stoly
I disagree with the idea that the internet is worse than it used to be. Back in the day, you went into a forum and people were MEAN for no particular reason. People do that now over politics more than anything. Before, that’s just how people were.
It sounds like you have a mathematics or science background. I’m actually a linguist with multiple degrees and who studied internationally at the postgraduate level. I’m speaking from the perspective of a linguist and referring to the semantic aspects of word usage. Count versus mass / countable versus uncountable is a very fundamental aspect of human language and in any pragmatic usage is very inflexible. When moving into specialist language use, pragmatics fall away and that precise usage can enter the space. My original comment is on the pragmatic use.
I think I may have realized in this thread that linguistic intuition is something that is sometimes counterintuitive to the average person in the way metaphysics can be, and perhaps challenging to acquire in a way that I have forgotten. You were probably the third person to make the same point and I may have been annoyed at having to defend something that is basic and recognized by anyone who studies language in pretty much any capacity.
Cheers
Ok this will be my last attempt.
You state that you can count the grains of sand on a beach. I disagree. You can count the grains of sand that you pick up and put into another vessel. Until you do that, the sand also remains an amorphous fluid. Same with water. You can count the water molecules in your glass, but you cannot count the water in the ocean. Scientists can make some really great estimations of how much water there is, but it will never be precise. It should also be noted that nobody anywhere ever outside of a scientific setting would ever speak in that sort of precision, yet you want all human language to operate that way.
Your argument is that if you can count an amount that would fit in your hand, you can count them all. This isn’t how things work, though, because there is no method by which every grain of sand on the beach or every molecule of water in the lake can be counted. You’re looking for deductive truth when induction is the only thing available.
Your issue isn’t with me, it’s with human language. I will leave you with these:
If you still disagree, you should try to convince them instead of me.
Can you explain to me how you would do that outside of a laboratory setting? The real answer is that it’s an amorphous fluid. It is a single object rather than discrete quanta.
What’s happening is that you’re trying to identify the exception and make it the rule. Yes, you can figure out how many moles of water are in a volume at a certain temperature and pressure. That’s not really the point, is it? When people pour glasses of water, they aren’t thinking in terms of moles. The word is noncountable because it was invented by humans far before any sort of chemistry was discovered. That usage can change, sure, but do you really think that the average person will ever see it that way?
Alternatively, are you thinking in terms of measuring volume? That’s definable, but it’s also not what is meant here.
Exciting! As a computer lab manager, September is always when the fun newness comes out.
you used a HOMONYM because words can have different uses. “water” meaning an amorphous fluid of dihydrogen monoxide vs “water” meaning discrete bodies of water. You can count bodies of water but you cannot count how much water is in your glass. If you want to use water as a countable, that’s fine, but you would be using it in a way that most people don’t intend.