Comment by woodruffw
10 months ago
I have definitely broken chairs upon sitting in them, which someone else could have sat in just fine. So it's unclear why something particular to me would change the chair-ness of an object.
Similarly, I've sat in some very uncomfortable chairs. In fact, I'd say the average chair is not a particularly comfortable one.
For a micro-moment before giving in it was a chair, then it broke. Now its no longer a chair. Its a broken chair.
That's not one, but two particularities that aren't latent to the chair itself: me (the sitter), and time.
Do you really have a personal ontology that requires you to ask the tense and person acting on a thing to know what that thing is? I suspect you don't; most people don't, because it would imply that the chair wouldn't be a chair if nobody sat on it.
A stump isn't a chair until someone decides to sit on it, at that point it becomes chair _to_ that person. Chair is only capable of acting as "chair" object if constraints are met in regards to sitter.
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What if it breaks in a way which renders it no longer a chair for you but not others?
This seems to imply that what is or is not a chair is a subjective or conditional.
A broken chair is by definition a chair. You just said it!