Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject of private property. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Right to (...) illustrate this contrast. The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)

This book explains China's intellectual property perspective in the context of European theories, through a critical examination of intellectual property theory and practice focused on China's compliance with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The author's critical review of contemporary intellectual property philosophy suggests that justifying intellectual property protection through Locke or Hegel's property theories internalizes a theoretical paradox. "Professor Wenwei Guan's treatment of intellectual property law and practice in (...) the PRC offers new perspectives that enrich an already active field of study. This book will be a useful contribution to academic and policy discourses examining conceptual and operational dimensions of China's intellectual property protection system and the broader process of China's international engagement." - Dr. Pitman B. Potter, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada "Dr. Guan reminds us of the daunting challenge of the public-private divide in forming and reforming TRIPS regime; how this regime has failed to address development needs and public concerns in developing countries like China; and how TRIPS's 'birth defect' can be overcome and its evolution can be put back on the right track." - Dr. Yahong Li, Associate Professor at Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University. (shrink)

Nearly all properties are, to a certain extent, versatile: there are many different ways to instantiate them. Consider for example a light-blue scarf and a dark-blue gemstone. These two objects share the property of being blue, despite being different kinds of objects and differing in the way in which they are blue. Our key insight (‘Property Versatility’) is that this apparently mundane observation should be extended: many properties are considerably more versatile than theorists typically take them to be. (...) This simple insight turns out to be incredibly powerful in addressing a wide range of issues in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and beyond. One such issue is the classic problem of copredication. Copredication sentences such as ‘Lunch was delicious but took hours’ are common yet puzzling. These sentences can be true despite seemingly ascribing incompatible properties: it appears that only the food eaten can be delicious, and only the event attended take hours. This book offers a comprehensive discussion of the problem of copredication, including a critical evaluation of extant approaches to the problem. The discussion culminates with a defence of the Property Versatility approach to copredication. Appealing to the insight behind Property Versatility, we develop a simple yet empirically powerful approach to copredication. In addition, the book demonstrates how Property Versatility is a powerful tool in addressing a wide range of issues beyond copredication, including the semantics of generics, the metaphysics of establishments and repeatable artworks, fictional discourse, and the nature of ambiguity, as well as a host of others. (shrink)

This book surveys the leading modern theories of property - Lockean, libertarian, utilitarian/law-and-economics, personhood, Kantian and human flourishing - and then applies those theories to concrete contexts in which property issues have been especially controversial. These include redistribution, the right to exclude, regulatory takings, eminent domain and intellectual property. The book highlights the Aristotelian human flourishing theory of property, providing the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to that theory to date. The book's goal is neither to (...) cover every conceivable theory nor to discuss every possible facet of the theories covered. Instead, it aims to make the major property theories comprehensible to beginners, without sacrificing accuracy or sophistication. The book will be of particular interest to students seeking an accessible introduction to contemporary theories of property, but even specialists will benefit from the book's lucid descriptions of contemporary debates. (shrink)

Two recent cases raise the question: Should the body be considered a form of property? Patients generally do not share in the profits derived from the applications of research on their body parts and products. Nor is their consent for research required so long as the body part is unidentified and is removed in the course of treatment. A market in body parts and products would require consent to all categories of research and ensure that patients are protected from (...) coercion and given the chance to be paid fairly for their contributions. Such a market might force us to rethink our policies prohibiting organ sales. Donors, recipients, and society will benefit from a market in body parts so long as owners—and no one else—retain control over their bodies. (shrink)

Jean-Guillaume-César-Alexandre-Hippolyte de Colins (1783-1859), a Belgian baron who lived mainly in Paris, sought to develop a position—rational socialism—intermediate between the extremes of full capitalism (with only private property) and full communism (with only collective property). All persons fully own themselves and the artifactual wealth that they produce, and they are entitled to an equal share of the natural resources and of the assets inherited from previous generations. Gifts and bequests are to be subject to heavy taxation (although at (...) less than 100% of their value, for efficiency reasons). Natural resources are subject to a rent-tax. A warning about the following reading: Colins writes in many places as if he held that an unrestricted right to make gifts and bequests is both necessary for efficient social functioning and required by justice. His ultimate view, however, is that efficient social functioning requires only some kind of weak (partially restricted) right to make gifts and bequest, and that justice does not require any such right. More specifically, he holds that justice requires that gifts and bequests be taxed as much as compatible with efficient social functioning. (shrink)

This paper provides an entrance into central discussions regarding Kant’s account of property. The first section shows how Kant engages and transforms important, related proposals from Hobbes and Locke as well as how the ‘libertarian’ and ‘liberal republican’ interpretive traditions differ in their readings on these points. Since Kantian theories for a long time didn’t focus on Kant’s Doctrine of Right but instead followed Rawls’s lead by developing Kantian theories grounded on Kant’s (meta-) ethical writings, the second section focuses (...) on property discussions found in the Rawlsian tradition. The final section shows how important contemporary work in the Kantian tradition goes beyond Rawlsian, libertarian, and liberal republican concerns of distributive justice among free and equal citizens, to include questions central to, for example, the philosophy of care, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of sex and love, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

According to the experience property framework qualia are properties of experiences the subject undergoing the experience is aware of. A phenomenological argument against this framework is developed and a few mistakes invited by the framework are described. An alternative to the framework, the framework of experiential properties is presented and defended as preferable. It is argued that the choice between these two frameworks makes a substantial difference for theoretical purposes.

This book gives an account of a full spectrum of property rights and their relationship to individual liberty. It shows that a purely deontological approach to justice can deal with the most complex questions regarding the property system. Moreover, the author considers the economic, ecological, and technological complexities of our real-world property systems. The result is a more conceptually sound account of natural rights and the property system they demand. If we think that liberty should be (...) at the centre of justice, what does that mean for the property system? Economists and lawyers widely agree that a property system must be composed of many different types of property: the kind of private ownership one has over one's person and immediate possessions, as well as the kinds of common ownership we each have in our local streets, as well as many more. However, theories of property and justice have not given anything approaching an adequate account of the relationship between liberty and any other form of property other than private ownership. It is often thought that a basic commitment to liberty cannot really tell us how to arrange the major complexities of the property system, which diverge from simple private ownership. Property and Justice demonstrates how philosophical rigour coupled with interdisciplinary engagement enables us to think clearly about how to deal with real-world problems. It will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, and legal theorists working on property rights and justice. (shrink)

We initiate a systematic study of the class of theories without the tree property of the second kind — NTP2. Most importantly, we show: the burden is “sub-multiplicative” in arbitrary theories ; NTP2 is equivalent to the generalized Kimʼs lemma and to the boundedness of ist-weight; the dp-rank of a type in an arbitrary theory is witnessed by mutually indiscernible sequences of realizations of the type, after adding some parameters — so the dp-rank of a 1-type in any theory (...) is always witnessed by sequences of singletons; in NTP2 theories, simple types are co-simple, characterized by the co-independence theorem, and forking between the realizations of a simple type and arbitrary elements satisfies full symmetry; a Henselian valued field of characteristic is NTP2 if and only if the residue field is NTP2 , so in particular any ultraproduct of p-adics is NTP2; adding a generic predicate to a geometric NTP2 theory preserves NTP2. (shrink)

The property theory of musical works says that each musical work is a property that is instantiated by its occurrences, that is, the work's performances and playings. The property theory provides ontological explanations very similar to those given by its popular cousin, the type/token theory of musical works, but it is both simpler and stronger. However, type/token theorists often dismiss the property theory. In this essay, I formulate a version of the property theory that identifies (...) each type (thus, each musical work) with a unique property. I then scrutinize the arguments offered for thinking that types, including musical works, are distinct from properties. I respond that no such argument is forceful and conclude that the property theory of musical works is superior to the type/token theory. (shrink)

New developments in biotechnology radically alter our relationship with our bodies. Body tissues can now be used for commercial purposes, while external objects, such as pacemakers, can become part of the body. Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives transcends the everyday responses to such developments, suggesting that what we most fear is the feminisation of the body. We fear our bodies are becoming objects of property, turning us into things rather than persons. This book evaluates how well-grounded this (...) fear is, and suggests innovative models of regulating what has been called 'the new Gold Rush' in human tissue. This is an up-to-date and wide-ranging synthesis of market developments in body tissue, bringing together bioethics, feminist theory and lessons from countries that have resisted commercialisation of the body, in a theoretically sophisticated and practically significant approach. (shrink)

For a free filter F on $$\omega $$, let $$N_F=\omega \cup \{p_F\}$$, where $$p_F\not \in \omega $$, be equipped with the following topology: every element of $$\omega $$ is isolated whereas all open neighborhoods of $$p_F$$ are of the form $$A\cup \{p_F\}$$ for $$A\in F$$. The aim of this paper is to study spaces of the form $$N_F$$ in the context of the Nikodym property of Boolean algebras. By $$\mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ we denote the class of all those ideals $$\mathcal {I}$$ (...) on $$\omega $$ such that for the dual filter $$\mathcal {I}^*$$ the space $$N_{\mathcal {I}^*}$$ carries a sequence $$\langle \mu _n:n\in \omega \rangle $$ of finitely supported signed measures such that $$\Vert \mu _n\Vert \rightarrow \infty $$ and $$\mu _n(A)\rightarrow 0$$ for every clopen subset $$A\subseteq N_{\mathcal {I}^*}$$. We prove that $$\mathcal {I}\in \mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ if and only if there exists a density submeasure $$\varphi $$ on $$\omega $$ such that $$\varphi (\omega )=\infty $$ and $$\mathcal {I}$$ is contained in the exhaustive ideal $$\text{ Exh }(\varphi )$$. Consequently, we get that if $$\mathcal {I}\subseteq \text{ Exh }(\varphi )$$ for some density submeasure $$\varphi $$ on $$\omega $$ such that $$\varphi (\omega )=\infty $$ and $$N_{\mathcal {I}^*}$$ is homeomorphic to a subspace of the Stone space $$St(\mathcal {A})$$ of a given Boolean algebra $$\mathcal {A}$$, then $$\mathcal {A}$$ does not have the Nikodym property. We observe that each $$\mathcal {I}\in \mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ is Katětov below the asymptotic density zero ideal $$\mathcal {Z}$$, and prove that the class $$\mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ has a subset of size $$\mathfrak {d}$$ which is dominating with respect to the Katětov order $$\le _K$$, but $$\mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ has no $$\le _K$$ -maximal element. We show that, when $$\mathcal {I}$$ is a density ideal, $$\mathcal {I}\not \in \mathcal{A}\mathcal{N}$$ holds if and only if $$\mathcal {I}$$ is totally bounded if and only if the Boolean algebra $$\mathcal {P}(\omega )/\mathcal {I}$$ contains a countable splitting family. Our results shed some new light on differences between the Nikodym property and the Grothendieck property of Boolean algebras. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the computer ethics debate on software ownership protection by examining the ontological, methodological, and ethical problems related to property right infringement that should come prior to any legal discussion. The ontological problem consists in determining precisely what it is for a computer program to be a copy of another one, a largely neglected problem in computer ethics. The methodological problem is defined as the difficulty of deciding whether a given software system is a copy of (...) another system. And the ethical problem corresponds to establishing when a copy constitutes, or does not constitute, a property right infringement. The ontological problem is solved on the logical analysis of abstract machines, and the latter are argued to be the appropriate level of abstraction for software at which the methodological and the ethical problems can be successfully addressed. (shrink)

This book represents a major new statement on the issue of property rights. It argues for the justification of some rights of private property while showing why unequal distributions of private property are indefensible. Three features of the book are especially salient: it offers a challenging new pluralist theory of justification; the argument integrates perceptive analyses of the great classical theorists Aristotle, Locke, Hegel and Marx with a discussion of contemporary philosophers such as Nozick and Rawls; and (...) the author moves with assurance among philosophy, law and economics to present a very broad, interdisciplinary study. (shrink)

Russell’s type theory has been the standard property theory for years, relying on rigid type distinctions at the grammatical level to circumvent the paradoxes of predication. In recent years it has been convincingly argued by Bealer, Cochiarella, Turner and others that many linguistic and ontological data are best accounted for by using a type-free property theory. In the spirit of exploring alternatives and “to have as many opportunities as possible for theory comparison”, this paper presents another type-free (...) class='Hi'>property theory, to be called P*, intended for applications in Montague-style natural language semantics and formal ontology. The theory is philosophically grounded on Gupta’s and Belnap’s revision theory of definitions and its basic idea is viewing predication (exemplification) as a ‘circular concept’ that can be captured by circular definitions. The paper has the following fourteen sections: (1) Introduction; (2) Formal type-free property theory; (3) Applying RTD [revision theory of definitions] to exemplification; (4) The system P*; (5) Some features of P*; (6) A comparison with Turner’s system; (7) Entailment and P*; (8) P* and natural language semantics; (9) Noun phrases; (10) The need for type-freedom in semantics; (11) Arithmetic in P*; (12) Arithmetic in PN*; (13) Complexity of P*; (14) Conclusion, and acknowledgments. (shrink)

In an interesting letter to Anna George, the daughter of Henry George, Bernard Shaw wrote: “Your father found me a literary dilettante and militant rationalist in religion, and a barren rascal at that. By turning my mind to economics he made a man of me”. I am not able to determine what making a man of Bernard Shaw would exactly consist of, but it is clear that the kind of moral and social problems with which Shaw was deeply concerned could (...) not be sensibly pursued without examining their economic aspects. For example, the claims of property rights, which some would defend and some would dispute, are not just matters of basic moral belief that could not possibly be influenced one way or the other by any empirical arguments. They call for sensitive moral analysis responsive to empirical realities, including economic ones. (shrink)

Intellectual property (IP) can internalize positive externalities associated with the creation and discovery of ideas, thereby increasing investment in efforts to create and discover ideas. However, IP law also causes negative externalities. Strict IP rights raise the transaction costs associated with consuming and building on existing ideas. This causes a tragedy of the anticommons, in which valuable resources are underused and underdeveloped. By disincentivizing creative projects that build on existing ideas, IP protection, even if it increases original innovation, can (...) inadvertently reduce the rate of iterative innovation. The net effect of IP law on innovation and welfare depends on the relative magnitude of these positive and negative externalities. We argue that the current regime probably suffers from excessive, and excessively rigid, IP protection. This motivates the search for institutional alternatives and complements. We suggest that a monocentric IP rights regime may not be the only, or the most efficient, way to internalize the positive externalities of innovation. The knowledge economy supports the emergence of diverse, polycentric forms of bottom-up self-governance, both market and community led, that entail the citizen coproduction of the norms and practices of intellectual creation and discovery. (shrink)

This article offers a preliminary critical-historical reconstruction of the concept of dispossession. Part I examines its role in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century struggles against European feudal land tenure. Drawing upon Marx’s critique of French anarchism in particular, I identify a persistent limitation at the heart of the concept. Since dispossession presupposes prior possession, recourse to it appears conservative and tends to reinforce the very proprietary and commoditized models of social relations that radical critics generally seek to undermine. Part II turns (...) to use of the term in Indigenous struggles against colonization, both in order to better grasp the stakes of the above problematic and suggest a way beyond it. Through a reconstruction of arguments by Indigenous scholars and activists, I seek to show the coherence and novelty of their formulation by suggesting that dispossession has come to name a unique historical process, one in which property is generated under conditions that require divestment and alienation from those who appear, only retroactively, as its original owners. In this way, theft and property are related in a recursive, rather than strictly unilinear, manner. Part III provides a specific historical example in the form of nineteenth-century US property law concerning squatters and homesteaders. (shrink)

Classical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural (...) law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to support laissez faire libertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise. (shrink)

I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to Pierre Joseph (...) Proudhon, I'll focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)

Recent proposals in political philosophy concerning nonhuman animals as property-holders – by John Hadley and Steve Cooke – have focused on the interests that nonhuman animals have in access to and use of their territories. The possibility that such rights might be grounded on the basis of a Lockean (that is, labour-mixing) account of property has been rejected. In this paper, I explore four criticisms of Lockean property rights for nonhuman animals – concerning self-ownership, initiative, exertion and (...) the sufficiency of protection offered – concluding that Lockean property rights could be extended to nonhuman animals. I then suggest that Lockean property rights actually offer advantages over interest-based accounts: they more clearly ground property, they are potentially broader, and they are considerably stronger. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with n-localization property introduced by Newelski and Rosłanowski in [10] and getting it for CS iterations of forcing notions.

Can we employ the property of rationality in establishing what rationality requires? According to a central and formal thesis of John Broome’s work on rational requirements, the answer is ‘no’ – at least if we expect a precise answer. In particular, Broome argues that (i) the property of full rationality (i.e. whether or not you are fully rational) is independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. That is, (...) (ii) by replacing a wide-scope requirement with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa), we do not alter the situations in which a person is fully rational. As a consequence, (iii) the property of full rationality is unable to guide us in determining whether a rational requirement has a wide or a narrow logical scope. We cannot resolve the wide/narrow scope debate by appealing to a theory of fully rational attitudes. This paper argues that (i), (ii) and (iii) are incorrect. Replacing a wide- with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa) can alter the set of circumstances in which a person is fully rational. The property of full rationality is therefore not independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. As a consequence, the property of full rationality can guide us in determining what rationality requires – even in cases where we expect a precise answer. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of results concerning the disjunction property, Halldén-completeness, and other related properties of intermediate prepositional logics and normal modal logics containing S4.

Strong property representationalism, as applied to visual experience, is the thesis that the phenomenal character of a visual experience is one and the same as the property complex or ‘sensible profile’ represented by that experience. Speaks discusses the following argument against this thesis:Let ‘RED’ stand for the phenomenal character of the experience of red.(1) Red = RED (strong property representationalism).(2) My pen has no representational properties, but is red.Hence,(3) My pen has a phenomenal character but no representational (...) properties.Since (3) is false, (1) is false too.(3) Follows from (1) and (2) only on the assumption that what it is for something to have a phenomenal character is for it to instantiate a certain property just as what it is for my pen to have the color red is for it to instantiate the property of being red. The property instantiation model of having a phenomenal character is not the only possible model, however, and I reject it.An alternative model is t. (shrink)

All of the attempts to date to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for life, in order to provide an essential definition of life, have failed. We only have at our disposal series of lists that contain diverse characteristics usually found in living beings. Some authors have drawn from this fact the conclusion that life is not a natural kind. It will be argued here that this conclusion is too hasty and that if life is understood as a (...) natural kind in the non-essentialist sense of a homeostatic property cluster, it is easy to see why the attempts to find a unique and essentialist definition of life have failed. Understanding life in this way would imply that the pretension to find such a type of definition should be abandoned. (shrink)

The words “liberty” and “liberalism” have a common root, reflecting the commitment of the original or classical liberals to a free society. Over the last century, the latter term has come to represent a political position that is willing to sacrifice liberty in the economic realm for the sake of equality and/or collective welfare. As a consequence, those who wish to reaffirm the classical version of liberalism – those who advocate liberty in economic as well as personal and intellectual matters (...) – have invented a new word from the old root; they call themselves libertarians. Both in doctrine and in etymology, then, partisans of this view define themselves by their allegiance to liberty. Yet they spend most of their day-to-day polemical energies defending property rights and the economic system of laissez-faire capitalism that is based upon such rights. Evidently there is a strong link between liberty and property at work here. What is that link? The history of political thought is full of ideas and controversies about precisely this question. My goal here is to raise the question in a specific form, one that I think captures a basic difference in approach between classical liberals and most libertarians today. The difference is not in the substance of the position – it is not a disagreement about how the ideal society would be constituted – but rather in the way the position is to be defended. The key question is: can the right to property be derived from the right to liberty? Of course a property right is a right to kind of freedom. (shrink)