Nicole Fitzgerald

Comment Sheet #4

Heraclitus and the Bath Water

I found the Cartwright piece to be quite excellently written; the nod

towards the suspicious nature of the word “same” in reference to
particular instances of “water” and “sugar” is slickly put on page 476:

“… or by consideration of the fact that the water Mary wiped up

might have been spilled. A puddle of water is not the sort of
thing that can be spilled; and what can be spilled – say, a glass
of water – is not the sort of thing that can be wiped up”

Which, in my opinion, totally wraps up any debate that might have

existed concerning a coherent discourse of mass nouns in terms of
their divisors of reference. Further, she manages to neatly deal with
“sameness” in a context devoid of these divisors (which themselves
had been leaned on heavily to discuss instances of mass nouns in our
past readings). The particular passage I have in mind is found on page
481, where Cartwright re-instigates discussion of the three formulae:

a) x is some water, and Heraclitus bathed in x yesterday,

b) y is some water, and Heraclitus bathed in y today,
c) x=y
d) The water Heraclitus bathed in yesterday = the water
Heraclitus bathed in today.

Where it is not the case that e requires that

e) There is exactly one x such that x is some water and

Heraclitus bathed in x yesterday.

But instead requires

f) There is exactly one x such that x is all of the water

Heraclitus bathed in yesterday, and exactly one y such that y
is all of the water Heraclitus bathed in today and x = y.

Cartwright’s conclusion here is that the only appropriate substituends

for a), b), and c) together are those substituends which render d)
equivalent to f). Which is, as noted above, quite neat! From a logical
standpoint, Cartwright has wrought a pristine definition for sameness
amongst mass nouns.
My qualm with Cartwright – and forgive me if this is missing the mark
– is that I’m inclined to ask, “so what?” Making no mistake, the logical
argument she has construed is certainly an airtight move in the right
direction, (i.e. the water Heraclitus bathed in yesterday = the water
Heraclitus bathed in today if and only if there is exactly one x such
that there is exactly one x such that x is all of the water Heraclitus
bathed in yesterday and exactly one y such that y is all of the water
Heraclitus bathed in today and x = y such that x is no less nor no
more than y), but it seems to me that Cartwright’s effort does little to
illuminate how exactly we might quantify the allness of waters x and y
(by H20 molecule?). That is, we have a well-formed logical schema to
evaluate sameness and identity of mass nouns, but it seems that the
bridge necessary to allow this schema some applicative use is one that
remains to be crossed. If we were able to stumble across a missing
piece that might allow us to apply Cartwright’s schema to tangible
quantities of water or sugar, we might be able to finally put the
trouble surrounding mass nouns to rest.