Remark 2: Thus, against Parsons, one may well want to deny that the (sum or join of the) wood is identical to the (sum or join of the) furniture. Indeed, if the furniture is broken, it ceases to exist, while the wood does not. This line of argumentation is adopted more generally by those who deny the identity of a ship and the wood it is made of, of a man and its molecules, etc. (cf. Wasserman 2012). Parsons’ argument is based on a controversial metaphysical assumption, one that a semantics of mass nouns need not  make.[5] (See Steen 2012, section 2.2 and supplement 1, for other metaphysical considerations concerning the purely mereological approach.)