Putnam said that the composition of water (H20) is different from the
composition of twater (XYZ) (Vide his "Water and Twater: why philosophers have
a say on scientific revolutions").
Putnam is challenging Thales of Miletus, who famously claimed, "All is water."
As Putnam qualifies this, "Stictly, all is water -- and twater". Putnam is
known as a doppelgaenger philosopher, always thinking of counterfactual
'thought experiments', "while Thales only cared for his little Earth. I never
forget Twin Earth in my pieces of philosophical reasoning."
We are reacting to Geary's praise of the liquid sounds (consonants, if you
must) of the Latin language, which he calls God's lingo -- "granting that Jesus
spoke in another one". This begs the question of the mother tongue and the
father tongue. Jesus's father was God, yet they spoke different languages; for
Geary claims that God spoke Latin while Jesus spoke another language. There are
other cases that can be cited that also display this phenomenon (Sir Anthony
Hopkins's father spoke Welsh, for example). Mary, Jesus's mother, spoke the
same language as Jesus did. Not Latin. When Pontius Pilatus (as the Latins
called him) spoke to Jesus, he spoke in Latin. His implicatures ("I'll wash my
hands") were carried by Latin utterances. God understood them, and Jesus too,
interpreter around or not.
Geary's idea is that God's lingo was Latin, "because it's so full of liquid
consonants". However, it was Dionysius Thrax, a Grecian (or Griceian, if you
must) who first used 'hygros' ("moist") to apply to the second consonant in a
cluster /l, r, m, n/. As he expresses it, "They have a slippery effect on your
tongue, as if you are sipping mercury -- the only liquid metal. That's why I
propose to call these consonants 'moist'."
Liquidity is a complex phenomenon. Usually a proposition is said to be analytic
a priori if it passes the test of the counterfactual:
i. Water is liquid.
ii. If water were NOT liquid, it would not be water.
McEvoy does not welcome definitions like:
iii. Water =df H20 in its liquid state -- as opposed to 'ice' (H20 in its
frozen state) and 'gas' (H20 in its steamy state).
McEvoy's implicature seems to be that Thrax should have considered these two
other states other than liquidity when applying 'liquid' metaphorically ("Is
his implicature that other consonants are frozen, and still other steamy? Don't
think so!").
McEvoy expands on this -- I may paraphrase slightly:
"My view is that the status of "Water is liquid" cannot be read off from the
propositional form etc. but depends on the methods we use to defend the
proposition."
This sounds dangerously like Schlick: the meaning of a proposition is its
method of verification; mutatis mutandis, 'method of verification' --
'challengeability'.
McEvoy goes on:
"We can use analytic forms of defence, and so render it analytic, or we can use
'synthetic' forms of defence. We can also shift between these depending on
'context', the problem at hand etc. - it may be quite in order to stipulate
that water is H20 in liquid form, and never ice,"
I'm never sure whose order that is? I suppose I can call it Grice's order.
Usually we say:
iv. Grice ordered me to implicate it.
However, if we perform an act of linguistic botany, as Grice call it, we may
utter, as McEvoy does:
v. It is in order that p.
Or, for imperative moves:
vi. It is in order to make it the case that p.
(a different neustic, same phrastic, to use R. M. Hare's terminology). Note
that McEvoy's phrasing is a guarded one: "it may be _quite_ in order"
implicating "it may not be in order at all" or "it may be in order" but not
"quite" so. "Quite" is one Britishism (as we may call it) and defies
truth-conditional semantics. Cfr.
vii. Snow is white.
viii. Snow is quite white.
It may be argued that if snow is quite white, snow is white. The reverse
however may not hold for a Brit: snow is quite white; it does not, of course,
follow, that my intention is to implicate that snow is white simpliciter."
Grice was fascinated by the conversational implicatures of 'quite'. "They
usually tend to be opposite to the implicatures of 'rather'". To use his
example:
ix. Snow is rather white.
Or:
x. Snow is white, rather.
which he compares to
x. Snow is white, quite.
But I disgress, or rather Grice does.
McEvoy continues that there is an order (by Grice we assume)
"when instructing someone what they must do when asked to serve 'water' at a
drinks function - it may also be quite in order for Bob Dylan to sing "I've got
ice water in my veins""
This latter seems to be a figure of speech, since we assume that literally
Zimmerman has blood in his veins. If taken literally, Zimmerman is flouting
Grice's maxim, "Try to make your conversational contribution one that is true".
If Zimmerman means "very cold water" (besides blood, we assume, or he would not
be able to sing the utterance) we have to distinguish between 'iced water' and
'ice water'. 'Ice water' is what linguists call a NN construction (noun noun):
as in 'opera queen'. The more correct 'iced cream', or 'iced water' may not
have scanned for Zimmerman. Plus, had he had iced cream, the addressee of his
song may be left wondering what flavor that iced cream was.
McEvoy:
"(and beside the point to object, by way of some stipulation, that "ice water"
is oxymoronic - in fact, in terms of Dylan's use, it is not oxymoronic)."
But plain false, and metaphorical. He is trying to be original. Instead of the
common knowledge utterance:
xi. I've got blood in my veins.
He turns the verse into a metaphor:
xii. I've got ice in my veins.
He adds 'water' for good measure. Note that if he has 'ice water' in his veins,
it is also true that
xiii. I've got water in my veins.
Granted, blood, like water, but not ice, is liquid -- and Geary might argue
that if a consonant is liquid, what Thrax (or Priscian, who translated him) was
having in mind was not water, but 'blood'. Blood, in fact, solidifies faster
than water, as science shows. While in the veins, blood remains liquid. Once
outside the vein, it dries.
The same phenomenon applies to water. Usually, 'dried water' seems oxymoronic,
since the phenomenon is one of 'evaporation'. Why the distinction? Blood
(seeing that Zimmerman mentions the natural kind) is composed of water --
indeed, 80% of Zimmerman is composed of water, as Thales of Miletus once proved
-- "Everything is more or less water". But it is also composed of OTHER things:
globules, etc. So, when we say:
ix. That's a spot of dried blood.
we implicate that the 'water' component of the blood sample has evaporated, and
the effect is that the globules look 'solid' now. Zimmerman cannot be
implicating that he has solid in his vain (since ice is solid). Which brings us
to
x. melted ice.
Melted ice is long for water. Zimmerman could well have sung, "I've got melted
ice in my veins" (Hence his use of 'water', implicating liquidation). He does
NOT notably say, "I've got ice in my veins", which would mean that circulation
(a phenomenon invented, or discovered, by a British scientist that Popper
admired) would not be possible, since solids don't circulate (Geary once told
me: "That's false: cars circulate, and they are for the most part solid). But
Grice disgresses.
McEvoy:
"In general terms, we can often shift harmlessly between using 'water' to
denote specifically a 'liquid' and using 'water' to denote H20 in either its
solid, liquid or even gaseous state. This is where 'ordinary language
philosophers' can start to show how little they understand ordinary language:
in ordinary language, a chemistry teacher would breach no 'rule' if they
referred to steam cooling into liquid in a flask by saying "You will see the
water turn from its gaseous form to liquid as it cools in the flask" - and only
the gombeen or 'ordinary language philosopher' would think of objecting "But it
isn't water until it turns into its liquid form, until then it's steam."
It is true that chemistry is NOT Oxford's forte. They have only three W
philosophy chairs: the Waynflete chair of metaphysical philosophy (there was
once one of physical or natural philosophy, which was found otiose -- "Nobody
seems to want to sit on it," the King once said -- the British monarch is
officially the chancellor of Oxford), the Wykeham chair of logic and the White
chair of moral philosophy. There is no W chair of chemistry. On top, we should
distinguish between a chemist and a chemistry teacher, who has to deal with
what Geary calls 'chemistry students'. To repeat McEvoy's dialogue (He follows
Grice's advice of providing conversational contexts where the implicatures are
more obvious):
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: You will see, Wilson, that the water turns from its gaseous
form to liquid as it cools in the flask.
WILSON: Cool.
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Cools, yes.
WILSON: No, I mean, that's cool, prof! But your use is loose, ain't it, sir?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: What are you trying to implicate, Wilson?
WILSON: I mean, if it is now in a gaseous form, it isn't strictly 'water', is
it? Not until the complex H20 turns into a liquid form. Until then, it's mere
'steam'. Right, prof?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Wilson, your wisdom never ceases to amaze me.
WILSON: We were taught different types of definition in the logic class, and
the prof said that a stipulative definition is the basis of science.
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Did he mention anything about mercury?
WILSON: You mean the messenger of the gods? We talked about him when reading
the Aeneis, but that was in the Latin class.
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Not Mercury, Wilson: mercury, the only liquid metal.
WILSON: What about mercury?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Did you know that mercury can attain a gaseous state, too?
WILSON: You don't have air conditioning in your house? I suppose that would
require very high temperatures, prof!
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Indeed. I use the micro-wave oven. When mercury becomes
gaseous we still call it mercury.
WILSON: Who is we?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Me and my wife.
WILSON: Shouldn't it be 'My wife and I'?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: You are changing the subject, Wilson. Mercury has a freezing
point of −38.83 °C and a boiling point of 356.73 °C, both, as you'll agree,
exceptionally low for a metal. In addition, mercury's boiling point of 629.88 K
(356.73 °C) is the lowest of any metal, if you didn't know that (as I assume
you didn't -- otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this). A complete explanation
of this delves deep into the realm of quantum physics, which would go over your
little head, Wilson, but it can be easily summarised for you as follows:
mercury has a unique electron configuration where electrons fill up all the
available 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 3d, 4s, 4p, 4d, 4f, 5s, 5p, 5d, and 6s subshells.
WILSON: Subshells?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: Yes, little cells, Wilson. Because this configuration
strongly resists removal of an electron, mercury behaves similarly to noble
gases, which form weak bonds and hence melt at low temperatures.
WILSON: But surely it is NOT a noble gas. Only the monarch has one of those,
right, prof?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER (ignoring Wilson's rude remark): Upon freezing, the volume of
mercury decreases by 3.59% and its density changes from 13.69 g/cm3 when LIQUID
to 14.184 g/cm3 when SOLID.
WILSON: And does it change the name in the interim?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER: In popular parlance it does. And there was a French chemist
who used different names. But if you check the periodical table of elements,
you'll see, Wilson, that the same symbol is used: Hg. The coefficient of volume
expansion is 181.59 x 10−6 at 0 °C, 181.71 x 10−6 at 20 °C and 182.50 x 10−6 at
100 °C (per °C). The stability of the 6s shell is due to the presence of a
filled 4f shell. An f shell poorly screens the nuclear charge that increases
the attractive Coulomb interaction of the 6s shell and the nucleus (see
lanthanide contraction).
WILSON: Is this Coulomb related to the inventer of America?
CHEMISTRY TEACHER (ignoring, again, WIlson): The absence of a filled inner f
shell is the reason for the somewhat higher melting temperature of cadmium and
zinc, although both these metals still melt easily and, in addition, have
unusually low boiling points.
WILSON: That's why H20 is not in the periodical table, prof, which seems to
prove my point. Comparing mercury to water is like apples and pears!
Cheers,
Speranza
