Abstract

Many discussions of holism fail to see the scope ambiguity and the subject ambiguity involved in the doctrine. With the different scopes or sizes, there are both moderate and extreme versions of holism. With respect to the different subjects, meaning holism can be distinguished from holism about confirmation or disconfirmation, about belief-fixation or belief-content, or about interpretation or understanding. The principal aim of this study is to disentangle the distinct doctrines involved in holism and to characterize and assess meaning holism in the works of Quine and Davidson. ;The Duhem-Quine thesis is generally considered as the origin of holism. Following Duhem's thesis concerning scientific confirmation or disconfirmation, Quine put forth a stronger and wider claim that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body. The views held in common by Duhem and Quine have come to be called "confirmation holism". ;In addition to the epistemic thesis of confirmation holism, it will be shown that Quine holds the distinct semantic thesis of meaning holism. Quine's new nonreductivist perspective on the verification theory of meaning is a bridge from confirmation holism to meaning holism. Quine also argues for what he calls "moderate" meaning holism by proceeding through a naturalistic account of children's language learning and the thought experiment of radical translation. ;Davidson's disagreement with Quine's behavioristic approach toward semantic studies leads him to construct his own holistic theory of meaning--an "extreme holism" which employs a Tarski-style theory of truth as part of its fundamental structure. According to Davidson, if we can put appropriate formal and empirical constraints on the theory as a whole, a satisfactory theory of meaning will finally emerge as a result of applying the theory of truth in interpreting or understanding the utterances of others. ;Finally, a response is given to Fodor's criticisms of meaning holism. It will be explained that Fodor's worries about the disastrous consequences of meaning holism can be addressed; and it will also be shown that his arguments against meaning holism, especially when directed at Quine and Davidson, are unfounded.