The Custom of Property Is Physically Contained

The class of words most likely to be overlooked in a title is the preposition. While this chapter briefly touches on of, as well as to and for, as examples of the mighty unsung and inversely proportional work that prepositions do in language, the focus in this chapter is on the cognitive contribution of the little word in. The chapter posits that an English language convention arose, and now has largely fallen out of use, for dealing with the formidable, yet beautiful, complexity of the meaning of property. The burden of the argument is to show that while this convention lasted for only 500 years, less than 1% of the time our modern species has roamed the planet, it provides an insight into how humans universally and uniquely cognize property. And the argument is this: Humans locate the meaning of property within a thing. Property is contained within the thing.

Primates Socially Transmit Tool Practices, but Humans Share Meaning-Laden Customs

The custom of property emerges out of the social practice of tool use in primates when symbolic thought is applied to it. Primates socially transmit tool practices, but humans share meaning-laden customs. The thingness of property as a custom comes from tools. Tool use is embodied knowledge, and property embodies the claim, “This is mine!” Humans socially transmit property with moral force. With symbolic thought, we can think about our actions, or others’, in the past and in the future, and we can evaluate them to be good or bad. We contemplate our conduct and our character in regards to the connections we make with things.

The Meaning of Property in Things

The central claim of the book is that property is a universal and uniquely human custom. Contra cultural relativists, every human society has property tools, utensils, and ornaments. Contra biologists, only Homo sapiens has property in things other than food, mates, and territories. Contra philosophers and legal scholars, the bedrock of property is custom, not rights. Contra social scientists and ordinary people, property is indeed a custom and not something that must be instituted by government. Property operates at the three levels. At the micro-level core of property is an organism that perceives the physical world through its body. The meso-level of property is the community within which the organism resides. At the macro-level of property are the institutions that unite strangers of different communities through the modern democratic concept of rights. Whereas the custom of property is ancient, moral, and universal to all people, property rights are modern, amoral, and majoritarian.

The Results of a Test Are Agreeable to the Prediction

Using a first-person three-dimensional virtual world experiment, this chapter reports a test of an implication of the book’s theory, namely that if A has property in Y and X is in Y, then A has property in X, which is in Y, even if someone else finds X. The results of the test are robustly agreeable to the prediction with an unexpected but consistent-with-the-prediction proviso.

Economics Is Founded Upon Property, Not Property Rights

This chapter discusses the implications for economics and its treatment of property rights, not property. The language of “property rights” contains a tacit assumption about how we think they work. Property, not property rights, is a fundamental principle of economics. Property rights are the expectations defined by property, not the content of property. In other words, property effects property rights. Such a view challenges the felicitousness of the bundle-of-sticks metaphor, which inverts how humans cognize property. We can no longer think about the rules of property as mere external constraints imposed upon an individual. The alternative theory this book presents situates the idea of property in a bidirectional relationship that extends to and from the minds of individuals and the moral scheduling pattern of their community. Property, not property rights, is the very foundation of economics.

Disputes Explicate How We Cognize Property, Out of Which We Discover a Clear General Rule

This chapter reconsiders several prominent court cases involving property to work through how the book’s theory can be used to think about property disputes. Such disputes explicate how people cognize property, out of which a clear rule emerges. The custom for created goods is first-in-hand, especially if the thing is someone’s creation, but also if the thing is in the common state placed by nature. The custom may evolve to first-to-work-upon if, as the property law scholar Robert Ellickson clearly explains, the costs are high. Firstness, however, doesn’t matter if location priorly matters. Out of this discussion emerges a testable implication of the theory. If someone has property in Y and X is in Y, that person has property in X in Y. The rule is that simple, and a difficult case indicates how to test the rule.

What Is Right Is Not Taken Out of the Rule, but Let the Rule Arise Out of What Is Right

This chapter explains the relationship between what is right in a moral claim of “This is mine” and the particular rules that make up the custom of property. What is right regarding things is not derived from the rules of property, but a rule of property arises from the collective background knowledge of what is right regarding people and things. The chapter draws from the spontaneous conversations of participants in two different economic experiments to illustrate such a distinction, beginning with what is meant by “what is right.” Resentment prompts people to act when someone takes something that they claim is theirs. Property is the moral scheduling pattern that emerges to protect members of a society from real and positive hurt.

My Claims Tie Together Modern Philosophies of Property Law

This chapter argues that the book’s claims on property reinforce and tie together several legal philosophies of property including Neo-Lockean, Kantian a priorism, exclusive use, and in rem. The language of “rights” muddies the meaning of property, and the conception of possession discards mind and custom. The British lawyer and jurist A. M. Honoré would seem to agree the book’s claims on property. The Neo-Lockean theory of property invokes custom but doesn’t go far enough. Kantian a priorism cannot account for the moral significance and transmission of property, and exclusive use cannot explain property as a scheduling pattern. The in rem theory of property has the right idea by returning to the thingness of property, but ultimately it cannot explain the micro- and meso-foundations of the property.

All Animals Use Things, Specifically Food

All animals use things, specifically food, but food is unlikely to be the original object of property in humans. Tools have potential to be the original objects of property because of how we make and use them. Many nonhuman animals use tools, but there is a gulf between their uses of tools and ours. Symbolic thought makes meaning possible, and meaning makes composite tools possible. This chapter contends that symbolic thought explains this discontinuity with the rest of the animal kingdom. The connection humans make between a person and a thing originate in the symbolic thought of a symbolic species.