Lockean property rights

====Pro Case==== 1) Attribution Ownership Through Work A) Insufficient Definition of Life Pro further complicates his definition of life by invoking dissipative structures. He then goes on to say that even this is an insufficient condition for life, and that things need to generate their own boundary… and even though the sun has a well defined, generated boundary, "gravity" is supposedly acting on it to keep it together, therefore the sun is not alive. Well, I have news. I do not keep myself together through willpower. Charged forces keep me together [1]. Charged forces keep rocks together. Etc etc… So I don't generate my own boundary, electromagnetism does. According to Pro, I am not alive. EXTENSION – even if you buy Pro's definition of life, it does not imply self ownership rights. If Insects and Ameobas own themselves, then we're in trouble because we squish them all the time. Indeed, his analysis is backwards. He begins by assuming that living things have agency and are able to create themeslves. In reality, many living things don't have agency or the capacity to reason. It is THIS quality, and this quality alone, that is the source of natural rights. Advanced scientific words elucidate nothing. B) Infinite Regression Pro admits that we are created by other beings, and that AFTER we are born, we continue to create ourselves. That's fine, but Pro thinks that ownership stems from creation… and if parents create the child, then by Pro's logic, that means parents OWN the child. This results in a world where everybody is owned by someone else, who is in turn owned etc… which causes another infinite regression to pop up. C) Performative Contradiction of Self Creation Pro concedes this point but for some reason thinks that adults have fully created themselves, and therefore own themselves. This is obviously false because large numbers of people have helped me reach adulthood. Parents, farmers, doctors, etc… So all of society is mixed in with me. By Pro's logic, this means society owns me. D) Self Creation is Irrelevant Pro goes off on a pseudo-philosophical tangent here. He basically doesn't think you can be counted as "alive" if you don't reproduce, regenerate cells, or die. I'll just accept this definition, and continue my argument that life is completely irrelevant to a discussion of rights. Only agency and the capacity to reason. So if we build a robot with a human's brain in it, it can't have kids, regenerate itself, or "die" in the conventional sense of the term, it can still have rights. (2) Control Ownership Through Humans A) Rights are antisocial Pro concedes this point. He goes on to say that humans don't normally use violence… but that would mean that ANY RIGHTS are AGAINST human nature, since they require violence to enforce. So following Pro, humans have no natural rights because they are naturally peaceful. B) Argument from Biological Happenstance Pro says there's nothing automatic about social behaviour, but its still natural… which kind of confuses me because, as I used the terms, I meant them to describe stuff that happens on its own. i) So here is Pro's big slight of hand. He uses "natural" in "natural rights" to mean the same thing as "biological". Even if you buy that, his argument still fails from the Antisocial discourse above. The term "natural rights" is used to mean something UNIVERSAL [2]. Pro's whole case is predicated on GENETICS. Even if all humans were genetically identical, his theory of rights would still fail to apply to intelligent, rational aliens, non-biological humans, etc. ii) Pro tries to write off human violence as an exception, rather than rule. So now he's further truncating the definition of "natural" to only include things that happen *most of the time*. Modern wars aside, humans have regularly resorted to violence as far back as we have evidence [3]. Humans have also probably scratched their behinds since time immemorial, and yet my opponent is not adding it to his list of natural rights... so Pro can't really believe that biology is the source of rights. iii) DROPPED, reprinted: "Anti-social humans can still have theories of mutual respect. Even if people are narrowly self interested, they can still respect each other's rights out of pragmatism and self preservation." 3) Mixing Labor with Nature Pro adds another criterion to ownership, namely that it must create value. Since value is subjective, this doesn't mean much. Pouring soup into the ocean could mean A LOT to me. So according to Pro, this would mean I own the ocean. Pro tries to deflect this by making the point blank claim that soup+ocean != value… why this does not create value is never explained. ====Con Case==== 1) Theory of Self Ownership Pro badly misunderstands this point. I do not assume that self ownership is part of our nature. Indeed, the communal lifestyle of hunter gatherer tribes more closely resembles communism. Self ownership and property rights are weird. The point is that it is impossible to argue against self ownership, because self ownership is implicitly assumed by the telos of argumentation – i.e., the consent of the audience. Since Pro and I are in an argument, self ownership must show up implicitly whether we like it or not. In this way it is "natural". There is no getting around it. Genetic engineering would not change this fact. 2) Extension of Self Ownership Pro points out that once you stop acting on things, you no longer own them. He only considers the superficial action such as "building a statue" or "building a cabin", and does not look at the action in broader context. People are engaged in Artisanship and Construction. It is only an intermediate step to create the object. The end of the action is presumably to DO something with it, and usually this requires some sort of exclusion of others. This appropriation is limited to unused and voluntarily transferred resources; else it would conflict with other's similar rights. Pro ignores the core pragmatic difference between our two systems, namely that mine is unmaterialistic. It allows people to use the same resources so long as they do not interfere with each other's activities. So my theory allows radio waves to be broadcast through farm land, and even through people. (In Pro's toilet example, it WOULD be a violation of my use-rights, since one of the uses of my house is to be a secure and private place) Conversely, Pro says that you can exclude anyone from anything you've created, which means he's not cool with radio waves, harmless photons, or even my gravitational field (which I can't help). If he took his theory seriously, he would be allowed to declare war on everyone and everything, because it all impacts his creations SOMEHOW. Thus is the downfall of the materialist approach. === Conclusion === Pro has been arguing for natural rights under the assumption that "natural" means "biological". He's wrong because "natural rights" has always meant universal, metaphysical, etc. It has never depended on genetics. Even if rights were derived biologically, he's given no evidence that peace is biological. Worse still, if humans are peaceful, there can be no natural rights because rights are inherently violent. Con's concept of self ownership is superior because it actually establishes a right that does not depend on biological chance. The extension of self ownership onto the real world is limited only by non-aggression. Since property is not aggressive, it is allowed (but not required) by self ownership. I thank Pro for his promptness and organization. Peace. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.livescience.com...