The Homesteading principle contradicts Self-ownership

This has made me think about a few points that I would like to develop and which could be the subject of future debates. That all said, I am going to go on to the actual debate. C1: A Challenge on OwnershipOreEle says that parents can take actions with the intent of having a baby. I can take actions with the direct intent of causing the sun to rise. It will, but that doesn't mean I caused it. Unless intentional action is taken against it, the baby will be born. There is no will or intention involved. Doing something to “help” the fetus does not count as creating it if it would have existed anyway. Even if a prenatal vitamin was the difference between life and death for the fetus, a casual relationship between an action and an object's existence is not enough to homestead it; the result must be an expression of the actor's will upon the world through a direct action. Complex biochemical processes cannot qualify. The farmer argument is at best a wash because I can just agree with OreEle that the farmer does not own the crops. They are presumably on his property, so he can just forbid anyone from taking them and go formally homestead them by reaping them after he's grown them. There will always be certain components of a creative process that we don't have perfect control over, but that is not the key issue. The key issue is whether will and intent are present. It is possible to become pregnant involuntarily and care a fetus to term against your will and unintentionally. You cannot unintentionally plant crops or build a table. Because it is possible to have a baby unintentionally, an infant cannot be considered the product of its mother's will or intention. Even if there is will and intent, it's not essential. I cannot homestead the stars because I claim I will them to shine. C2: Resolving the Issue of Child OwnershipSome of the debate here seems to have resulted from an organizational problem on my end. C3 should have come before this, because the purpose of this claim is to resolve discontinuities in ownership that could result from various interpretations of C3. Thus, Pro's claim that parents might or might not be willing to give up partial ownership of their child is resolved under C3. Once the children acquired certain traits, they would have to. I will defend this under C3. This is not an example of people being forced to use property in a certain way, it is an example of ownership being shared. It is possible for us to agree to share the use of something without violating libertarian laws. Pro is conflating the possibility of him owning ½ of A and me owning ½ of A, which is possible, with us both owning all of A, which is impossible. So, when the child is born and has no self-ownership, it would be owned by its parents. As it grows and its capacity for self-ownership increases, ownership would be shifted from the parents to the child according to the principles outlined in C3. Finally, I will explain what I mean when I say the fetus creates itself and why Pro's objection is a non sequitur. He claims that the mother creates the fetus because the nutrients come from her body. Well, when my body regenerates old tissue the nutrients may come from a sandwich, but it does not create me. The processes of growth that go on inside a person's body are not controlled by anyone. Under Pro's interpretation they are my action (or the fetus's action), and as per C1 I don't think we should consider this valid homesteading activity anyway. C3: The Final Issue of Ownership and HomesteadingPro's response on this point is located in the comments section. It's a bit confusing and doesn't directly address my core argument, so I'll go over my original point again. I have argued that whether or not we can own something is dependent on the characteristics of the thing itself. This is not controversial because most theories already accept that you cannot own non-scarce resources. I have added that we cannot own an acting being that claims self-ownership. In effect, self-ownership always supersedes homesteading, and for a legitimate, non-arbitrary reason. The purpose of the homesteading principle in the first place is to allocated the use of unowned property with respect to acting beings. Applying the homesteading principle to beings that are already self-owning is unnecessary and incorrect. Pro takes a very simplistic view of this and says that an involuntary transfer of property must be theft. There is a serious problem with this idea: in order for someone to steal himself, he must be externally owned in the first place. This is question-begging with regards to my argument, which stated that upon certain changes in the mental characteristics of the child it could no longer be owned. Con also argues, “This argument only looks at the child after it has reached personhood, and can claim self ownership. The entire [sic] contridiction focuses on before a child reaches personhood, at a time when it does not have self ownership. ” The purpose of this argument is to explain the transition. An unconscious bundle of cells could be wholly owned and an adult human could not be owned at all. As the characteristics of the individual shift from one to the other, the extent to which it is possible to claim external ownership of the individual decreases. That is not theft; it is simply a description of what you can and can't do. You can't own something that claims ownership of itself. This is not an instance of a car 'claiming' you are a bad driver. A car is not a willfully acting being and do not make requests, so they are fundamentally different from people. If a car really did come alive and ask for a better driver, you should have to respect its request! Conclusion:Remember, C1 and C3 are independent of one another and if either argument is sound then there is no a contradiction. C2 explains how details could be resolved to prevent discontinuities. In short, I think that there can only be a contradiction if we take an extremely narrow view of the issue. Pro's thesis for this debate has been that since self-ownership entails that we own ourselves and the homesteading principle entails that we own our creations, if we create someone there is a conflict of ownership. I have resolved this issue by arguing that we do not create people in a genuine sense because human development is wholly separate from our will and that there are sound reasons to belief that even if we did, the basis on which property rights rest entails self-ownership be prioritized over the homesteading principle. Things that claim ownership of themselves do not have the capacity to be owned external in that way. It is not simply the case that they happen not to be owned in that way. I realize that this debate may be a bit tricky for voters who are not familiar with libertarian jargon, so I have tried to explain along as best I could. I hope it will be possible for everyone to learn from this. Voting Points:Spelling and Grammar: Pro repeatedly misspells words, including 'contradiction. ' We both have some typos. My writing is very good. Vote on this at your discretion, but you cannot justifiably vote Pro. Conduct: Pro misses part of a round and has to post in the comments, inconveniencing everyone. I graciously allow this. Vote Con on conduct. Arguments: I have two independent solutions that resolve the contradiction and address the issue on a much deeper level than Pro. Vote Con on arguments. Sources: We both use few sources. Pro has a few from the dictionary. I cite and use The Ethics of Liberty, and actual book.