Mind, Vol. 106 . 422 . April 1997 © Oxford University Press 1997

A Note on the Nature of “Water”

BARBARA ABBOTT

1. Introduction

In his essay on the study of language Chomsky (1995) notes that sub-stances such as tea and Sprite, although they (are believed to) containroughly the same proportion of H

2

O molecules as tap water, are neverthe-less not called “water”. In so doing he wants to challenge the essentialistsemantics of Putnam (1975) and Kripke (1972), according to which refer-ence for words like “water” is determined by internal structure properties,and suggests instead that “special human interests and concerns” (p. 22)play a role in categorization in this case no less than in the case of artifactterms. Coincidentally, in a paper titled “Water is not H

2

O” Malt (1994)has argued along very similar lines. Both Chomsky and Malt echo con-cerns expressed by Wilson (1982, p. 578). However, while Wilson (1982)generally supported Putnam’s psychologically externalist semantics, andMalt remains neutral on this issue, Chomsky’s remarks are part of anextended plea for psychological internalism. In this paper I want to reas-sert the claim that water

is

H

2

O, and respond in a way that is consistentwith that fact to Chomsky’s observations. This requires explaining whysubstances which are largely H

2

O may be called something else (§3), andexplaining why what we call “water” does not have to be pure H

2

O (§4).But first I want to clarify the extent to which the conclusions of Putnam(1975) have been challenged.

2. Putnam

Putnam’s main and best known claim in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”(1975) was that typically unknown internal structure properties are neces-sary in fixing the reference of natural kind terms—atomic or molecularstructure in the case of words for substances, and genetic makeup in thecase of plant and animal species names. Putnam’s famous twin earththought experiments were designed to show that something with theexternal, readily observable properties of, say, a tiger or water, would nev-

312 Barbara Abbott

ertheless not

be

a tiger or water unless it had the right internal structure.This is true even when, as is usually the case, ordinary speakers of the lan-guage do not know what the internal structure properties actually are. Tooverturn this result one would have to show that internal structure proper-ties are not necessary in the determination of the extension of a naturalkind term—for example that there could be a substance that is consideredby people to be water even though it doesn’t have the right internal struc-ture. I want to make clear that this fundamental aspect of Putnam’s viewis not at issue here. Chomsky’s (and Malt’s) main attacks concern insteadthe sufficiency of internal structure to determine extension.

A note on the phrase “natural kind”: in an everyday totally compositionalsense it may refer to kinds that are found in nature as opposed to ones thatare manufactured by people. However this phrase (and correspondingly“natural kind term”) has acquired a special use following Putnam (1975)and Kripke (1972). In the latter use it does not apply to all kinds of thingsfound in nature, but rather to species of plants and animals, well-definedsubstances such as gold and molybdenum, and natural phenomena like heatand lightning. These are things whose names (natural kind terms) wereargued by Kripke to be nondescriptional. So although mud and bugs existin nature, they are not natural kinds in the technical sense, and the words“mud” and “bug” are not natural kind terms in this sense. When Malt isconsidering whether the meanings of natural kind terms are in fact moresimilar to those of artifact terms than is commonly assumed, she points toexamples like trees and vegetables (pp. 67f); but these also are not naturalkinds (and “tree” and “vegetable” are not natural kind terms) in the tech-nical sense that is relevant to issues of word meaning.

Chomsky casts aspersions on Putnam’s twin earth thought experiments(despite the fact that he has not challenged their main result), suggestingthat the intuitions are those of philosophers and not normal languageusers. However Keil (1989) reports results of the same type as Putnam’sthat were obtained with 10 year olds, whose ears are probably “not previ-ously contaminated by philosophical theory” (to use the words of Stich(1983), cited by Chomsky in this connection (1995, pp. 42–3)). Chomskyalso complains that normal speakers do not have intuitions about theoret-ical semantic relations like reference and extension (1995, p. 42), but toget Putnam’s results one does not need to use terms like “reference” or“extension” which, indeed, ordinary speakers may not be familiar with intheir technical uses. All one needs to ask is whether, for example, undersuch-and-such conditions such-and-such a substance would be water orsuch-and-such an animal would be a tiger. In this respect gatheringsemantic data is no different from gathering syntactic data, where nativespeakers who do not (consciously) know anything about Principle B of the

A Note on the Nature of “Water” 313

Binding Theory will nevertheless agree with Chomsky’s intuition thatsomebody who says “John expects to like him” is saying that John expectsto like some male person other than himself (cf. Chomsky, 1995, p. 36).

In addition to the well known twin earth result, Putnam put forward amore complete theory of word meaning. He suggested a multi-part “nor-mal form” for the description of word meaning which would include notonly a specification of the extension—in the case of “water”, “H

2

O (giveor take impurities)”—but also “semantic markers” (“natural kind; liquid”)and a “stereotype” (“colorless; transparent; tasteless; thirst-quenching;etc.”) (Putnam, 1975, p. 269). Putnam was clearly aware of the fact thatwhat we call “water” may (be believed to) contain impurities, which isone of the points that is stressed by Chomsky. His (and Malt’s) other mainobservation in this regard is that many substances, such as tea, clam juice,blood, and Windex, which are correctly believed to contain a high per-centage of water, are nevertheless not called “water”. None of these sub-stances have the stereotypical properties of water and hence to that extentthey would not fit the meaning of “water” under Putnam’s approach.

Some loose ends remain here however: Putnam’s stereotypical featuresare given ad hoc and it is not clear what official role they are to play inmeaning. Putnam’s theory is less radical than Kripke’s view, according towhich “water” and other natural kind terms are nondescriptional. Thatmeans that they do not have a meaning in the traditional Fregean sense.Kripke did not include any features, stereotypical or otherwise, in hisaccount of the semantics of natural kind terms. (Although internal struc-ture properties determine the reference of natural kind terms, they are notpart of meaning in Kripke’s view—there was no change in meaning feltwhen these properties were discovered by scientists.) In fact Kripke’sapproach will be supported over Putnam’s in what follows.

3. Why tea is not called “water”

Why don’t we use the term “water” for substances like tea, Windex, andSprite, which people believe to consist partly or almost entirely of water?Both Chomsky and Malt suggest that it is because of the existence of otherfeatures which are involved in the concept of “water”—features such assource, location, and function, which reflect “special human interests andconcerns” (Chomsky 1995, p. 22). One immediate problem with claimingthat such features actually belong to the concept of water is that differenttypes of water differ on these features. Water can come out of faucets, fallout of the sky, or be bought at the store. It can be located in bottles, orpipes, or just be lying around on the surface of the earth in various quan-

314 Barbara Abbott

tities. As for function, or the role of water in the lives of humans, it is dif-ficult to think of any substance which has more different kinds of function.And the other side of this coin is not surprising either. Consider Evian orPerrier. These kinds of water, like beer or Sprite, come from a bottlingplant, are kept in the refrigerator, and are used only for drinking. (Ordi-narily, that is—of course you could wash your hair in them if you wantedto, but you could also wash your hair in beer or lemon juice.) Thus theyhave the same kind of source, location, and role in our lives, as substanceswhich are not called “water” and hence these features cannot explain whybeer or Sprite are not called “water” while Evian and Perrier are.

In contrast to the functional features, Putnam’s stereotypical features ofcolorlessness, transparency, and tastelessness do a good job in these cases.Thus unlike beer or Sprite or lemon juice, or tea, or Windex, Perrier andEvian look and taste like water. It is interesting to note why these featureswork better than the type of considerations proposed by Malt and Chom-sky: it is apparently because they are a better clue to internal structureproperties. Small as the proportion of additives or other substances in beeror radiator coolant are believed to be, it is their presence that seems inthese cases to be crucially responsible for what these things are called andthey are what give the substance its distinctive taste and appearance. Wewill return to this fact below.

Other intuitions support the conclusion that functional and locationalproperties do not seem in general to do a good job of predicting what iscalled “water” and what is called by another name. Were a magician tochange the water in the Mississippi to Sprite or wine we would no longercall it “water” despite its location and its use for floating barges. Blood isthe same stuff whether it is in someone’s veins, in a plastic bag at theblood bank, or lying in a puddle in the street. We could even have an oceanof calamine lotion. These intuitions go contrary to those of Chomsky, whoholds that if a giant tea bag were installed at the water processing plant,so that what came out of people’s faucets was indistinguishable from tea,it would nevertheless be called “water” (Chomsky, 1995, pp. 22–3). HereI believe Chomsky is in the minority—possibly he has missed all thosegrade B horror movies in which blood pours out of a shower head.

We have considered substances such as Sprite, celery juice, and Windexwhich consist to a greater or lesser extent of water but which contain dis-tinguishing additives. Of course these are not natural kinds, and the termsfor them are descriptional.

1

For these kinds of terms, then, we might

1

It has been convincingly argued that artifact terms are to be distinguishedfrom natural kind terms in this respect. See e.g. Goosens (1977) and Schwartz(1978), as well as Abbott (1989) and the references cited there. These argumentsrespond to the contrary view expressed in Putnam (1975) and Wilson (1982) onthis issue.

A Note on the Nature of “Water” 315

expect features involving human interests and concerns to figure in theirsemantics. It is interesting that in these cases apparently it is the nature ofthe substance instead that is crucial. Of course that is possible since theinternal structure of e.g. Windex did not have to be scientifically discov-ered but was known from the start. And perhaps it should not be surprisingthat the internal structure of substance artifacts is crucial to their function,and hence possibly part of their nominal essence, since as substances theydo not maintain distinct shapes.

As the perceived proportion of water in a substance increases, we gofrom substances which we would judge to consist partly or mostly ofwater to substances whose internal structure is completely that of water,but which have other types of properties by which they are classified. Teaand coffee come very close to being in this situation. Paul Bloom has sug-gested to me that it may be the case that tears are in fact, or are believedto be, of exactly the same chemical constitution as the Pacific Ocean.Another example, which would work better in English if there were a spe-cial word for it, is holy water. Does this mean that I must take back myclaim of nondescriptionality for “water”? If the same substance is called“tears” when it comes out of someone’s eyes, but “water” when it is in amassive quantity lapping up against the coast of California, doesn’t thatmean that the property of source

is

forming part of the concept of “water”and the meaning of the word “water”?

No. And here’s why. The difference is not that one substance (e.g. thestuff coming out of your eyes) is not water and the other stuff is water.They are both water.

2

The difference is only that one is

called

“water” andthe other is not. And that only goes to show that we need to distinguishwhat something is from what it may be called on particular occasions. Butit is clear that we needed to do this anyway. After all, all and only physicalobjects are physical objects, but rarely do we actually call any of themthat. Some of these physical objects are animals, and some of those ani-mals are people, and we often call them “people”. Some of these peoplemay on occasion appear to hotly deny that they are animals or physicalobjects, but of course they would be meaning that they are not

merely

that.Some of these people are students, and some of those students are vege-tarians, and so forth. What you call something depends not only on whatit is, what categories it falls into, but also on why you want to refer to it,what your purposes of the moment are. So we usually ask for a cup of tearather than asking for a cup of hot water containing an infusion of tea orother herbal matter, because the former turn of phrase is easier for most

2

Chomsky remarks, concerning a cup of tea, that “we do not have water at all(except in the sense that milk is mostly water, or a person for that matter)” (1995,p. 22). Apparently he is invoking an ambiguity in the word “water”, and my replyto that is in §4 below.

316 Barbara Abbott

contexts and purposes. (For a number of examples of unusual languageuse of the latter type, see the movie

The Coneheads

.)Let me summarize our conclusions so far. First, it is clear from water’s

variety of sources, locations, and functions in our lives that features con-cerning these aspects do not form part of the meaning of the word “water”,nor do they play a role in determining its denotation. Second, substancessuch as celery juice, Sprite, and beer are partly or mostly water

in virtueof being

partly or mostly H

2

O. Incidentally, it must be stressed that todeny that water is (coextensive with) H

2

O would be to deny this basic fact,a punishment which should be severe enough to deter anybody. Third,some other substances such as tears or holy water may consist virtuallycompletely of water (give or take impurities—see §4 below), and tea andcoffee may be on the edges of this category. Hence we must attend to thedifference between what something is and what it is called. Fourth, sub-stances which are not called “water” are called by other names becausethey belong to particular categories in virtue of other properties they mayhave. These other categories are not natural kinds (in the relevant philo-sophical sense), and the names for them are not natural kind terms. Hencein principle features of any type may form a part of their meaning. Wemight expect features related to human interests and concerns to be cru-cial, so it is interesting that in the majority of these cases internal structureproperties appear to play a distinguishing role. However in the case ofsubstances such as tears and holy water, which have or are believed tohave the same internal structure as ordinary water, other features are cru-cial, including possibly features of source or function. Gricean consider-ations can readily explain why in typical situations “holy water” or “tears”are better expressions to use than “water”.

4. Vagueness: why water can contain impurities

If water really is H

2

O, why do we not reserve use of the term “water” foronly those quantities which contain H

2

O molecules and nothing else? Onepossible conclusion is that “water” is ambiguous, with one sense meaningpure water and the other meaning impure water. Chomsky (1995, p. 22)speaks in terms of different senses of “water” (as did Putnam (1975, pp.239ff)). But this is unsatisfactory. Methodologically speaking, postulationof ambiguity is weak. Furthermore our intuitions say “water” is notambiguous in this way, and grammatical evidence agrees. For one thing,there is apparently no language which regularly distinguishes pure fromimpure water with two different words. Secondly, VP proforms do not dis-

A Note on the Nature of “Water” 317

tinguish two senses for “water”, as opposed to the clearly ambiguous“bat”. Compare (1) and (2).

(1) Mary drank some water (it was pure) and so did Sue (yucky pol-luted stuff!).

(2) ? Mary bought a bat (to practice line drives) and so did Sue (toeat the mosquitoes in her garden).

Similarly (3) can easily apply to a situation where what the chemist dis-carded was pure water, but what was found in the puddle was polluted.

(3) The water that the chemist discarded was later found in a puddlein the street.

The burden of proof for those who would still want to claim ambiguity isprobably too heavy for anyone to bear.

The fact that we apply “water” to substances containing other things ispart of a very general and natural type of vagueness in our use of linguisticexpressions, and one which therefore need not and should not be incorpo-rated separately into our account of the meaning of each word and phrase.For example, when someone asks to borrow our car we are not requiredto remove from the glove compartment the maps, box of Kleenex, regis-tration, etc.—i.e. everything that is not part of the car strictly speaking.Nor when we ask for a plate do we insist that the plate be sterilized, orwhen we ask to see someone do we assume that they will take their clothesoff. It is true that Portia was able to get Shylock on this type of technical-ity, but had the legal advisor been anyone else, Antonio probably wouldhave been a goner.

Unger (1975) has argued that nothing is really flat, because everythingis less flat than some other real or imaginable thing. Lewis (1979) repliesthat part of any context is an implicit standard for precision in the use ofterms, and for a particular claim to be true in a given situation it is onlyrequired that the local standard of precision be met. When we imaginesomething flatter than the pavement or the desk which we have previouslyjudged to be flat, we are implicitly shifting standards. Similarly I amclaiming that the use of the term “water” for substances containing impu-rities is a case of ordinary vagueness, and that the appearance of ambigu-ity or different uses of the term “water” depending on the amount ofimpurities in question is actually a reflection of different implicit stan-dards of precision. By the same token “water” may not be felt to beentirely synonymous with “H

2

O” because of the higher standard of preci-sion regularly invoked by the latter.

318 Barbara Abbott

5. Conclusion

I have reasserted the not-so-bold claim that water is in fact H

2

O, despitethe fact that the word “water” may be applied to substances containingother than H

2

O molecules. I have argued that features of source, location,and function do not form a part of the meaning of the word “water”. Suchfeatures may form a part of the meanings of terms that refer to substanceswhich consist either partly or wholly of water, but since these are not nat-ural kinds that should not be surprising. Thus the conclusion that themeanings of natural kind terms are similar to those of other words is notsupported, and neither is the strict internalist view of Chomsky (1995).

3

Department of Linguistics and Germanic,

BARBARA ABBOTT

Slavic, Asian and African LanguagesDepartment of Philosophy Michigan State UniversityA-614 Wells HallEast Lansing, MI 48824-1027USAabbottb@pilot.msu.edu

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3

An earlier version of this paper was read at the annual meeting of the Lin-guistic Society of America, January 1996, in San Diego, California and I wouldlike to thank that audience for their comments. I would also like to express mygratitude to Paul Bloom, Noam Chomsky, Gene Cline, Rich Hall, Larry Hauser,Larry Horn, Barbara Malt, Stan Mortel, Carol Slater, and an anonymous readerfor their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, but without necessarily imply-ing their agreement with the finished product.

A Note on the Nature of “Water” 319

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320 Barbara Abbott