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237798

Confirmation holism and semantic holism

Mack Harrell

pp. 63-101

Abstract

Fodor and Lepore, in their recent book Holism, maintain that if an inference from semantic anatomism to semantic holism is allowed, certain fairly deleterious consequences follow. In Section 1 Fodor and Lepore's terminology is construed and amended where necessary with the result that the aforementioned deleterious consequences are neither so apparent nor straightforward as they had suggested. In Section 2 their “Argument A” is considered in some detail. In Section 3 their “argument attributed to Quine” is examined at length and a shorter and more perspicacious argument suggested which avoids their charge that the Quinean argument is guilty of an equivocation on the word ‘statement’.

Publication details

Published in:

(1996) Synthese 109 (1).

Pages: 63-101

DOI: 10.1007/BF00413823

Full citation:

Harrell Mack (1996) „Confirmation holism and semantic holism“. Synthese 109 (1), 63–101.