The Homesteading principle contradicts Self-ownership

Introduction:Thanks to OreEle for proposing what I think is a difficult and interesting philosophical puzzle. It will require a fair amount of exposition and analysis for me to develop and explain my solution, which we can debate the merits of in the following rounds. The gist of OreEle's argument is that if a person creates another person, there is a conflict of ownership: the created person has a claim to self-ownership and creator has a claim to ownership through the homestead principle. I will attempt to show that there is no conflict and that the question of ownership can be easily resolved through examining the underlying philosophical foundations of the rights of ownership. In the interest of organization I will break my analysis into a few broad categories.C1: A Challenge on OwnershipPro believes that a baby is created by the labor of its mother, and at first glance this seems to be the case. However, considering it really means to mix one's labor with property and exert one's will in the world through the creation of something, I see no reason why this should be taken to be the case. A baby is 'created' by its mother in a sense wholly different than how a table is created by a carpenter.Consider the example of the carpenter first. When he creates a table, he has the idea of some distinct object in his mind which he wishes to bring into being in the world through his skills, knowledge, and tools. He then exerts his will over his property, including himself, his tools, and his materials, and through his skills and knowledge creates the object he imagined. He has used his will to impress his mind upon the physical world and is thus wholly responsible for and entitled to his product. This is the basis on which the homesteading principle rests.The example of the mother 'creating' a a fetus is entirely different from this. It is a wholly involuntary process that goes on in her body, and the influence of her mind (as contrasted from her brain as an organ, which has some influence) over it is minimal. There is no relationship whatsoever between the mother's will, knowledge, and skills and the baby that results. She is not specially entitled to own the born child any more than one is entitled to own his arm if it randomly falls off. I might well be the first person to pick it up, but there is no other relationship between me and the arm. Likewise, the fetus does not specially belong to the mother just because it was involuntarily and forcefully expelled from her body.C2: Resolving the Issue of Child OwnershipOf course, this still raises the question of how ownership of the born child is to be determined for the period in which it cannot own itself. Fortunately, this can be solved through allotting a form of limited or “trustee” ownership to the caretaker of the child until it reaches maturity. As a consciously acting individual (and any child that is capable of voluntary motion meets this criteria), the child possesses a right of self-ownership and therefore cannot be physically aggressed against. The child unlimitedly possesses its rights insofar as it is capable of exercising them. The caretakers of a child may 'own' the child insofar as it does not exercise these rights, and they lose their ownership whenever this ownership is challenged. The child is in a real sense always a self-owner, and the ownership of others over the child is in absentia only.C3: The Final Issue of Self-Ownership and HomesteadingIn order to clarify any ambiguities in the position on self-ownership and homesteading that I have outlined, consider a philosophically relevant but physically impossible scenario: upon the carpenter's creation of the table, the table comes alive and demands the right to self-ownership. It obstinately marches out of the workshop and refuses to be the slave of anyone. There is still no issue here when we consider in more detail the basis for the carpenter's ownership of the table.Specifically, the carpenter's exercise of his will over the physical world through the table was the connection between his mind and the physical world that established his basis for ownership. It is not based on some totally arbitrary claim that if you alter an object, you are its possessor (this leads to the ridiculous conclusion that barbers can homestead people's hair, etc). Once the table begins to act of its own will, the basis for the carpenter's ownership of it through the homesteading principle no longer exists and it is now the will of the table itself the establishes the connection between minds and the physical world that is the basis for property. The table is a self-owner as soon as it claims that right. The very basis on which we are able to own anything is that the thing in question does not assert its own ownership and so we may claim it. The very same principle is fully applicable to children.Conclusion:There are never two owners of the person. Once a child exhibits the capacity for self-ownership, its homesteader (if such a homesteader so exists) loses the right to own it because that right had been based on the lack of self-ownership of the child in the first place. There is not even any reason to believe that a mother is a homesteader of a child because she does not create it in a meaningful sense. It is equally unreasonable to believe that caretakers of children are anymore than trustees of the rights that the child has but is not presently capable of exercising.References:There is a chapter of The Ethics of Liberty on this topic (Chapter 14). That was the only outside material I directly used.