Tracking the ownership status of objects: the visible nature of human property

Luca Tummolini (Institute of Philosophy, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche)

Università degli Studi di Milano, Centre for the Study of Social Action

Tuesday 16 December, 16.30-18.00
Seminar Room, Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche "Cesare Beccaria", via festa del Perdono 7

Luca Tummolini (CNR)

“Tracking the ownership status of objects: the visible nature of human property”

Knowing that someone owns a particular object is a crucial piece of information when interacting in social contexts. Consider the decision whether or not to grasp a cup that is in front of you. By tracking the ownership status of the cup, you can predict who is going to react, what the owner expects from you, how the other bystanders will behave if you act contrary to shared expectations. Given that ownership seems to be an abstract concept that is not available to the senses, its ascription is often considered to be enabled by explicit cognitive processes. In this talk I will provide evidence that tracking object ownership is an implicit, automatic and often unaware process that is influenced by any cue that predicts the establishment of individual physical control over objects. In particular, I will discuss the results of four experiments in which the same context has been used to determine whether different visual cues (spatial proximity, temporal priority, touch) ground the sense of object-ownership as measured by a sensibility judgment task. The experiments have been done in collaboration with Claudia Scorolli and Anna Borghi at University of Bologna.