Biology and property

[€dd]

Hello, I am a philosophy student and I'm in need of some information for a project I am working on.                                            What I'm interested in is to research the origin of land property, which canonically in philosophy is thought as a peculiarity of men, but it seems to me that it can be considered more as a characteristic of predatory animals in general (the reasoning being that as far as I know if a group or a single predator gets in an area where another group of predators resides there will be confrontation), but, with this said, I'm in no way an expert, so I was hoping that someone more competent could confirm or debunk my hypothesis. 

Btw I'm not a native English speaker so I hope that I have been as comprehensible as possible 

[CharonY]

I think land ownership and territoriality are very different concepts. The first being a rather abstract concept . Territoriality on the other hand is widely distributed through the animal kingdom, and clearly not limited to predators. Think ants or birds, for example.

[Sensei]

Animals migrate (a lot!) , mostly to find new food sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_migration

Animals which would not migrate, simply would increase their population to too high level, eat everything what is to eat in the area they're living, and start dying due to exhaust of natural resources.

Humans, prior "invention" of agriculture, also had to migrate to find new sources of food. Agriculture made human attached to specific area of the Earth. Agriculture requires taking care of piece of soil, with plants, for a few months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture

 

[€dd]

Ok so I agree with the responses but I think I have to be clearer: I know that animals don't have property the way we do, but the point I was trying to make is to link territoriality with aggressive behaviors and violence in general, and predators are generally more aggressive. There are some obvious exceptions, for example hippopotamuses (I don't know if that's how you say that) are very aggressive and territorial. 

To get to the point, I guess you could boil down my argument to: a species that establishes their domain over some land does so thanks to violence and can only maintain it through violence. 

P.S. The philosophical definition of property I refer to is: not giving willing access of something to somebody else (which leads me to believe the territory of a territorial animal can be defined as his property) 

P.S.2 I am not a commie (I thought I needed to clarify) 

 

[CharonY]

20 hours ago, €dd said:

Ok so I agree with the responses but I think I have to be clearer: I know that animals don't have property the way we do, but the point I was trying to make is to link territoriality with aggressive behaviors and violence in general, and predators are generally more aggressive. There are some obvious exceptions, for example hippopotamuses (I don't know if that's how you say that) are very aggressive and territorial. 

To get to the point, I guess you could boil down my argument to: a species that establishes their domain over some land does so thanks to violence and can only maintain it through violence. 

P.S. The philosophical definition of property I refer to is: not giving willing access of something to somebody else (which leads me to believe the territory of a territorial animal can be defined as his property) 

P.S.2 I am not a commie (I thought I needed to clarify) 

 

I do not think that it makes sense to use such overarching narratives to explain the natural world. Animals are territorial for a variety of reasons (though in the broadest sense it involves resource use). Plenty of non-predatory animals are very aggressive, especially toward their own species, during breeding season, for example. In fact, territoriality is best investigated in birds. 

It should also be noted that there is an inherent cost of violence, and a lot of territorial animals avoid fatal or serious injuries by limiting violent actions. The reason is that using violence excessively is a bad strategy all around. Even the winner might be too injured to benefit from the territory so that many conflicts are  ritualized to various degrees.  An exception are hive animals, in which the individual has less at stake. There the fights get really vicious. At the same time, some non-predatory animals exhibit strangely excessive violent behaviour during breeding seasons. I may be misremembering, but I recall that a song bird (maybe robin?) causes a surprising number of deaths due to territorial behaviour.

In short, all these types of grand narratives which try to capture nature's complexity in simple narratives are pretty much always lacking in explanatory power and will be contradicted by observations. While they may be compelling, they are generally ultimately wrong. 

 

[€dd]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

I do not think that it makes sense to use such overarching narratives to explain the natural world. Animals are territorial for a variety of reasons (though in the broadest sense it involves resource use). Plenty of non-predatory animals are very aggressive, especially toward their own species, during breeding season, for example. In fact, territoriality is best investigated in birds. 

It should also be noted that there is an inherent cost of violence, and a lot of territorial animals avoid fatal or serious injuries by limiting violent actions. The reason is that using violence excessively is a bad strategy all around. Even the winner might be too injured to benefit from the territory so that many conflicts are  ritualized to various degrees.  An exception are hive animals, in which the individual has less at stake. There the fights get really vicious. At the same time, some non-predatory animals exhibit strangely excessive violent behaviour during breeding seasons. I may be misremembering, but I recall that a song bird (maybe robin?) causes a surprising number of deaths due to territorial behaviour.

In short, all these types of grand narratives which try to capture nature's complexity in simple narratives are pretty much always lacking in explanatory power and will be contradicted by observations. While they may be compelling, they are generally ultimately wrong. 

 

First of all, I want to say that this has been really helpful, I don't want to sound ungrateful and it isn't my intention to have a debate on an topic that I don't know that well. Also, what you say about grand narratives is true, but, the point is, that that wasn't my objective. The reason I asked these questions is neither about biology nor it has to do with animals (even if it refers to them), it is purely philosophical. To be more specific, I'm trying to put in a different perspective some key concepts of contractualism, utilitarianism and natural law. 

[CharonY]

A few points:

1) Since you are not talking about biology, the thread is going to be moved to philosophy, if you want to expand on that part more.

2) Taking examples from the natural world and try to fit it into a philosophical framework is often not helpful as the theoretical framework and mechanism are often on different levels and do not necessarily support each other.

3) This is especially problematic if you cherry pick examples from the natural world and try to strengthen a philosophical argument with it. Your main question in OP was whether territoriality is mainly a characteristic of predators, and I think that has been answered. I.e. there are plenty of non-predators that are territorial, and conversely quite a few predators are migratory (or at least in part). In addition, even among territorial animals, quite a few exhibit ritualistic competition. I.e. the degree of violence can vary with some non-predators being more violent than some predators. Thus, the biological aspects are fairly complex and I am not sure how much it would help you in a philosophical argument.

If you want to explore the biological side for a moment, you are basically talking about falls under the broader aspect of resource use and competition. The development of such behaviour is often investigated under the viewpoint of cost-benefit trade-offs (with regard to fitness), which for example explains why for the most part incumbents retain their territory (unless severely weakened). In that regard you could state that animals generally do not relinquish resources willingly, if they can avoid it. Here again, there are notable exceptions of course, such as in social animals.

[€dd]

16 hours ago, CharonY said:

A few points:

1) Since you are not talking about biology, the thread is going to be moved to philosophy, if you want to expand on that part more.

2) Taking examples from the natural world and try to fit it into a philosophical framework is often not helpful as the theoretical framework and mechanism are often on different levels and do not necessarily support each other.

3) This is especially problematic if you cherry pick examples from the natural world and try to strengthen a philosophical argument with it. Your main question in OP was whether territoriality is mainly a characteristic of predators, and I think that has been answered. I.e. there are plenty of non-predators that are territorial, and conversely quite a few predators are migratory (or at least in part). In addition, even among territorial animals, quite a few exhibit ritualistic competition. I.e. the degree of violence can vary with some non-predators being more violent than some predators. Thus, the biological aspects are fairly complex and I am not sure how much it would help you in a philosophical argument.

If you want to explore the biological side for a moment, you are basically talking about falls under the broader aspect of resource use and competition. The development of such behaviour is often investigated under the viewpoint of cost-benefit trade-offs (with regard to fitness), which for example explains why for the most part incumbents retain their territory (unless severely weakened). In that regard you could state that animals generally do not relinquish resources willingly, if they can avoid it. Here again, there are notable exceptions of course, such as in social animals.

I know that this isn't really a scientific topic, but I didn't know who to ask offline and thus I came where I was sure to find answers. With this said, I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you talk about taking examples from the natural world, as almost all philosophies have elements derived from the observation of the world around us and some (like empiricism) are solely devoted to using a more scientific approach. 

Anyways, there are still some questions I have and I don't think that I would get the answers I'm looking for if I asked them in the philosophy section, so I might open another thread in this section. 

[Sensei]

On 6/4/2019 at 7:46 PM, €dd said:

To be more specific, I'm trying to put in a different perspective some key concepts of contractualism, utilitarianism and natural law.  

Human attachment to specific piece of land is (used to be) consequence of agriculture. i.e. if land is feeding person and his or her family, there is no need to leave it. Obviously climate change, global warming, will change it, and people will have to leave their fatherlands and move to more moderate climate regions such as Europe or North America.

I would say it's quite "natural law" to seek for lands which can feed you and your family. No matter if it's human, animal, plant or microorganism. They all search for new territories to settle. If territory is giving everything they need, they are progressing in that direction (therefor natural barriers of countries are typically oceans, mountains, rivers etc. lands which are very hard/impossible to settle on)

Edited June 8, 2019 by Sensei