Holism, strawberries, and hair dryers

Topoi 21 (1-2):47-54 (2002)
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Abstract

The paper "Does Epistemological Holism lead to Meaning – Holism" (Cozzo, 2002) touches one of the main problems of a molecularist theory of meaning: how to restrict the class of inferences connected with a word, in order to define the sense of the word. I will discuss the starting point of this approach, mainly the pre-theoretical criterion against meaning holism: meaning holism, following a well-known argument by Dummett, reduces communication to a mystery. However there is a strong background assumption of this argument: communication is sharing the same meanings. Accepting this assumption without acknowledging it makes the entire proposal more problematic than it appears at first sight. In what follows I will try to clarify the possibility of a different reaction to meaning holism, putting forward some distinctions which come to light when the above stated assumption is made explicit. Then, some other comments will follow on the difficulty of avoiding extreme meaning holism, even within Cozzo's elegant attempt to implement a molecularist vision; in the end, his notion of the sense of a word will appear to be difficult to define, if these holistic aspects of language take the space they deserve even in his theory. I conclude with two remarks regarding two relevant requirements for a theory of meaning (conservativeness and harmony)

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Carlo Penco
Università degli Studi di Genova

Citations of this work

Introduction.Carla Bagnoli & Gabriele Usberti - 2002 - Topoi 21 (1-2):1-10.
Contexts in Philosophy: Pragmatic competence as filter.Carlo Penco - 2018 - Modeling and Using Context 2 (1):1-19.

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References found in this work

The logical basis of metaphysics.Michael Dummett - 1991 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Making it Explicit.Isaac Levi & Robert B. Brandom - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):145.
Two Dogmas in Retrospect.Willard van Orman Quine - 1991 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (3):265 - 274.
Circularity, Definition and Truth.André Chapuis & Anil Gupta (eds.) - 2000 - New Delhi: Sole distributor, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.

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