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> it's about recognizing that's things as such have agency, even if they are "inanimate" From the article: "A piece of shiny plastic on the street pulls your

> it's about recognizing that's things as such have agency, even if they are "inanimate" From the article: "A piece of shiny plastic on the street pulls your eye toward it, turning your body in a different direction—which might make you trip over your own foot and then smash your head on the concrete, in a series of events that’s the very last thing you planned or intended. Who has “acted” in such a scenario? You have, of course. Human beings have agency. But, in her telling, the piece of plastic acted, too. It made something happen to you." No, your reaction to seeing the shiny plastic on the ground is what happened to you. Your brain recognized it as something potentially interesting and/or valuable. The shiny piece of plastic did not somehow will you to pick it up, it cannot and does not have agency. (I can't believe we're having this conversation on HN. WTF is going on in the culture that makes animism suddenly attractive?) EDIT: Thought experiement: If you were blind or it was night time and you were walking by the shiny plastic you would not even notice it to pick it up.

mxkopy 4y ago
If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye", even as just a shortcut. Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying?
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye" Ok, but the intent does not reside in the plastic, the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. > Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying? The article seems to imply that these inanimate objects exert some kind of influence on us (and possibly on other inanimate objects?). If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? The philosopher in the article seems to be saying that they can draw her form a distance without her even seeing them.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    > the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. What if the creator is dead? The only place the intent can reside, then, is in the things they left. And the only thing I'm trying to say here is that 'intent' is a word with undefined semantics. Its only job is to be useful, not to actually point to a thing in the physical world. > If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? I'm not sure where in the article 'influence' was described in this way - as an aether, basically. It doesn't follow that if inanimate things have influence, we don't need to interact with them in order to feel it, or that if I were 300 light years away, I would still be able to feel the influence of a shiny plastic thing. What the writer is talking about isn't well defined, but it's not acausal either.
    - UncleOxidant 4y ago
      > What if the creator is dead? The only place the intent can reside, then, is in the things they left Then the intent died with the creator. The can opener doesn't have as it's intent the opening of cans. The designer of the can opener designed it with that intent in mind. The can opener has no mind. We can see the designers intent in the can opener, sure, but the can opener has no intention in itself to open cans and cannot do so without some human picking up the can opener and using it to open the can.
      - mxkopy 4y ago
        As you're kind of implying, both 'intent' and 'design' are ideas that sort of revolve around the 'mind', which makes this whole discussion prone to being metaphysics. If for example you think that the designer doesn't have a mind, then intent isn't something that people do but rather something that sort of happens to things. It could be the case that the designer made the can opener exclusively for right-handed people and doesn't even know about it. We can still say the can opener is intended only for right-handed people, but the origin of that intent is much more ephemeral- it's the intent of a predominantly right-handed society or whatever.
  - quinnjh 4y ago
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  The agency in your first example is the creator's, not the plastic's.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

mxkopy 4y ago

If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye", even as just a shortcut. Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying?

UncleOxidant 4y ago
> If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye" Ok, but the intent does not reside in the plastic, the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. > Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying? The article seems to imply that these inanimate objects exert some kind of influence on us (and possibly on other inanimate objects?). If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? The philosopher in the article seems to be saying that they can draw her form a distance without her even seeing them.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  > the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. What if the creator is dead? The only place the intent can reside, then, is in the things they left. And the only thing I'm trying to say here is that 'intent' is a word with undefined semantics. Its only job is to be useful, not to actually point to a thing in the physical world. > If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? I'm not sure where in the article 'influence' was described in this way - as an aether, basically. It doesn't follow that if inanimate things have influence, we don't need to interact with them in order to feel it, or that if I were 300 light years away, I would still be able to feel the influence of a shiny plastic thing. What the writer is talking about isn't well defined, but it's not acausal either.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    > What if the creator is dead? The only place the intent can reside, then, is in the things they left Then the intent died with the creator. The can opener doesn't have as it's intent the opening of cans. The designer of the can opener designed it with that intent in mind. The can opener has no mind. We can see the designers intent in the can opener, sure, but the can opener has no intention in itself to open cans and cannot do so without some human picking up the can opener and using it to open the can.
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      As you're kind of implying, both 'intent' and 'design' are ideas that sort of revolve around the 'mind', which makes this whole discussion prone to being metaphysics. If for example you think that the designer doesn't have a mind, then intent isn't something that people do but rather something that sort of happens to things. It could be the case that the designer made the can opener exclusively for right-handed people and doesn't even know about it. We can still say the can opener is intended only for right-handed people, but the origin of that intent is much more ephemeral- it's the intent of a predominantly right-handed society or whatever.
- quinnjh 4y ago
tsimionescu 4y ago
The agency in your first example is the creator's, not the plastic's.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]