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Single Idea 2335

[filed under theme 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism ]

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.

Gist of Idea

Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation

Source

Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09)

Book Ref

Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.9

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.

The 16 ideas with the same theme [meaning always involves an entire language]:

9180 Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett]
4142 To understand a sentence means to understand a language [Wittgenstein]
1619 There is an attempt to give a verificationist account of meaning, without the error of reducing everything to sensations [Dennett on Quine]
2334 Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam]
2335 Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam]
2336 Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam]
2560 Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty]
6394 The pattern of sentences held true gives sentences their meaning [Davidson]
2477 If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor]
2433 For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor]
2761 If the meanings of sentences depend on other sentences, how did we learn language? [Dancy,J]
3000 Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor]
7320 Holism cannot give a coherent account of scientific methodology [Wright,C, by Miller,A]
3205 Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey]
9381 If some inferences are needed to fix meaning, but we don't know which, they are all relevant [Fodor/Lepore, by Boghossian]
4606 To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil]