Mind Association

Water =H 2 O
Author(s): Barbara Abbott
Source: Mind, Vol. 108, No. 429 (Jan., 1999), pp. 145-148
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2659906
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Water=H20
BARBARA ABBOTT

Water= H20. It follows that something is H20 to the extent that it is water
and vice versa. Whether we call something "water" or not, however,
depends on more than just the percentage of water it consists of. A key
consideration is whether there is another name for it (whether it is also
something else), and that is determinedby the other propertiesof the thing
in question plus human interests and concerns which play no role in determining the extension of the term "water".
In view of the fact that many kinds of things, including babies, chickens, and tomatoes, contain a higher proportionof water than Utah's Great
Salt Lake, Joseph LaPorte asks: "when do impurities spoil the water-status of a sample containing H20, and when, on the other hand, are they to
be overlooked?" (LaPorte 1998, p. 451). In addition to setting up a false
opposition between being overlooked and spoiling the water-status,
LaPorte is using the term "impurity"in an odd way. The non-water parts
of a baby, a chicken or a tomato are not impurities but ratheressential elements which make each kind of thing different from lake water and from
the other kinds. On the other hand the Great Salt Lake just contains an
especially high proportionof the salt and other kinds of minerals that are
found in 97 percent of the world's water. These are impurities and do not
help to constitute a separatekind, otherthan the general fact that salt water
may be considered a separatekind from fresh water.
Nevertheless we learn that the baby itself, the tomato, the chicken, are
more purely water than the Great Salt Lake! Who would have thought it?
But it is true! Contraryto appearances,their other parts do not make it the
case that they are less water than the Great Salt Lake, do not "spoil their
water-status".
Pragmatic reasons why we do not call babies, tomatoes and chickens
"water"arenot farto seek. One obvious one is thatmost people do not know
that these things have such a high water content. But even if that were common knowledge we would still need to use different terms for these different things because it almost always makes a difference to our purposes.
When I ask for some water there is a good likelihood that a bucketful from
the Great Salt Lake will meet my needs better than a tomato-if I want to
douse a small fire, say, though not if I want to water the begonias. And when
we are interested in babies then chances are very great that chickens or
Mind, Vol. 108 . 429 . January 1999

(DOxford University Press 1999

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146 BarbaraAbbot
tomatoes definitely will not do instead, much less a bucket of water. Even
in a salad someone might care stronglyto have lettuce and not spinach. That
is why we have differentnames for these things in the firstplace. Of course
human interests and concerns figure strongly in these naming practices.
If it were true that any given object could only belong to one kind, then
something which was a baby or a tomato could not also be water, and the
extension of "water"would be hedged all aroundby human interests and
concerns. The antecedent of this conditional is false, as Clucky the Leghorn (who is also a chicken, a pet, a bird, an animal) attests. However our
tendency to refer to things using basic level terms ("chicken", in the case
of Clucky) may lend an appearanceof truthto the antecedent and thus an
appearanceof soundness to an argumentfor such a conclusion.
LaPorte offers a different reason for asserting those conclusions-his
intuitions. It "seems incredible"to him that an infant falls in the extension
of water (p. 453), so he thinks that it is false ratherthan true but strange to
describe a baby as "water".But a ratherlarge literaturestands testimony to
the fact that intuitions concerning what is semantic as opposed to what is
pragmaticarenot reliable. (See e.g. Horn(1996) andthe works cited there.)
Let us consider anyway the claim that "factorssuch as function, natural
source, and observable behaviour play a role" in determining the extension of "water"(p. 454). LaPorte does not specify in any more detail what
the factors are or what role they play. (Chomsky (1995) and Malt (1994)
were also vague on the specifics of this approach.) The idea seems to be
that water is H20 which is in a stereotypical location or serving a stereotypical function-say in a lake or an ocean, or being drunkout of a glass.
But now LaPorte's comment that earthworms,jellyfish, and chickens are
"composed mainly of water"(LaPorte 1998, p. 453) would be false, since
the H20 comprising these animals is not in a stereotypical location or
serving a stereotypical function. This is not a good outcome.
The only escape that is mentioned by Chomsky, Malt, or LaPorte is to
retreat to the position that "water"is ambiguous, meaning pure H20 on
one interpretation,and impure H20 which is in a stereotypical location
or serving a stereotypical function, on the other. But no independent
evidence has been given in favour of this claim, nor have replies been
offered to the argumentsgiven against it' (see Abbott 1997, pp. 316-7).
'Jessica Brown says "Abbot [sic] (1997) discusses the issue of whether 'water'
literally applies to both pureand impuresamples and concludes that 'water'literally
applies only to pure water"(Brown 1998, p. 282, fn. 9). I was startledby this statement. The word "literally"does not appear in my paper and in ?4 I paraphrased
Lewis's (1979) reply to Unger (1975) with what I thought was evident approval.
I said "for a particularclaim to be true in a given situation it is only required that
the local standardof precision be met" (Abbott 1997, p. 317). In ordinaryconversation "water"applies as literally to what is in the Nile as "my car"does to my car
(including all the junk that's in it).

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Water= H20 147

With respect to the phrases "thatcrying water in the crib", "clucking ...
water in the coop", and "the growing water", LaPorte remarks:
On the view that it is just H20 content that determines the reference of "water",the above expressions succeed in referringto the
baby, the chicken, and the tomatoes,just as straightforwardly as
"water from that lake" succeeds in referring to lake water.
(LaPorte 1998, p. 453, emphasis added.)
Not so, since there is another factor here. Wholes are more than the sum
of their parts, and what we can predicate of a whole may be different from
what we can predicate of its parts. My telephone is 80 percent plastic. It
is ringing. Is the plastic ringing? To the extent that the answer to this question is "No", to that extent is it not straightforwardthat we can predicate
crying, clucking, and growing of the water which largely constitutes a
baby, a chicken, and a tomato, respectively. By the same token we cannot
predicate roundness of the water in Round Lake.
LaPorte says: "To expect pragmatic considerations to smooth over the
oddity of the above references is expecting too much" (LaPorte 1998, p.
454). I have cited an additional fact (propertieslike clucking and growing
may be predicable of wholes but not the substances which constitute
them) but I also think he underestimatesthe strengthof pragmatic considerations. In addition to the nonobviousness of their high water content, the
fact that babies, chickens and tomatoes belong to separate and distinct
kinds which we use in different ways and have different names for is a
powerful factor. There is a comparable oddity in suggesting that someone
"shut that wood" (referring to a 90 percent wooden door), or "put the
books on that steel" (referring to a 100 percent steel bookshelf). Is
LaPorte preparedto deny that the door is in the extension of "wood", or
the bookshelf in the extension of "steel"?In that case there might be nothing left in the extension of "steel" at all.
Let me summarize our possibilities. On the one hand we can claim that
water = H20. (Our main problem then will be explaining to friends with a
straight face what the purpose of our paper is.) We can note that most of
the things we call "water"are not pure water, but that in that respect water
is like almost everything else we come into contact with in everyday life.
We also learn that many things that do not seem like water at all, things
like babies and chickens, actually contain a higher proportion of water
(and thus are more purely water) than things we do call "water".Nevertheless we can explain why, even if it were common knowledge that these
things are largely water, we would not call them "water"and why it would
sound very odd indeed to call them "water".Each of these things has other
propertieswhich make it a distinct kind, and the differences between these
kinds are importantto us and thus importantto mark terminologically. In

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148 Barbara Abbot

this respect "water"is not different from other substance terms like "plastic", "wood", and "steel".
On the other hand we have two alternatives (neither of which has been
spelled out in detail). One would deny that water = H20 and assert instead
that water is by definition a substance in a lake or ocean or being drunkor
... ? But then we would also have to deny the obvious truththat tomatoes
andjellyfish and blood contain a very high proportionof water. The other
alternative makes the unsupportedand problematic claim that "water"is
ambiguous. Neither of these alternatives seems very appealing.2
Department of Linguistics and
BARBARA ABBOTT
Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages
Department of Philosophy
Michigan State University
A-614 Wells Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
USA
abbottb@pilot.msu.edu
REFERENCES
Abbott, Barbara1997: "A Note on the Nature of 'Water"'.Mind, 106, pp.
311-9.
Brown, Jessica 1998: "Natural Kind Terms and Recognitional Capacities". Mind, 107, pp. 275-303.
Chomsky, Noam 1995: "Language and Nature".Mind, 104, pp. 1-61.
Horn, Laurence R. 1996: "Presupposition and Implicature", in Shalom
The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 299-319.
LaPorte, Joseph 1998: "Living Water".Mind, 107, pp. 450-5.
Lewis, David 1979: "Scorekeeping in a Language Game". Journal of
Philosophical Logic, 8, pp. 339-59.
Malt, Barbara 1994: "WaterIs NotH 20". Cognitive Psychology, 27, pp.
41-70.
Unger, Peter 1976: Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

2I am very grateful to Aldo Antonelli, Gene Cline, Rich Hall, Larry Hauser,
Larry Horn, Myles McNally, and Carol Slater for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this paper.

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