A Study Of Jerry Fodor's Criticisms Of Meaning Holism

The theory of meaning is one of the core subjects in philosophy of logic,language and mind.With the development of the theory of meaning,the understanding of the structure and characteristics of meaning are more and more clarified.Among these studies the debate about meaning holism is an important field emerged in this process.After a prolonged debate,there are both positive and negative views involving each component in the argument structure of meaning holism.On the one hand,this reflects the complexity of the theory of meaning itself.On the other hand,it also shows that the argument or refutation of the theory of meaning involves almost all the important problems of the theory of meaning.Jerry Fodor's theory of meaning has the distinctive position of "anti-holism".His criticisms of meaning holism has important status and widespread influence in contemporary theory of meaning.However,the research on Fodor's theory of meaning and his criticisms of meaning holism is relatively insufficient in the academic circles in China.In this paper,based on the analysis and elaboration of Fodor's representationalist theory of meaning,I examine the development of meaning holism by Fodor's argument against it.From the structure of Fodor's criticisms of meaning holism,I interpret the core concepts of this structure respectively.Accepting the reasonability in Fodor's theory,and combining with logical actionism methodology,meaning holism can be defended if it is not confined to Fodor's theory of meaning of "thought first".To a certain extent,the difficulties in Fodor's theory can also be solved.The research of this paper is listed as follow:Firstly,I survey the historical changes in understanding meaning holism from philosophy of science,philosophy of language to philosophy of mind.On the one hand,in the analysis of Fodor's commentary on meaning holism,it shows that anti-holism has relation with the past,especially with W.V.O.Quine.On the other hand,it shows how Fodor can oppose to meaning holism with respect of the different viewpoint.On the basis of metaphysics of realism,Fodor object to the relativism brought about by meaning holism.More importantly,for Fodor,under the background of philosophy of mind and the constraint of his understanding of meaning holism,it is impossible to have an intentional generalization,as a result the scientific psychology becomes impossible.Meanwhile,Fodor thinks that there is no sufficient reason for the emergence of the theory of meaning in philosophy of science,language and mind without a reasonable meaning attribution.Secondly,by analyzing Fodor's interpretation of related concept of meaning holism,and generalizing the mode of argument of meaning holism,it is pointed out that rejecting analyticity,inferential role and the principle of compositionality constitute the support of meaning holism together.Unlike traditional understanding,Fodor does not accept the conclusion of holism with rejecting analyticity.On the one hand,like Quine,Fodor thinks that there isn't a satisfied explication of analyticity because of the unexplainable synonymy.On the other hand,unlike Quine,Fodor commits to the reality of meaning and thinks there are constitutive inferences as "grey cow is cow".At the same time,the bottom top principle of compositionality is the basic principle to explain the semantic property of expression.And this principle is essentially non-inferential,such that meaning holism doesn't follow.This structure shows that Fodor has different view point of meaning from a holist,focusing on meaning from the level of language to the level of mind.Thirdly,on the basis of intentional realism,this paper analyzes the philosophical and methodological foundation of the theory of meaning from the language of thought hypothesis.It points out that Fodor's theory of meaning is the theory of content based on the ontology of language of thought with the representational theory of mind.Fodor argues that what is needed to grasp meaning is a sound semantic theory that illustrates how the meaning of words and sentences is specified.This theory should not only have the function of psychological explanation to the behavior,but also has the function of reference.In Fodor's view,the epistemical cycle inherent in the understanding of the meaning of natural language will not be able to provide such a theory.The way of explicate content attribution from belief attribution like interpretist is entirely a reverse order.Therefore,it's the only way to construct the theory from language of thought with mental property of meaning.As a result of the language-like features of language of thought,the interpretation of the nature of the content of proposition and concept become the central of this theory.In this understanding,the meaning of natural language is the product of cognition.For Fodor,it will inevitably bring about the consequences of holism because of the cognitive entanglement.But there still are embarrasses in Fodor's theory on account of the problems about the nature of language of thought and how to coordinate between the relational property and the non-relational property of content.Next,it must be acknowledged that Fodor's distinguishing between the linguistic and thought analysis of meaning,and coordinating semantic internalism with externalism are reasonable.Then it is pointed that the function of Fodor's language of thought is over-simply with the strong representationalism.This is a symbolic system only with the function of representation.Because of its internality,such a system can't really have the function of learning and communication under the condition of publicity.Separating meaning of language from meaning of thought,Fodor's symbol of representation is purely syntactic or has contextual relations with the world.But then,Fodor will have to accept a holistic constraint,that is,the constraint of "linguistic community" of interpretationism or that of H.Putnam.Meaning is the property showed up in speech action and mental action.Finally,affirming the significance of Fodor's distinction between meaning of thought and meaning of language,as well as applying logical actionism methodology,this paper tries to defend a moderate version of meaning holism by constructing a sophisticated actionism methodology.Based on the three-domain division of language-thought-object,we use the construction of speech action,mental action and objective action to connect these three.Thus we recognize the co-existence of the meaning of language and the meaning of thought.Therefore it shows a mutual support between language expressing thought and thought representing object by actions.In this structure,if symbols have no public meaning of language and content of thought,natural language can't express thought and language of thought can't represent world.Meaning of language and meaning of thought have to be acquired through actions.Since there is no prioritization between the three realms of language,thought and object,nor between three actions,logical actionism methodology can thus dispense with Fodor's pursuit of a single primitive meaning.We can grasp meaning wite the three actions of language,cognitive and practice by relativizing the problem of primitive.And in the condition of weakening the strong identity standard of meaning attribution,as well as the dual structure of meaning and logical actionist methodology,it is required the guarantee of holism.Our strategy should be a moderate meaning holism,instead of Fodor's alterative choice between strong holism and atomism.