What are the origins of ownership as a conceptual domain? By combining experimental evidence from cognitive science, a theoretical proposal from developmental psychology, and the computational framework of reinforcement learning, I argue that ownership concepts can develop as a by-product of our curiosity-based exploration and become grounded via our experience of control in physical and social environments.

Money can take many forms—a coin or a bill, a payment for an automobile or a prize for an award, a piece from the 1989 series or the 2019 series, and so on—but despite this, money is designed to represent an amount and only that. Thus, a dollar is a dollar, in the sense that money is fungible. But when adults ordinarily think about money, they think about it in terms of its source, and in particular, its moral source (e.g., (...) dirty money). Here we investigate the development of the belief that money carries traces of its moral history. We study children ages 5–6 and 8–9, who are sensitive to both object history and morality, and thus possess the component pieces needed to think that a dollar may not be like any other. Across three principal studies (and three additional studies in Appendix S1; N = 327; 219 five‐ and six‐year‐olds; 108 eight‐ and nine‐year‐olds), we find that children are less likely to want money with negative moral history, a pattern that was stronger and more consistent among 8‐ and 9‐year‐olds than 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds. These findings highlight pressing directions for future research that could help shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the belief that money carries traces of its moral history. (shrink)

Boyer's minimalist model is a compelling account of ownership psychology that is more efficient than previous models. However, it is unclear whether the two simple systems that make up this model – acquisitiveness and cooperation – are sufficient to both explain the nuanced development of ownership concepts and to account for the prominent influence that history has on ownership psychology.

We contrast Boyer's intuitive account of ownership with formal legal accounts based on institutions of ownership. Boyer's emphasis on social aspects of ownership intuitions may have a bearing on recent arguments that property institutions are justified by their capacity to promote human flourishing. Moreover, Boyer's account of property intuitions facilitates the study of acquisition and mental representation of formal ownership concepts.

Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirelyad hoc, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of (...) two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as “this is hers,” “that is not mine.” This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand “cultural appropriation” and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free ofad hocstipulations. (shrink)

Commentators discussed the coherence and validity of a minimalist approach to ownership intuitions, in ways that make it possible to clarify the model, re-evaluate its cognitive underpinnings, and sketch some of its implications. This response summarizes the model; addresses issues concerning the need for a special technical lexicon when describing cognitive semantics; the psychology involved in contexts of competitive acquisition and their consequences for possession and use of rival resources; the role of cooperative expectations in creating mutually beneficial allocation of (...) resources; the consequences of ownership psychology for social interaction and the production of social norms of property; and the relations between psychological processes and legal institutions in the domain, before proposing some final thoughts. (shrink)

Every day, people make decisions about who owns what. What cognitive processes produce this? The target article emphasises the role of biologically evolved intuitions about competition and cooperation. We elaborate the role of cultural evolutionary processes for solving coordination problems. A model based fully on biological evolution misses important insights for explaining the arbitrariness and historical contingency in ownership beliefs.