Abstract

ABSTRACT: Paul Horwich writes in his recent book, Meaning : "the picture of meaning to be developed here is inspired by Wittgenstein's idea that the meaning of a word is constituted from its use—from the regularities governing our deployment of the sentences in which it appears." Horwich makes no claim to a faithful exegesis of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, but I argue in the present article that the conception of meaning he develops in his book is actually quite close to that of the author of the Investigations. I do this by comparing the views of the two philosophers. I also examine the question of holism, which, as it seems, is inseparable from the notion that use is constitutive of meaning.