Quoting jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM:
> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > Um, on that logic, just about any everyday concrete noun is a good
> > counterexample - a hand, afterall, is just one out of a very strictly
> limited
> > set of configurations of mostly water and some organic compounds.
>
> Well, no. A hand is not defined by the material it's made from
This could be true ...
> -- cells are
> dying and being replaced, and within each cell, atoms exchange and
> recirculate
> constantly: you have essentially no atoms in common, except iron, with
> yourself
> two years ago.
... but this is not relevant thereto. Exchanging the building blocks for new
ones of the same sort in (essentially) the same places changes neither the
material or macroscopic configuration.
If we stick to hands in the basic sense - not quasi-metaphorical usages as the
hands of a statue or doll - how would one define one if not in terms of
configuration?
> But a fist is a particular state of a hand, not a
> chose-en-soi
> in any meaningful sense; we do not have a noun meaning "curled-up toes",
> for example.
What's _chose-en-soi_? And we've not got nouns for most possible configurations
of organic material either, for the pragmatic reason we rarely have a need to
talk to them.
Andreas