  A first attempt to defend the view would be as follows. Bunt (1985) and others have proposed that, although modern science is in conflict with the claim that the mass noun water refers distributively, English speakers use the noun as if it did. The problem with this suggestion is that it cannot be falsified, since it puts aside the very cases that would do so. So it doesn’t seem to be an empirical hypothesis and it doesn’t appear to make any prediction. What benefit would there be to add this claim to any theory?