No, they don't have ownership, they have possession. And they use violence to enforce it. And if they leave their possessions, even for a moment, they don't have them anymore and another animal takes them.
Sure. If I beat you up and take your bike in the United States, I possess your bike, but I don't own it. That's an easy distinction by example and it is noncircular. The law thinks it belongs to you and men with guns will try to take it from you. How would you describe your relationship to an object in your safety deposit box? You certainly don't possess it. In a world without society, you would have zero relationship to it at all, it has nothing to do with you. All you have are the promises that it will be returned to you upon request and that those promises will be backed up by force of law, enforced by society.
Yes, ownership cannot exist without societal structure, it's a legal term invented to describe something so it's only relevant where law exists (i.e. society), which was exactly my point a couple of posts ago. That does NOT mean that ownership is "possession plus society". It simply means that ownership is a concept that cannot be defined without societal structure.
And it's very often that eggs inside nests get stolen when left unattended. They are food for other animals. How is the frequency with which something happens relevant here? I don't know what point you're trying to make; do you not understand what it means to own something? Do you believe that when you leave your home for work in the morning it ceases to be yours? Do you really believe there is no difference between a crow picking up an object and a contract assigning legal ownership of an object to a person? Is this a Socratic dialogue?
Ownership is where you can get other people to support your possessory interest. I think the fact of violence is extremely relevant, and that you are discounting the impact it would have on you.
> Ownership is where you can get other people to support your possessory interest.
Getting other people to "support" it sounds like society. Is that the only difference? If possession is exactly the same as ownership-minus-society, then the original argument that ownership only exists because of society is pretty circular. If that's the case then I reaffirm there's a huge difference between society-only 'ownership' like IP rights, and society-optional 'ownership' like physical possessions.
> I think the fact of violence is extremely relevant, and that you are discounting the impact it would have on you.
I'm not discounting violence, I'm just thinking about how the enforcement of laws is backed by violence and wondering what distinction there's supposed to be.
Why would I get hurt? You seem pretty weak and easy to defeat. In this brave new world of yours where I'm not bound by any ethical calculus, what makes you think you'll get any opportunity for redress?
Yours and new in the sense of what you're asserting in this thread. I'm just being poetic, don't be so literal.
But good luck having a particularly big advantage in a fight against most fellow adults of your species without using society to get there.
This sounds like a roundabout way of restating the libertarian trope about the state having a monopoly on violence. Look, let me just ask you directly: how much experience you have of real violence? Have you ever fought for your life, or put it in serious jeopardy? I don't mean an everyday bad situation, I mean one where you were genuinely on your own with no prospect of assistance.
> I mean one where you were genuinely on your own with no prospect of assistance.
Where I had no prospect of assistance and my opponent had no prospect of assistance and there were no weapons created by society? Because I'm not trying to make an argument about ordered society vs. anarchic society. I'm talking about a situation where there are absolutely no societal interactions at all wrt ownership. And I've certainly never been in a fight like that. Or a non-fight like that.
I feel like you've done a good job of demonstrating that some forms of society will ruin ownership. But that's not the same thing as a total lack of social constructs.
There are animals that own objects where that ownership is not enforced through any societal methods.