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made in terms of the categories of our best science, and it is these categories
that settle whether or not some stuff is water. If best science vindicates the
 folk typing in sufficiently many cases (whatever precisely that comes to),
X is water if and only if it belongs to the right category, or one of the right
categories, as discerned by best science; if it does not, there is no such stuff as
water. Either way, it is our best science, not the folk marker or identification
intuition, that settles the issue at the end of the day. Rhetorically, this sounds
like an objection, but it is, in fact, a version of the reference fixing view. To say
that x is water if and only if (a) the folk typing matches enough the best-sci-
ence typing and (b) x is in the best-science class for water is the very same as
saying that the reference fixing is on the best-science kinds that sufficiently
often are waterish if such there be.13
Now  finally  I can say why we have to be vague about what it is that is a
priori; why we say that something like (b) or (b*) is a priori. Putting names to
things, except in some highly circumscribed cases in mathematics or where
explicit semantic decisions are called for, is a highly context-dependent, vague,
accommodating-oneself to one s fellow speakers and writers, and leaving issues
unresolved in the expectation that the need for resolution will never arise
matter. Neat formulae are not to be expected. But, as we saw above, this does
not matter for the target argument. What matters is that the empirical facts
as stated in terms of H2O are enough to ensure that our world contains stuff
that counts  semantically counts  as water.
Notes
1 There are two theses to distinguish.
(a) There is a true (huge) statement frameable in physical terms that a priori
entails every true statement about what our world is like.
(b) For every true statement about what our world is like, there is a (sometimes
huge) true statement frameable in physical terms that a priori entails it.
96 Frank Jackson
The significant differences between these will not concern us here. I will also
fudge the difference between S a priori entails T, and S s being such that one can
move a priori from S to T.
2 As the title suggests, the paper addresses a series of surrounding issues, but a
good part of it is devoted to attacking my argument. The most significant issue I
will not be discussing is their Twin Earth objection to a priori deducibility (except
by way of passing reference in a note below).
3 For some spelling out, see Jackson (1998). This spelling out is largely motivated
by the challenge of Crane and Mellor (1990).
4 Chalmers (1996). He is an ally in the sense of supporting a priori passage; he
disagrees with my current self though not a former self over what to infer from a
priori passage concerning the truth of physicalism.
5 Russell (1972: 93 4).
6 Because it is in general a posteriori that the F exists, strictly there should be a
 modulo the existence of the F added here, but, in the present context, there is
no need to include this qualification as the empirical premise a priori entails the
existence of the relevant unique F.
7 The claim is not that were you told of some possibly non-actual world w* that
(a) 60 per cent of the earth is covered by H2O
and
(c) H2O is the stuff that plays the water role
are both true at w*, you could infer without further ado
(d) 60 per cent of the earth is covered by water
is true at w*.
You could not. You would need to know that H2O is the stuff that plays the
water role in our world, and that is an additional piece of information. The
difference is similar to that between  P, therefore actually P being a priori valid
and  P is true at w*, therefore  actually P is true at w* not being a priori valid.
I note the point because if I understand Block and Stalnaker s criticism of Joe
Levine s (1993) views about the a priori deducibility of boiling from enough
physical information, they conflate the issue of the a priori validity of the style of
argument in the text with that in this note.
8 Some prefer to use  watery and  heatish for the role minus the acquaintance;
accordingly, they say that what is a priori is that water (heat) is the watery
(heatish) stuff of our acquaintance.
9 The precise sense in which it might have turned out that water is like jade is the
same sense in which it might have turned out that water is XYZ, the sense in
which this is epistemically possible. What this precise sense is is controversial
in view of the fact that water could not have been XYZ! But there had better
be some sense, or else there is no sense in which it is a posteriori that water
is not XYZ. We holders of the view that the phenomenon of the necessary a
posteriori is a linguistic one have our own way of finding the path through this
little minefield (see, for example, Jackson 1998: 84 6), but it would beg too many
questions to presuppose our path in a reply to objections that take off from a very
different perspective on the phenomenon.
10 For two very explicit discussions, see Jackson (1994; 1998: 26). Chalmers (1996)
is equally clear on the point.
From H2O to water 97
11 See, for example, Armstrong (1968) and Lewis (1970).
12 What follows for the case of water appears to be what Block and Stalnaker are
saying for the example of life. My discussion here (and elsewhere) is indebted
to discussions with David Braddon-Mitchell. I take the term  identification
intuition from Devitt (1996: 73). In his view, the relevant intuitions sometimes
are those of the folk but sometimes are those of one or another body of experts.
13 Which is, of course, the usual version when we want to include ice and steam as
water.
References
Armstrong, D. M. (1968) A Materialist Theory of the Mind, London: Routledge.
Block, N. and Stalnaker, R. (1999)  Conceptual analysis, dualism and the explanatory
gap , The Philosophical Review 108: 1 46.
Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind, New York: Oxford University Press.
Crane, T. and Mellor, D. H. (1990)  There is no question of physicalism , Mind 99:
185 206.
Devitt, M. (1996) Coming to Our Senses, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, F. (1992)  Critical notice of Susan Hurley, Natural Reasons , Australasian Journal
of Philosophy 70: 475 87.
  (1994)  Armchair metaphysics , in J. O Leary Hawthorne and M. Michael (eds)
Philosophy in Mind, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kripke, S. (1980) Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Levine, J. (1993)  On leaving out what it is like , in M. Davies and G. Humphreys (eds)
Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lewis, D. (1970)  How to define theoretical terms , Journal of Philosophy 67: 427 46. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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