Not to disagree, but the question of what a thing is independent of the meaning we attach to it is worth thinking about. There was this interesting passage in

Not to disagree, but the question of what a thing is independent of the meaning we attach to it is worth thinking about. There was this interesting passage in this book about the art world, "The $12m Stuffed Shark"-- which I recommend btw-- that went sort of like this: A famous conceptual artist died. People going through his apartment found things in his closet that were maybe lost works, maybe junk he collected. It's funny to think about but the difference of interpretation amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of the things you learn from that book is that if a famous art collector pays a lot of money for something found in that closet it will continue to be valuable and maybe end up in museum. If they don't, it's trash and never meant to be a work of art.