than Jewish idea. There is nothing wrong with such translation per se, but it is just a translation.

[shkrobius]

Limited ownership is still ownership, and it is not limited by people. The same relates to every positive right, including the right to life. People command their lives no more than they command their bodies.