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This paper argues that popular criticisms of semantic holism (such as that it leaves the ideas of translation, disagreement and change of mind problematic) are more properly directed at an "instability assumption" which, while often associated with holism, can be separated from it. The versions of holism that follow from 'interpretational' account of meaning are not committed to the instability assumption and can thus avoid many of the problems traditionally associated with holism.

Semantic holism has it that the semantic properties of an individual expression are determined by that expression.

Holistic claims about evidence are a commonplace inthe philosophy of science; holistic claims aboutmeaning are a commonplace in the philosophy oflanguage. W. V. Quine has advocated both types ofholism, and argued for an intimate link between thetwo. Semantic holism may be inferred from theconjunction of confirmation holism andverificationism, he maintains. But in their recentbook Holism: a Shopper's Guide, Jerry Fodor andErnest Lepore (1992) claim that this inference isfallacious. In what follows, I defend Quine's argumentfor semantic holism from Fodor and Lepore'smulti-pronged attack.

Abstract In their book, Holism: A Shopper's Guide, Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore fail to distinguish between two kinds of holism. One of these is holism about meaning, which is indeed problematic. The other is holism about translation, which is not so clearly problematic. Moreover, the problem with the first sort is that it renders communication unintelligible, not that it rules out psychological laws. Further, Fodor and Lepore's criticisms of various contemporary holists are based on serious misreadings. In particular, Quine need not accept the conception of statements that they force on him, and Davidson and Dennett do not argue for the principle of charity in the ways Fodor and Lepore suppose. But Fodor and Lepore's question about the provenance of the principle of charity is a good one and deserves an answer.

Contents: Preface. Johannes BRANDL: Semantic Holism Is Here To Stay. Michael DEVITT: A Critique of the Case for Semantic Holism. Georges REY: The Unavailability of What We Mean: A Reply to Quine, Fodor and LePore. Joseph LEVINE: Intentional Chemistry. Louise ANTHONY: Conceptual Connection and the Observation/Theory Distinction. Gilbert HARMAN: Meaning Holism Defended. Kirk A. LUDWIG: Is Content Holism Incoherent? Anne BEZUIDENHOUT: The Impossibility of Punctate Mental Representations. Takashi YAGISAWA: The Cost of Meaning Solipsism. Alberto PERUZZI: Holism: The Polarized Spectrum. Jonathan BERG: Inferential Roles, Quine, and Mad Holism. Jerry FODOR & Ernest LEPORE: Replies.

The term ‘meaning holism’ (together with variants like ‘semantic holism’ and ‘linguistic holism’) has been used for a number of more or less closely interrelated ideas. According to one common view, meaning holism (MH) is the thesis that what a linguistic expression means depends on its relations to many or all other expressions within the same totality. Sometimes these relations are called ‘conceptual’ or ‘inferential’. A related idea is that what an expression means depends, mutually, on the meaning of the other expressions in the totality, or alternatively on some semantic property of this totality itself. The totality in question may be the language to which the expressions belong, or a theory formulation in that language. In this sense MH is contrasted e.g. with so-called atomistic theories, according to which each simple expression can have a meaning independently of all other expressions, or molecular theories according to which there are meaning dependencies but restricted to smaller parts and often unidirectional.

Perhaps you are wondering what I mean by ‘holism’. After all, everyone seems to use the term in a different sense. Even if we restrict ourselves to holism of meaning and content, we have many different holisms. Some take holism about meaning to be the doctrine that if you’ve got one meaning, you’ve got lots of them.2 On other views, to say meaning is holistic is to say that the meaning of each term depends on the meanings of all or most other terms.3 Others take meaning holism to be the doctrine that there is no real distinction between language and theory or between the “dictionary” and the “encyclopedia”.

This is my expository and critical review of Jerry Fodor's Psychosemantics. See also Callaway 1992, Meaning Holism and Semantic Realism.