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Full Idea
In the foundationalist picture the meaning of individual words (defined ostensively) is primary, and that of sentences is derivative. For coherentists sentences come first, with meaning understood functionally or inferentially.
Gist of Idea
Foundationalists base meaning in words, coherentists base it in sentences
Source
Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10)
Book Ref
Williams,Michael: 'Problems of Knowledge' [OUP 2001], p.124
A Reaction
Coherentism about language doesn't imply coherentism about justification. On language I vote for foundationalism, because I am impressed by the phenomenon of compositionality.
| 1773 | A sentence always has signification, but a word by itself never does [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 13467 | Leibniz was the first modern to focus on sentence-sized units (where empiricists preferred word-size) [Leibniz, by Hart,WD] |
| 8646 | Words in isolation seem to have ideas as meanings, but words have meaning in propositions [Frege] |
| 7732 | Never ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition [Frege] |
| 8446 | We understand new propositions by constructing their sense from the words [Frege] |
| 18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
| 21700 | Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine] |
| 21701 | Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine] |
| 8170 | Sentences are the primary semantic units, because they can say something [Dummett] |
| 19131 | We recognise sentences at once as linguistic units; we then figure out their parts [Davidson] |
| 3588 | Foundationalists base meaning in words, coherentists base it in sentences [Williams,M] |