Distributed Cognition, Distributed Being, and the Foundations of Law

Descriptive and normative liberal property theories are based on the assumption of a pre-social individual and its differentiation from a world of objects. This foundation is utterly dissolved in a posthuman attitude which appreciates the distributed nature of being and the entanglement of humanity in a physical world. Private property is, moreover, at the center of global ecocide and ongoing colonial practices. For these reasons, the question of the ethical justifications for property can no longer be ignored. Is property justifiable at all, and if so in what form, in an entangled world? What does the codependence and indeed interchangeability of subjects and objects mean for the future of property? My chapter does not directly consider these questions, but lays out some of the groundwork for a reconsideration of property by examining the abstract account of law and the profile of property that presently exist.