Is a key still a key if there's nothing to unlock?

even without a lock the key still has a purpose. it serves as a means to get people talking about this question. to unlock the lock was incidental. it's true purpose has been fulfilled

As Alan Watts used to say, "The word is not the thing". In other words, don't take language too seriously. (And what goes with that is: don't fail to take language seriously enough.)

Man takes things that nature provides and shapes them according to his purposes. The purposes come and go; they can last a very long time or a very short time. What a key "is" is part of a huge web of interactions between the human mind and the material world. But everything is temporary. Someone takes some metal and shapes it into a lock and a key. At some point, no one has any use for them any more. Does that change what they are? Well, one might say, not in a material sense. They were metal and they're still metal. But if something is no longer needed by anyone, that can had a big change on what it is. Metal that is not cared for can rust.

What it all comes down to is that everything is part of a field that is part mind and part matter, and everything in the field is, to some degree, fluid, changing. The universe is not, as our science conceives it, a machine. It is alive. It is aware. The mind of man is part of a much larger mind.

A key is as much a concept as it is a thing. If we take a key to be only the piece of metal that you hold in your hand, we're missing a huge part of it. The problem is that we don't really believe that mind is real. Our science says that only matter is real. But mind is as basic a reality as matter. And that means that what a key is is not just a piece of metal that has been shaped in some way that doesn't ultimately change what it is. What it is can't be separated from purpose. But that purpose is fluid; the language and concepts it gives birth to are fluid. So "key" is fluid. We tend to believe that things are the way they are, that the way things are now is the way they are supposed to be, and so a key is a key and that's that. But it's all relative, which is to say that it's part of the vast river of ever-changing relationships that is creation. The word is not the thing. And, it is an enormously important part of the what makes the thing what it is.

So we might say the answer to your question is, a key is less of a key than it was when it unlocked something. It isn't quite the key that it was, but it's obviously much more like a key than a chair is. Something can be more or less of a key because the material key doesn't exist as an isolated entity. "It" is continually changing. Very slowly in some ways, quickly in others. And always in relation to the evolution of the concept "key".

just because nothing in the world is without purpose doesn't mean it HAS to have a purpose...

so the key would still be a key, since nobody ever said every object has to have a purpose.

then again, let's say i have a key that i've had made for a particular lock, but i throw that lock into a volcano... ta-da, no more lock. now my key doesn't have anything to unlock, so therefore has no purpose. but i, being human, will find a NEW purpose for it and will thus name it something else.... so maybe i will make it part of a necklace and call it a pendant instead of a key.

good question.

It may no longer have a purpose, but it is still a key, as long as there is someone out there who knows what a key is.

Yes it is and will still be until someone create something that can serve as a purpose for the key :-)

A key is still a key if there is nothing to unlock for it is not labelled as a key because it unlocks things but because things are unlocked by it.........think about it

Of course it has a purpose. To unlock what it was made for. Once the other part is no longer the purpose ceases to exist, but it may serve other purposes, such as to ask questions about its existence or to save it and remember something that it once opened that gave you a passage to something you enjoyed. It can serve as a memory, a keepsake a good luck charm. I can go on.

yep. a key is an object and i dont feel like looking at it like it has some ultimate purpose of unlocking and without something to open the key itself is meaningless

no, because a key is something you use to unlock something, so it should be something that looks like a key. also, this would be a proper question and i would only be properly answering this question if your question was, Is something that looks like a key still a key if there's nothing to unlock?

If it is shaped like a Key - that is the reason you call it a Key - it can unlock a probable lock.

Its lock has not been created yet.

That probable lock is its match.

So it is still a key.

EnJoy