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Single Idea 7320

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

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.

Gist of Idea

Holism cannot give a coherent account of scientific methodology

Source

report of Crispin Wright (Inventing Logical Necessity [1986]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.5

Book Ref

Miller,Alexander: 'Philosophy of Language' [UCL Press 1998], p.126

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).

Related Idea

Idea 2461 An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor]

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]