Full Idea
Holism blurs the supposed contrast beween the synthetic sentence, with its empirical content, and the analytic sentence, with its null content.
Gist of Idea
Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences
Source
Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.71)
Book Reference
Quine,Willard: 'Theories and Things' [Harvard 1981], p.71
A Reaction
This spells out nicely that Quine's rejection of the distinction is completely tied to his holistic view of language. The obvious phenomenon of compositionality (building sentence meaning in steps) counts against holism.
Related Idea
Idea 19049 In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine]