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Maybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but I don't believe inanimate entities can experience "difficulty" or "misfortune". Would you say that a rock

Maybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but I don't believe inanimate entities can experience "difficulty" or "misfortune". Would you say that a rock suffers "misfortune" if it topples off a cliff into the sea? Is it "difficult" for a glacier to maintain its integrity in the face of global warming? Is my car unfortunate to have been scratched in a parking lot? (OK, I do believe that last one, but I'm anthropomorphising my car to talk about my own human misfortune)

hervature 6y ago
Definitely philosophical. If we can use statements like “a business had a bad quarter” and “a business had a good quarter” and understand that these mean that the financial statements were negative/positive. It isn’t a stretch to say something like “a business has had 10 straight bad quarters” is a plight considering a business can cease to exist.
FFRefresh 6y ago
Is a group of people an inanimate entity to you? Are there only certain types of groups of people that you think are an animate entity?
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  If you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So yes, it is an inanimate entity. When we say things like "that Lions football team suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy -- referring to the suffering of the members of the team but speaking metaphorically about "the team".
  - FFRefresh 6y ago
    We'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a group of people somehow makes the organization not human. For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat", even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making enterprise.
    - 8note 6y ago
      I'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the corporation itself. The group of people are the labourers being exploited, and they're separate from the group of owners that the corporation represents.

hervature 6y ago

Definitely philosophical. If we can use statements like “a business had a bad quarter” and “a business had a good quarter” and understand that these mean that the financial statements were negative/positive. It isn’t a stretch to say something like “a business has had 10 straight bad quarters” is a plight considering a business can cease to exist.

FFRefresh 6y ago

Is a group of people an inanimate entity to you? Are there only certain types of groups of people that you think are an animate entity?

ForHackernews 6y ago
If you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So yes, it is an inanimate entity. When we say things like "that Lions football team suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy -- referring to the suffering of the members of the team but speaking metaphorically about "the team".
- FFRefresh 6y ago
  We'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a group of people somehow makes the organization not human. For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat", even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making enterprise.
  - 8note 6y ago
    I'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the corporation itself. The group of people are the labourers being exploited, and they're separate from the group of owners that the corporation represents.