How is "property" defined in a state of nature?

My understanding of the justification for Natural Rights is that in a State of Nature (a condition with no government, which I understand to mean a condition in which nobody is under any contractual obligations) you would have uninhibited control of your Life, Liberty, and Property. Therefore, unless you enter into a contract in which you consent to having one or more of these rights be diminished (i.e. unless you consent to be governed, to leave a State of Nature and form/enter a society), it would be coercive for anybody to try to infringe upon these rights. (Similarly, it would be coercive for you to try to infringe upon anybody else’s analogous rights.)

I don’t have much of a beef with the Right to Life and the Right to Liberty – maybe a few philosophical nitpicks, but nothing worth worrying over (and certainly nothing worth starting a thread over). However, the Right to Property has always left me a bit confused, since I’ve never really understood what “property” would mean in a State of Nature – in a society I understand “property” to form as the result of implicit/explicit contractual obligations (“I own this property because I purchased it with cash money” or “I own this property because I hold the legal title for it” etc.), meaning that the whole concept of property has always struck me as being meaningless in a State of Nature devoid of any contractual obligations. (Another way to put it is that your Natural state is Alive, Free, and Buck Naked, i.e. that ownership of property is not “natural” but social.)

So, the question is, “what constitutes ownership of ‘property’ in a State of Nature?” Would I rightfully own something if I simply claim it to be mine (by planting a flag on it, or urinating on it, or whatever)? Would I rightfully own something so long as I was capable of defending it? Would I rightfully own something if I had somehow improved it from its raw state (e.g. if I smelted copper ore, would I then rightfully own the copper)? As a corollary to the last question, how would I establish rightful ownership of raw materials in the first place (e.g. copper ore, or a copper vein)?

I’ll provide one hypothetical by way of example: Bob is living in a mud hut that he constructed himself, surrounded by several acres of good hunting territory. Jack wanders into the area in search of new hunting territory. Is Jack initiating coercion by moving into the hunting territory? Would Bob be initiating coercion were he to drive Jack out of the territory? What if Jack moved into Bob’s hut without Bob’s consent, with/without forcing Bob out of the hut? Would it make a difference if the hunting territory were capable of easily supporting both Bob and Jack, or if it were capable of easily supporting only one of them? Would it make a difference if Bob had been living in the territory for two weeks or twenty years prior to Jack moving in? Or if he had not built the mud hut, but had simply found it abandoned? Or if the acreage were wheat fields sown by Bob (i.e. acreage that Bob improved upon), rather than unimproved hunting territory?

The primary question, “what constitutes ownership of ‘property’ in a State of Nature,” is the only one that really interests me – no need to address the entire hypothetical, or even any of the hypothetical. Hell, make up your own hypothetical, just keep it semi-plausible.

Stop here.

If there aren’t any contractual obligations, you can’t have uninhibited control of your property. Why? Because you can’t buy, sell, lease, rent or hire it.

So, if you define your “State of Nature” in these terms, you don’t have any “Property”. End of Great Debate, surely?

I think you are too busy worrying about how “nasty, poor, brutish and short” life is, rther than worrying about your property “rights”.

What a cheery little ray of sunshine Hobbes was! :frowning:

The theoretical foundation for natural (or God given) property rights is one of causality, i.e., that your original property — your life, your body, your mind — is what you use directly to acquire all the rest. Thus, there is an unbroken causal link from your blurry little baby eyes to your new Chevy truck. Those who credit their lives to nature will speak of natural rights, while those who credit their lives to God will speak of God given rights.

Pretty much in a “state of nature” you’d be able to own anything you could take.

And don’t forget to pee on the trees to mark your territory.

Robin

There’s two different answers to this. The traditional philosophical answer is that your property is anything that you create using your own labor. So, a field that you till and plant yourself is yours. A hunting ground remains public property until you put some effort into developing it.

The answer in the real world, of course, is that your property is anything that you can keep others from taking for themselves.

All you own in a state of nature is what you are carrying on you at the time.

If the history of humans and their societies is any indication, this is a very generalized point for all time.

If you are looking sidelong to Hobbes as you type this then I don’t have much to say. If you are simply using the terminology, then I think that contractual obligations do not undermine the State of Nature. To me, a State of Nature is one in which we do not have a permanent power structure in place where humans play roles in it. A permanent power structure is The State. Being bound by only the laws of physics and one’s physiological nature is existing in The State called Nature which only enforces the laws of physics and our physiology—where humans always play themselves.

That’s how I look at it.

So? If fusion reactors haven’t been developed yet, then I couldn’t put a fusion reactor on my property either. I’d still have unhibited control of my property, I just couldn’t apply a non-existent process to my property by virtue of the process’s non-existence.

If contracts are allowed to exist in a “State of Nature,” then that poses the question, “What contracts are allowed to exist in a State of Nature, and what contracts will cause a State of Nature to end and a Society to begin?”

But, to answer your question, IMO you cannot have “property” in a State of Nature. This probably isn’t the end of the Debate, though, since (I assume) not everybody agrees with my assumptions/conclusions.

Alright, but what would the process of rightfully acquiring property entail? I’m Alive, Free, and Buck Naked – how do I go about making Item X mine by rights? (Do I just need to pick it up, or maybe walk around it ten times? Do I need to mark it in some way?) If this process involves contractual obligations, then why are these contracts “natural” while other contracts are “unnatural” (or “social” or whatever)?

That’s the only conception of natural property that I can come up with, but it nags at me since it strikes me as being coercive. Sure, maybe Jack can expel Bob from the mud hut and the hunting territory, but would this therefore make it right?

Which then poses the question, “where did you derive the right to improve (and in a sense destroy) property that you did not own?” F’rinstance, if I made a copper bracelet by smelting and working raw ore, then how did I gain ownership of the ore in the first place? Why would I have the right to use the ore, while somebody else would not? (Wouldn’t I essentially be destroying communal/natural property by smelting the ore, since the raw ore would be removed from the community/Nature?)

Nah, I try not to assume that either Hobbes’s or Locke’s State of Nature is the “correct” one. (Though the key word here is “try.”)

I agree with your last sentence, and I ought to clear up that I was using “contract” to mean “an agreement between two or more human parties” (I just noticed that the dictionary doesn’t have the word “human” in its definition), i.e. that an agreement between Man and God or Man and Nature (or whatever) could still exist in a State of Nature.

WRT The State, my contention is that any binding social contract would be a part of (or in extreme cases the whole of) The State. F’rinstance, if Jack and Bob agree to share the hunting territory in question and not interfere with one another, then it would be hyperbole (or reverse hyperbole? Is there such a thing?) to call this a State or Society or Permanent Power Structure, but at the same time I don’t see how it could still be called a State of Nature since the two parties have essentially signed a political/economic non-agression pact with one another. A large pact of this kind would certainly constitute a Contract of State, so why would a smaller pact be treated any differently?

[quoet]but at the same time I don’t see how it could still be called a State of Nature since the two parties have essentially signed a political/economic non-agression pact with one another.
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Well, this is why I’m disagreeing: I don’t see that as being representative of a permanent power structure. They have agreed—in whatever way—to do certain things. And perhaps they even agree to some sort of arbitration for disagreements and so on. It is a defined power structure where arbitrators must exist, for example, that I think pushes us out of the SoN. I don’t think, for example, that a family—which is complete with agreements, concessions, and implicit “social contracts” in itself—is a State: everyone still plays themselves.

You might be interested in reading “The Construction of Social Reality” by John Searle.

“Property” is a social construct. Before there were humans there was no such thing as “property”. After we’re gone it will cease to exist. (Unless it’s reinvented by sentient roaches.)

Social constructs can exist only through the consensus of large numbers of humans. What’s the difference between a dollar bill and a page ripped out of the telephone book? Both are just ink and paper, after all. The dollar bill is “money” because lots of people agree that it is. If everyone stops thinking that a dollar bills are money (think Germany in the 1930’s) then they aren’t.

If property is a social construct, and social constructs require the consensus of large numbers of people to exist, then property cannot exist in a state of nature.

Which explains why you’re having so much trouble defining ownership … .

At what point would you say that a permanent power structure exists? You mention that a family wouldn’t count as one, but would a clan (by which I mean an extended family ruled over by its eldest member(s))? Or a rough confederation composed of several clans?

Huh, I didn’t know that Searle wrote political philosophy – I’d thought that he mostly just stuck to cognitive philosophy. Thanks for the recommendation – the university library is bound to be able to find a copy…

Overheard at alehouse:

I declare, good fellows, 'tis Thomas Hobbes! Prithee, Master Hobbes, a question, of which I am reminded on contemplating that which is nasty, poor, brutish and short: how fares your mother these days, sirrah?

Whenever a permanent role is played by arbitrary people. In a clan, for instance, one might have a Chief—always. who the chief is is determined in some way or another, but the role is always there. In a family, there might be a mother and father. Should the father die, there is no replacement. All subsequent people are step-fathers, grandparents doubling in a fatherly role, etc, but the father role is only able to be played by one person.

I agree with your argument with regards to the nuclear family, but I don’t agree that Jack and Bob’s loose alliance is fundamentally different from the Clan-And-Chief structure. If Jack dies then the power structure is pretty much nullified, but by the same token if the clan were to suffer enough attrition its power structure would also be nullified – it’s simply a lot easier for the Jack-Bob alliance to suffer sufficient attrition than for the Clan-And-Chief to suffer sufficient attrition. The Jack-Bob alliance certainly has a different degree of structure than the Clan-And-Chief, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a different kind (the fact that presumably Jack and Bob are on equal political footing while the Chief is on higher footing than the rest of the clan not representing a substantive difference IMO) – it’s possible for any power structure to suffer attrition sufficient to nullify the power structure.

Though I s’pose that the Jack-Bob alliance is necessarily limited in that one of the Hunters is eventually going to die (just as the Father of the nuclear family is eventually going to die), but a dead Hunter can simply be replaced by another Hunter (while, as you said, a Father can never be fully replaced). Simply add a third party to the alliance, making it the Jack-Bob-Vlademir alliance, and then there’s still an alliance even when one of the Hunters dies.

I think it is different; the men always only answer to themselves and their morality, whereas a power structure itself has its own sort of guidelines. Think of a police officer who doesn’t like the war on drugs but still feels compelled to bust guys for it. I think the permanent structure adds a new component to decision making, and is thus more of a change in kind (since there is a new kind of decision, at least!) than just degree.

I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily a given in the situation – the Jack-Bob alliance might start out as a simple non-aggression pact and remain so indefinitely, but another considerable possibility is that Jack and Bob would take positive action to maintain the pact as need be (i.e. when determining their individual course of actions they would take “maintenance of the pact” into account as one of their decision factors). F’rinstance, if Vlademir were to hostilely encroach onto the section of the hunting territory that was predominantly Bob’s, then Jack is not compelled by his non-agression pact to assist Bob (and is also not compelled by his interest in the territory since he had little stake in it), but nevertheless Jack would consider the pact when determining what course of actions to take (e.g. “Vlademir took hostile action without apparent provocation, so it is a distinct possibility that I will not be able to forge a non-aggression pact with him as I have with Bob”). Of course it isn’t a given that Jack is going to assist Bob, but by the same token your police officer might decide that his/her dislike of the war on drugs was too severe to continue on his/her present line of work – what matters is that both Jack and the police officer have an additional social cum governmental consideration to take into account when coming to their respective deicisions.

Long story short, I’m just not seeing the difference in kind. The cop takes the power structure into consideration when making decisions, but so do Jack/Bob (though to a different degree, since their “power structure” is much less pervasive).

Ah, I see what you’re saying. It does seem like a smooth, continuous change, where we go from small agreements and concessions among two people to three, to five, to 150, etc etc until all of a sudden we have a state of some kind. I don’t mind this as a description of what happens, but I do see a fundamental split of perspective when social roles exist “independent” of the people that fill them.

Yes, that is true—in all cases, each individual uses their own morality to determine which action suits them. But what concerns me in the police officer’s case is that their actions are not judged based necessarily on who they are, but whether they meet this independent standard, as defined by the role assumed. Bob and Jack also have standards, but they aren’t independent of them; indeed, the standards they live up to (or attempt to as the case may be) were determined by them.

Nice argument. Each point flows into the next. But I’d argue the first premise. Property is only a human construct?

I would submit that there are many many territorial animals out there, such as monkeys and bees (the first two that sprang to my mind) that claim an area as their property. If a group of monkeys or a group of bees lays claim to property, then that negates the premise that before humans, there was no property. My version of that premise would read “Before humans, there was no such word as property”.

Newbish thoughts from a virgin to the boards.