Evidential holism

Abstract

AbstractEvidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation” (1993: 35). But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as: that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction; that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language of which it is a part; that all knowledge is empirical knowledge (there is no a priori knowledge). This paper is a survey of what evidential holism is, how plausible it is, and what consequences it has. Section 2 will distinguish a range of different holistic claims, Sections 3 and 4 explore how well motivated they are and how they relate to one another, and Section 5 returns to the arguments listed above and uses the distinctions from the previous sections to identify holism's role in each case.