Here is your plate of cereals.
That's a lid, not a plate.
Maybe it was made to be used as a lid, but it makes a perfect plate. So I am using it as a plate.
It may serve as a plate, but it is not a plate, because it was made to be a lid.
Maybe it was intended to be used as either a lid or a plate. How do you know it was made to be just a lid?
I don't. But the picture on the shipping box, showed it as a lid for a bowl.
Maybe, you were viewing the picture upside down, so that the bowl was the lid for the plate.
No, because there was a picture of a flower in a vase with the top of the flower on the side of the lid, not the bowl. The flower or water would not have stayed in the vase if the bowl were pictured on top of the lid.
Fair enough, but what does it even matter whether it was intended as a bowl or a plate? If I am using the object designed to be used as a lid as a plate, it is a plate to me as long a I intend to use it as a plate.
What is relevant is not your intentions, but rather those of its designer. If someone were using a an object designed to be a pencil as a swizel stick would you say that they were using a swizel stick as a swizel stick or a pencil as a swizel stick? The user's intent is to use the swizel stick as a swizel stick, but the designer's intent was that it be used as a pencil.
Well, you would not say that a "swizel stick is being used a swizel stick" because that statement has no content; however, you might say that the user has a very unusual swizel stick, implying that it has an existence as a swizel stick. Besides, an object designed as a pencil does not make a very good swizel stick because it could add a bad taste to your drink, but in the case of the object designed as a lid, it makes such a good plate that if you did not reason that it was intended to be used as a lid of a bowl, you might think that it was designed to be used as a plate.
So, I suppose that in most cases things are used for their intended purposes, so that their existence as objects designed for a purpose is the same as the existence as objects used for a particular purpose. In that case, there no distinction needs to be made between the two types of existence, but in these cases a distinction needs to be made for the conversation to make any sense.
Right!
