| 9180 | Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege thought of a language as a game played with fixed rules, there being all the difference in the world between a move in the game and an alteration of the rules; but, if holism is correct, every move in the game changes the rules. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege's Distinction of Sense and Reference p.248 | |
| A reaction: Rules do shift over time, so there must be some mechanism for that - the rules can't sit in sacrosanct isolation. People play games with the language itself, as well as using it to play other games. |
| 4142 | To understand a sentence means to understand a language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: To understand a sentence means to understand a language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations [1952], §198) | |
| A reaction: Does this make learning a language logically impossible? Helen Keller only knew one word at the beginning. |
| 1619 | There is an attempt to give a verificationist account of meaning, without the error of reducing everything to sensations [Dennett on Quine] |
| Full Idea: This essay offered a verificationist account of language without the logical positivist error of supposing that verification could be reduced to a mere sequence of sense-experiences. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Daniel C. Dennett - works | |
| A reaction: This is because of Quine's holistic view of theory, so that sentences are not tested individually, where sense-data might be needed as support, but as whole teams which need to be simple, coherent etc. |
| 2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of Quine called "meaning holism" offered arguments refuting logical positivist attempts to show that every term we can understand can be defined using a limited group of "observation terms". | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.08) | |
| A reaction: To seems a rather large jump from saying that sentences come in groups to full-blown 'holism' (involving every sentence). |
| 2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: If I say "Hawks fly", I do not intend my hearer to deduce that a hawk with a broken wing will fly. What we expect depends on the whole network of belief. Language describes experience as a network, not sentence by sentence. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09) | |
| A reaction: The shortcut through this is 'exactly what did you mean when you said "Hawks fly"?'. That is, get me closer to your proposition. |
| 2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Holism immediately suggests that most terms cannot be defined, at least not in a way that is fixed once and for all. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps there exists a single perfect definition for each holistic system, only graspable by a transcendent intellect. Or why can't there be a matching holistic system of definitions? |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: For cooler heads there must be some middle view between "meanings remain and beliefs change" and "meanings change whenever beliefs do". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: The second one seems blatanty false. How could we otherwise explain a change in belief? But obviously some changes in belief (e.g. about electrons) produce a change in meaning. |
| 6394 | The pattern of sentences held true gives sentences their meaning [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Although most utterances are not concerned with truth, it is the pattern of sentences held true that gives sentences their meaning. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.14) | |
| A reaction: Davidson's distinctive version of meaning holism, as opposed to Quine's rather behaviouristic version. I agree that we relate to people through the pattern of sentences they hold true, but I am unconvinced that this 'gives sentences their meaning'. |
| 2477 | If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If learning that fish typically live in streams is part of learning "fish", typical utterances of "pet fish" (living in bowls) are counterexamples. This argument iterates (e.g "big pet fish"). So learning where they live can't be part of learning "fish". | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: Using 'typical' twice is rather misleading here. Town folk can learn 'fish' as typically living in bowls. There is no one way to learn a word meaning. |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
| 2761 | If the meanings of sentences depend on other sentences, how did we learn language? [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: It is clearly possible to learn a language from scratch, because we have all done it, but if holism is true and the meaning of each sentence depends on the meanings of others, how did we do it? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: The question of 'how did it ever get started?' actually seems to block almost every explanation of everything that ever happens. How do I begin to move my hand? |
| 3000 | Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Meaning holism really is a crazy doctrine. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 60) | |
| A reaction: Yes. What is not crazy is a contextualist account of utterances, and a recognition of the contextual and relational ingredient in the meanings of most of our sentences. |
| 7320 | Holism cannot give a coherent account of scientific methodology [Wright,C, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Crispin Wright has argued that Quine's holism is implausible because it is actually incoherent: he claims that Quine's holism cannot provide us with a coherent account of scientific methodology. | |
| From: report of Crispin Wright (Inventing Logical Necessity [1986]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.5 | |
| A reaction: This sounds promising, given my intuitive aversion to linguistic holism, and almost everything to do with Quine. Scientific methodology is not isolated, but spreads into our ordinary (experimental) interactions with the world (e.g. Idea 2461). |
| 3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Semantic holism is a desperate measure. Belief content would be continually changed by new beliefs, evidence for a belief would change the target belief, and no two people would ever agree on concepts. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It is far more plausible to say language is a bit on the holistic side. Total holism is mad. |
| 9381 | If some inferences are needed to fix meaning, but we don't know which, they are all relevant [Fodor/Lepore, by Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The Master Argument for linguistic holism is: Some of an expression's inferences are relevant to fixing its meaning; there is no way to distinguish the inferences that are constitutive (from Quine); so all inferences are relevant to fixing meaning. | |
| From: report of J Fodor / E Lepore (Holism: a Shopper's Guide [1993], §III) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered | |
| A reaction: This would only be if you thought that the pattern of inferences is what fixes the meanings, but how can you derive inferences before you have meanings? The underlying language of thought generates the inferences? Meanings are involved! |
| 4606 | To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is something puzzling about the notion that someone could understand the sentences "birds warble" and "tigers growl", yet have no idea what the sentence "tigers warble" meant. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: True enough, but this need not imply the full thesis of linguistic holism. Words are assembled like bricks. I know tigers might warble, but stones don't. Might fish warble? Or volcanoes? I must know that 'birds warble' is not a tautology. |