Re: the Maligned Art

> If I create a tool that looks like, is capable of acting like, has all the
> properties of, a hammer, can one say that it is NOT a hammer until someone
> actually uses it as such?
If "hammer" is a description of the form of an object, then it is a hammer
regardless of whether it has ever been used.  I you define a "hammer" as
"an object with the form of a hammer which has been used to hammer" then
of course hammer-ness is an acquired property.  To me, however, this latter
seems extremely artificial and would in fact be an illegal semantic definition
in my own conlang; instead you would, using the verb "to hammer", indicate
that the thing in question, during at least one past span of time, has been
used as a hammer: HAMMER'yaret.  To me a language is a language, a conceptual
structure, regardless of its speakership, whether past, present, or future.

A hammer is a hammer, regardless of what it is hamming, whether it is hamming,
whether will ham or has ever hammed before :-)

Josh Shinavier