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Comment by earthboundkid | Hacker News Reader

A table is an artificial object. If I’m trying to build a table and a leg breaks, I will replace the broken leg. A natural object like the Old Man of the Mountain isn’t like that. When it broke, nature didn’t care and didn’t “fix” it. Biological organisms are weird because they are in between. Your heart pumps your blood, and if it’s not working, your body tries its best to fix it. It has a function like an artificial object, but it has no designer or mental intention behind it. Then what about the mind itself? The brain is an undesigned organ. How can it represent the world?

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> A table is an artificial object.

Does it have to be? If a natural rock formation or horizontal tree root with a flat top is used as a table, then it is a table, is it not?

Tables are anything humans use for the purpose of a table.

Their manufacture or lack thereof is immaterial.

I agree discovery vs. manufacture isn't that big of distinction. If a rock table was almost fit for purpose, but not quite, you might do something to make it work, or if it's way too different to work as a table, you wouldn't consider it at all. In any event, human intention is taking raw material (trees, rocks that are almost table) and using it according to an intention, and the intention is what makes it a table.

If you discover a flat surface in the forest that happens to have some stuff on top, like pine-cones or whatever, you might think to yourself: "Hah! It's a table!", even if no human ever touched it or designed it to be a table.

Similarly, if we find aliens and see their tables, then we would also call them tables even though they were not human-designed.

If an AI builds and uses a table, then that is still a table, even if no organic (or even conscious!) being ever intended it to be a table.

Last but not least: tables don't even have to be made of matter! A table is a table, even if it's in a computer game or virtual reality.

These concepts are much more fuzzy around the edges than philosophers like to pretend they are.

There's some distinction in Aquinas that I don't remember the word for that would describe a "table" of pinecones as just being a table by analogy but not a real table. It has a form like a table, but if it just arose by accident, it lacks the substance of a table. I don't think aliens or videogames complicate the question that much, but I do think some flat surface in the forest is only like a table but not really a table until some conscious being comes along.

> It has a form like a table, but if it just arose by accident, it lacks the substance of a table.

Incidentally, only the life created by God Himself is actual life, but the life that evolved on its own is not actually life, it lacks the substance of true life. Has nobody tried this argument against Darwin's work before?

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