There are intellectuals who discuss this subject from the perspective of the right to private property. Establishing this right makes it possible to assert that one thing or another is what one owns, and I do feel important so that one goes against the situation that object is taken from them without legitimacy. Although I do respect the rights of citizens, the word has been used in a way that is wide and convenient. The following writing develops the ideas on private property, not limited in the perspective of the rights.
Right to property arises in the circumstance that there is at least another person around oneself. If there’s no person around, would one claim the ownership of property? There’s no need to insist the ownership unless there’s another person in the world. In relation to the labour and property, “every Man has a Property in his own Person: This no Body has any right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his”(1).
Private property is related to the extensibility of self, that is to say that to what extent one thinks their self extends. One’s body is physically always with self. One is likely to think that it is self.
The works created by author is the extended part of that author. Especially I believe that my works are going to continue to exist in the world based on the robustness and resilience of the ideas embedded in them.
The works created by artificial intelligence are perceived different from what I wrote by myself. Suppose I hand over the former to others as a submission, I am reluctant to do so. They are not my works. In the process of making works, I embed what I perceived and felt from my life in the works. Some of the readers may feel them in reading, that makes difference. Also, regarding AI, the knowledges on the work are internalised in oneself. That has to do with if one can present it proficiently to the audience if requested. The output is also in details carefully organised by oneself (one’s will is in every piece of contents) compared with the ones created by AI.
In the world where extended intelligence spreads, people would be more sceptical towards the world. The objects created by the EI comes from persons, but since the distance is broader, the people who create and their output has a certain distance.
For example, Aristotle “places dianoia and epistēmē praktikē, practical insight and political science, at the lowest rank of his order, and puts above them the science of fabrication, epistēmē poiētikē, which immediately precedes and leads to theōria, the contemplation of truth”(2).
Fabrication is a type of expression that one expresses oneself to the world. It requires, though depends on what kind of artifact one fabricates, a lot of time to be spent while contemplating in oneself. This time is precious in the sense that it ferments thoughts in the inner part. Because the aim of capitalism is to gain profit and it is required for firms to seek efficiency in that game, the fabrication of things which takes inefficient cost of time came to face difficulty in continuing their business, except a few products which has success of attaching high values. Having said that, one doesn’t have to deal with it in the perspective of capitalism or business.
When one is dedicated to what one cares in his private life, in some cases, the private aspect may contribute to the public benefit.
In addition, based on personal experiences, the wisdoms that are beneficial to the public can be produced.
As regards copyright, privacy, and particularly on the Internet, “there’s a bit of ‘our’ data that ‘we’ve’ lost control over. In the case of copyright, it is the data constituting a copy of our copyrighted work; in the case of privacy; it is the data representing some fact about us”(3).
As for privacy and how personal information is maintained, the concern was raised in 1973 that “an individual’s control over the personal information that he gives to an organization, or that an organization obtains about him, is lessening”(4), and “Nowadays an individual must increasingly give information about himself to large and relatively faceless institutions, for handling and use by strangers-unknown, unseen and, all too frequently, unresponsive. Sometimes the individual does not even know that an organization maintains a record about him. Often he may not see it, much less contest its accuracy, control its dissemination, or challenge its use by others”(5).
We can find that the technological environment regarding privacy has changed. Previously “given the technology of 1790, trespass law was a meaningful legal protection for privacy. So long as entering was a necessary step to effective spying, laws against entering without permission were effective protections of privacy”(6).
When a baby/child starts their life, they start recognise the self. The example of “new-born child” who starts recognising what is own and what is object which exists outside own, that “It must make the strongest impression on him that some sources of stimulation, which he will later recognize as his own physical organs, can convey sensations to him at any time, while other things – including what he most craves, his mother’s breast – are temporarily removed from him and can be summoned back only by a cry for help”(7).
After learning to a certain level (going beyond the elementary level), it becomes internalised. In learning another language, it may first learn via what you know such as first language, they acquire the ability to use another. By reaching certain level, you are able to skip using another language. You understand the meaning of what is in front of you without first language. It has the feeling of directly understanding it, that is the object and self.
Imagine in playing music with more proficiency, there may be no boundary between the musical instrument and self.
Aspiring to have something as one’s own property is ultimately to make it oneself or internalised.
The psychedelic experience reports that “when activity in the default network falls off precipitously, the ego temporarily vanishes, and the usual boundaries we experience between self and world, subject and object, all melt away”(8).
(1) John Locke, Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p.15.
(2) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), p.301.
(3) Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), p.200.
(4) ‘Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens’, ASPE, published 30 June 1973, accessed 28 July 2024, https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/records-computers-rights-citizens. Jonathan Zittrain refers to this part in his book Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008), p.201.
(5) ‘Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens’, ASPE, published 30 June 1973, accessed 28 July 2024, https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/records-computers-rights-citizens. Jonathan Zittrain refers to this part in his book Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008), p.201.
(6) Lawrence Lessig, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p.260.
(7) Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin Book, 2002), p.5.
(8) Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (London: Penguin Books, 2019), p.305.
