Holisme Modéré? Paradoxe holiste et énoncés d’observation

Semantic holism makes incomprehensible how communication is possible, since it implies that, in order to understand someone, one should know his/her whole language – and, with that, the totality of his/her beliefs (Dummett). Quine’s strategy to escape this paradox hinges on the allegedly autonomous meaning of observational sentences, which should allow one to interpret a speaker’s utterances step by step. Holism becomes thereby moderate, for it tolerates a class of sentences out of its own so farreaching network. However, this strategy is not coherent with the very doctrine it is intended to defend. Holism is recalcitrant to any attempt to moderate it: in fact, the holistic interconnection of sentences has an undesired rear-impact even on observational sentences. So, semantic holism seems not to find the hoped way out of Dummett’s objection.