> Why not describe things in terms of what they do instead of what they "are".
Would you say that about your spouse? The beauty of beholding one's wife is in who and what she is. What she does tells us something about who and what she is, to be sure, but any attempt to suppress the what (and the who) is dehumanizing and objectifying.
But, of course, what a thing does depends on what that thing is.
The reason I can say a human being can sort a list of numbers is because human beings have intention. When a human being sorts of list of numbers, they intend to sort the list. The intention is the cause and explanation for the actions taken the lead to a list of ordered numbers, as well as the resulting list of ordered numbers.
Does a computer sort numbers? In common speech, we say it does, just as we use all sorts of anthropomorphizing language when discussing computers. But at best, this is loose and analogical language. That's fine, as far as it goes, as long as we don't take it or mean it literally. However, the computer itself lacks intention. It is our intention that produces the computer, and our intention that makes the computer an instrument used by us to sort. Taken by itself, the computer is undergoing a transformation that effects something that we may interpreted as a list of sorted numbers, but the computer itself is not sorting. You wouldn't say that the clouds add x and y when x liters of water falls into a pool of y liters.
> The latter is highly subjective and open to abuse.
On the contrary, what a thing is is the most real and objective thing there is. An effect cannot be understood without knowing the cause, and the cause cannot be understood without knowing the agent. You can know some things about the effect, sure, and here the effect is that the text produced may be interpreted as intelligible. But the apparent intelligibility is borrowed from the source text, perhaps just a clever trick.