Moderate Holism and the Instability

1 MODERATE HOLISM AND THE INSTABILITY THESIS* Mental or semantic holism can be roughly characterized as the doctrine that the meanings of one’s sentence or the contents of one’s beliefs are a function of (are determined by) their relations to all of one’s other sentences and beliefs. Holistic theories of meaning and content are typically criticized for (among other things) leaving the ideas of translation, disagreement and change of mind problematic. However, such criticisms are more properly directed at an “instability thesis” which, while often taken to be a consequence of holism, can be separated from it. A ‘moderate’ holist need not be committed to the instability thesis, and can thus avoid many of the problems traditionally associated with holism. Holism has two alternatives: atomism (the doctrine that each of one’s beliefs or sentences gets its content independently of its relation to one’s other beliefs or sentences) and molecularism (the doctrine that each of one’s beliefs or sentences gets its content in virtue of its relation to a corresponding subset of one’s other beliefs or sentences). Atomistic and molecular theories face a number of well-known problems.1 Nevertheless, they are often favored over holistic theories because holism seems to demand that any differences in belief must result in differences in meaning or content. Among the most frequently cited reasons for not being a holist are the following two consequences of this purported demand.2 First, holism seems to make literal translation from one person’s language into another’s impossible. No two people have exactly the same beliefs, so by insisting that what one means by one’s terms is a function of all of one’s beliefs, holism suggests that no two people mean quite the same thing by any of their terms. If what one meant by, say, “elephant” were determined by all of