Social Powers and Mental Relations
Taking its departure from the current interest in the metaphysics of the social world, this paper argues that lordship or ownership (dominium) on Ockham’s view is a power that is really identical to a person, persons, or collectivity of persons. In this sense, it is not a real entity that adds to Ockham’s famously parsimonious ontology. Rather, lordship is a mental relation connecting certain human beings (‘lords’ or ‘owners’) with certain things (‘property’) that is instituted by the individual intellective and volitional acts performed by members of the past and present community. Lordship is real, however, to the extent that the community authorizes certain members of the community to perform certain acts with respect to certain things. On the reading defended, Ockham’s view is ontologically reductionist but receptive to the shared reality of the social world.