Evolution and morality, pt 2: theft and ownership
Is theft really so bad? Perhaps, but only if ownership is so good.
In the last discussion, it did not appear to take too long, or require too much marshalling of evidence, to conclude that no moral system can sustain the instinct to murder: either the species dies out, or the instinct does. However, it turns out that this instinct may be the only one that can be dealt with so summarily, since it is the only one that deals directly with survival. When dealing with theft, we are instantly confronted with a problem of definition. The connotations of the word “theft” are too strong to use without question. It would perhaps be more accurate to think of theft as one kind of taking, and specifically one which implies the existence of, and tacit social agreement to, the idea of ownership.
Our task might be simplified if we split the world of objects into different categories, according to their relation to the wellbeing of the species as a whole. This appears to be necessary, because we can think of at least two kinds of taking: of objects that are absolutely necessary to their “owners”, and those that aren’t. It is quite obvious that, if somebody is starving to death, and they chance upon an edible loaf of bread, while at the same time I am perfectly full, it would be wrong to take the bread from them. This is true if we accept the conclusion of the previous post, since this action is the same as murder. If, however, I too am starving, it seems to be of entirely no value to speak of whether my taking the bread is good or bad. Since I have equal right, by the laws of nature, to live as the other does, there is no sense in which any one of us can lay claim to ownership of the bread. At this stage, we are assuming nothing about the nature of the species in question other than that it must eat to live—we are not assuming that it has any established system of ownership. Even if the species did have an established system of ownership, the basic fact that denying a starving person a loaf of bread, if you can possibly help it, is the same as murder, trumps any such system. So we can tentatively say that there exist at least two kinds of object, those that are directly necessary for survival, and those that aren’t.
But this doesn’t take into account all kinds of object that play a part in human life. The second category might be further split into two: those objects that only serve for our pleasure (defined in the broadest possible sense), and those that are used as investments for some future benefit, whether that be pleasure or security. With these two types of object, it is not obvious that the instinct to take them would doom the survival or advancement of the species. After all, at this stage it is still possible to speculate that the instinct to take another person’s pleasure object (say, a book), if the “owner” did not have the wit or could not devote the effort to protect it against such taking, might trump the total good granted to the species as a whole by the “ownership” of these pleasure objects. Investment objects are slightly clearer. A farmer’s tools, as well as his land, are some of his investment objects, and it is apparent that taking these would severely restrict his ability to survive, but would not kill him, so we can’t say that it is tantamount to murder. The only way to assess the moral value of theft is first to consider the idea of ownership, and to answer the question whether it redounds to the good of the species, or otherwise.
There is an extent to which we humans find ownership natural, and feel strongly that those possessions we have are truly ours, and that it would be a great injustice if they were taken from us. This might give us the impression that we have evolved to have this feeling—and indeed, this might be the case. But if that is so, then it is not easy to argue that this feeling, this natural tendency towards ownership, is in any way good for us as a species. After all, the wide majority of nature is perfectly happy without such a feeling, and indeed there are those, such as sharks, who are so perfectly well adapted to their environments that it is difficult to see how ownership could in any way be useful to them. Moreover, if we imagine that the Great White community were tomorrow to develop an instinct for ownership, we might even guess that they would be too preoccupied with settling the consequent issues to give their full attention to daily hunting, and this might even be harmful for them. At any rate, it is hard to see how their comfortable position would improve.
It is also hard to see how even those species that are very low on the food chain would improve their plight if they developed an instinct for ownership. On further reflection, it seems apparent that the instinct can only develop once the species in question have become sufficiently masters of their environment to turn their attention inwards in such a way. The precise way in which we developed this instinct is not obvious. Perhaps it actually came about in the days in which we were still struggling against the elements, when we first invented tools which we thought should never fall into the hands of rival tribes. These tools would have been effectively owned by the whole tribe, but once we had mastered our environments the instinct remained, and since we had no need for it in its group from, we turned it in on ourselves. However it developed, we can be reasonably certain that it can only develop once the species is relatively comfortable, and once it is reasonably intelligent. Once it has established itself, its uses become apparent. We want to own things because we perceive there to be some utility or value in them. We might be wrong, but we are right enough of the time that the cumulative effect on our species is a good one. We make tools that make agriculture possible and then more efficient, that make hunting relatively risk-free, that allow us to build houses—I need not bore the reader with the full list. All of this is possible without ownership, but ownership gives us the incentive to employ our fullest efforts in this regard. It might be argued that the inevitable psychological effect of all this is that we place too high a premium on ownership, and only rarely does it have real value, which means that we have an inflated anxiety about possessions. But the uses of ownership clearly outweigh such psychological drawbacks as there may be.
Be this as it may, it does not mean that the ownership instinct is unambiguously good, in the way that the (indiscriminate) killing instinct is unambiguously bad. Given that we are taking survival as the ultimate bedrock of any morality, there are clearly considerations that can supersede the ownership instinct. If you are rich and a poor man steals from you out of necessity, is it right to react with outrage? Is it possible to say that the thief was morally wrong, when survival is the most important thing of all? In a milder case, what if you can find a considerably better use for something than its current owner—would it be wrong to steal then? If you are correct in your assessment, then stealing is better for society than not stealing. There are other considerations, too. If the “institution” of ownership is generally a good thing for society, then there might be times when non-ownership is better for society. If, for instance, a reclusive billionaire buys Picasso’s Guernica only to hide it in a dark lair for his amusement alone, we have a case where the needs of culture at large are being set aside for the sake of private ownership, where non-ownership might be better overall.
We can conclude with some certainty, then, that the ownership instinct is good for society so far and only so far as it serves society. Alongside this ownership instinct must come a natural respect for the ownership claims of others, if the instinct is to have any positive effect at all, and this means that stealing, as a general rule, runs counter to the good of the species. However, it is not difficult to concoct cases in which stealing has a positive effect for the species. If we are only slavish respecters of our instincts, then, we might be blinded to the original purpose of those instincts.
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[...] can have any importance in the first place? David Michael at Perplexicon explores what sorts of evolutionary purposes ownership might have served and how these might both explain and delimit our s… Perhaps it actually came about in the days in which we were still struggling against the elements, [...]
So I’m reading this post… I love reading your posts, by the way, and I have no reason for not commenting before now. I see you use WordPress but don’t have an option for registration.
Shame… As there is no other real way to contact you, I’m going to make free to make my personal message here. Hoping you don’t mind.
Anyhow, on to the point.
I’m sure that this won’t be the last time you and I diverge. I simply cannot accept that should I have some food and you need some food and I don’t give it to you, I am therefore guilty of murder… or if I have some food, and we are both equally in need of food, you have just as much claim to ownership to said food as I do (assuming I acquired it by moral means). Murder is a very deliberate positive action which puts the lives of others in grave danger. Not acting is simply not equal to acting. If I stole your food and now you are in danger of starving to death, then I am guilty of murder, but the mere fact that I have food does not make me [morally] obligated to give it to you if you are in need. If you were in a burning building and I didn’t run in to save you, am I guilty of murder? If I didn’t light the fire, no, I’m not guilty of murder. I may be a coward, but I am not a murderer.
Let me throw another scenario at you. I know that for my family to survive the winter, we must have x amount of food on-hand. I have exactly that. You come along and your family doesn’t have enough to last the winter. Your food is all gone, but my family still has food. We are not in danger of starvation. Am I guilty of murder for refusing to share the food that I have? I don’t think so. If I part with that food, we both starve to death. Would you put your family at risk to not last the winter in order to feed my family?
As for the automatic “communal” aspect of “necessities…” I can’t dig that either. If I worked my ever-lovin’ patootie off for the harvest I have this year, that’s my life-blood… my sweat… mine. It is not yours. That you cannot live without it does not mean that my blood and sweat and time and energy must suddenly belong to anyone who comes along because “you simply can’t live without it.” This idea, itself, renders the idea of “private ownership,” and, dare I say, “self-ownership” useless. I would simply be a slave to anyone who doesn’t work as hard as I do, or isn’t as skilled as I am. This is not to say one should not be charitable if one can be charitable. It simply means that taking from me without my permission, for any reason is theft, an act of aggression, and in my opinion, indefensible.
Allowing such a justification for theft opens the doors for many many problematic things, not the least of which you’ve mentioned above: a lot of the terms we use are quite vague and nebulous and we cannot assume that those who use the same terms use them in exactly the same capacity. How do you define “need?” You and I obviously define “theft” very differently. Do we define ownership very differently as well? Quite possibly. I find it simplifies things to a) exclude such complicated exceptions and b) be charitable.
Being charitable is always in one’s best interest, and should you find someone heartless being less than charitable, you are certainly free to not do buisiness with them and discourage others from the same. There are ways to influence behavior which do not resort to “theft” or any other aggresive (read “morally questionable”) act.
Anyhow, that’s my two cents. Take it for what it’s worth.
I don’t think that not giving food is the same as murder, but that taking food, in the circumstances outlined in the 2nd paragraph, is. I realise that if I did think that not giving food is the same as murder, then every single person would be guilty of murder all the time. I was trying to relate an instance of taking with killing, and to show that in that case it is not the theft as theft that is wrong, but the fact that it ends up killing the person in question that makes it wrong. This kind of “theft” has nothing to do with legal ownership of bread, in other words.
I would also agree with your conclusion about the family with the x amount of food. That brings up another interesting dimension which I should consider later: that of families. It may be the case that prioritisation of families is indirectly good for the species as a whole…
You may very well feel that your blood and sweat are yours and no one else’s, but that does not necessarily make it so. After all, in what sense could it be shown to be true? It is a feeling, like any other, and while I share that feeling, we must also put it in some context. For instance, I might argue that my survival trumps the vast majority of all other considerations, and nobody, but nobody, has the right to tell me otherwise. In that case, it would be perfectly reasonable to steal some of your hard-earned food: why should your mere feeling of ownership trump my mere feeling of the necessity of survival?
PS. How does one create an option for registration?
I’m going to quote you here… I’m not sure if your blog will allow me to use this particular type of markup, but I’m going to try…
I am going to have to re-read. I’m not sure where my understanding went awry.
Let us view this against the same evolutionary instinct for survival that we discussed in comments pursuant to your last post. If we can establish (which I believe we have) that human beings want to live, doing anything which they perceive to be a threat to that life is likely to provoke them. We have also observed, very often, that people react similarly to threats to non-essienial property. Well, I have witnessed that to be the case, anyhow.
We then have to figure out why it is that people would consider that property just as worthy of violent defense… and I think the answer lies in what it really means to be alive. People take their “identity” very seriously, and while these things may not be considered a physically vital part of one’s existence (you won’t die without a car, but you are guaranteed to die without water, for example), loss of identity is very often equated in an emotional sense with loss of life. People react violently if you attack America (ideologically) because they fancy themselves “americans.” People react violently when you attack christianity because they fancy themselves “christian.” I think that property one earns works into that equation similarly.
Another position I take (being of the opinion that my property, the fruits of my labor are my own) is that a person who would actively take a non-essential piece of my property is just as likely to take an essential part of my property (a car versus my food stores). That person then, even though they aren’t actively trying to take something I rely on for survival, becomes an active threat to my survival regardless.
Obviously this is a purely subjective position. I recognize that. I have simply come to the conclusion that all theft contributes to an artifically shortened lifespan and therefore it is not something I should be engaging in.
Oh yes! And about registration… You’ll go to your wp-admin, find “settings” on the left, and go to “general.” Assuming you have a version close to the version I use, it should be the sixth option down.
I take your point, but I think it comes down to what you say in the last paragraph, that it is a purely subjective position. If you are taking your position into a public sphere in which there are some people who consider it morally right to blow themselves and others up, for instance, you surely have to find a way to show that your position is superior to theirs.
If I were very rich and had very many possessions, I feel certain that I wouldn’t feel each and every one of them to be so intimately part of my identity. Perhaps a few books, a few artifacts from my childhood, nothing much more. So if a thief stole a lamp from me, which was only serving a practical purpose and which was easily replaced, I cannot imagine being filled with murderous rage. Perhaps the intrusion, and the subsequent feeling that if a lamp can be taken, then nothing else is safe, would greatly worry me. My focus then would be on improving the security of my home to guarantee that members of my family can’t be harmed—not to guarantee that more things won’t get stolen.
Which relates to your point about the burglar being a potential threat to your survival. This is a fair enough fear, but it should be kept in context. In my post I was talking about instincts, and the balance of instincts in a society. It seems to me that the instinct that, in time, looks upon a burglary as a great inconvenience is better than the one that looks upon it as a heinous crime. It is that same instinct that can make us genuinely charitable, and is thus, on the face of it, better for society at large.
I think this is going to come down to a very different opinion on what is “better” for very subjective reasons. I don’t think this is something that you and I are going to hash out, really. There are so many beliefs and experiences that lead me to the conclusions I’ve made, we would have to discuss them at great length in order to determine which one leads me to disagree with you, but suffice it to say… I do disagree. I believe that it is more useful or “better” for people to view home intrusion as a particularly heinous crime and thus meet that intrusion with deadly force. Realistically, I think that would go a lot further in preventing all future intrusions throughout a community than simply better fortifying your individual home.
Hmm… We’ll have to agree to disagree!
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