Sentence-based Semantics

Abstract

In modern Analytic Philosophy, semantic holism grew out of dissatisfaction with verificationist accounts of meaning of the logical positivists, and it is associated above all with W.V.O. Quine. But early steps toward semantic holism have been taken by the verificationists themselves, and even earlier by the founders of the Analytic tradition, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. In this chapter, we shall discuss these early moves toward holism, including the key semantical views of Frege, Russell, and Carnap, with special attention to the way their positions became reformulated in Quine’s work.