Talk:Ownership
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- See also: Talk:Property.
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[edit] Why are there no comments here?
Is it the case that people realize that ownership is fictional?
Ownership like responsibility, blame, praise, guilt, obligation, rights, etc. is ascribed rather than described. Unlike descriptions, ascriptions are neither true nor false. That is, simply ascribing ownership to b doesn't establish the truth of the sentence "b owns this".
The Latin roots of ascription and description are informative: 'ad scribere', literally 'to write to', as opposed to 'de scribere', literally 'to write down from' - where what is 'written down from' is a state of affairs.
The resemblance to mystical incantation is obvious on moving from ascription to utterance, where simply saying "b owns this" supposedly establishes the truth of the sentence "b owns this".
The process of ascribing and uttering fails elsewhere: for example, simply saying "The cat is sitting on the mat" doesn't establish the truth of the sentence "The cat is sitting on the mat".
The document referred to in the following link clarifies the matter of ownership linguistically.
Ash --58.84.69.162 02:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Circular definition
The article starts off with "[o]wnership is the socially supported power to exclusively control and use for one's own purposes, that which is owned." Seems like we need a definition of "owned" here. Anyone have a nice concise way of doing this? Gwimpey 22:51, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Circular definition
The article begins with "Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession ..". This is still uninformative.
The state of affairs where b has twenty cents in his hand (or pocket) establishes the truth of the sentence "b has twenty cents in his hand (or pocket)". The state of affairs doesn't establish the truth of the sentence "b owns twenty cents". The relation of ownership is not observable in the state of affairs. The only observable relation in this example is that of holding.
Likewise, the state of affairs where b paid $200k and thereafter resided in the house at address establishes the truth of the sentence "b paid $200k and thereafter resided in the house at address". The state of affairs doesn't establish the truth of the sentence "b owns the house at address". The only observable relations in this example are those of paying and residing.
In the absence of a state or fact, I would suggest that an appropriate definition for "ownership" is as follows: "Ownership is an ascribed or fictional relation between person(s) and object(s)".
Ash--58.84.77.227 16:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
- I think to say that the relationship is "ascribed or fictional" is too much existentialist, even social constructionist in nature. You're describing the state of affairs of ownership too philosophically that you forget that ownership exists in certain social arrangements. For example, ownership can mean ownership in a capitalist society where it would be defined by the law that exists in that society. The relationship then, is not ascribed or fictional but rather, legal. In other societies with different modes of production, ownership's definition will change according to social definitions. The definition is not "fictional" if people consider the relationship to be real. If we are trying to be objective, then we must try to encompass all definitions as possible and not jump to conclusions as to the definition of a term. Moonwalkerwiz 07:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Ownership in computer science
Anyone think we should do an article about ownership in computer science? For example, in C++, where memory is manually managed, you can transfer ownership of a pointer when you pass that pointer to a function or something. The constructor of std::auto_ptr transfers ownership of the pointer to the auto_ptr, which deletes the pointer when the auto_ptr goes out of scope. I don't feel confident enough about the subject material to write the article myself, though. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MisterPhyrePhox (talk • contribs) 01:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
