Conflict in Creation and Normativity

Christopher Frugé (University of Oxford)

Zoom link is available on request. Please email Sarah Murdoch ([email protected]) to receive it.

Different creators shape what each other makes simply by attempting to make mutually relevant creations. Two communities who claim overlapping territory don’t both make the same land exclusively their own but instead create smaller territories than they claimed. Two people who claim exclusive right to the same coconut don’t both make a right to the whole thing but rather just to half. Artificers can thus influence another’s artifact even where there is no collective attempt to make something together. Yet despite such shared creation certain creations are inviolable in that necessarily a creator is uninfluenced by others when making them. Therefore, I develop an account that captures the dynamic of shared creation with domains of inviolability. The principle of artifact construction is globalist in canvassing packages of potentially conflicting creative attempts and selecting the least arbitrary product to be created. Inviolability arises due to that principle privileging certain unified connections between certain artificers and certain artifacts. The focus throughout is on the creation of property rights, so the view offers a mind-dependent and social approach to normativity that nevertheless provides for a domain of indestructible normative power and protection.