draft june 2002-please don't quote Wittgenstein, Locality and Rules

Abstract. This paper attempts to give some substance to local holism, a picture that seems to fit Wittgenstein’s analysis of the working of language. Any form of holism has to solve the well-known paradox of semantic holism, as discussed in philosophy of language: if meaning is holistic there is no possibility of sharing meaning. In the paper I show different answers to this paradox, from atomism to different forms of molecularism and holism. In this quick overview, I try to check to what extent the different answers to the paradox are coherent with the main ideas of later//the second/ / Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein seems to be far from the global holistic thinker he is often considered to be; his ideas are more akin to a form of local holism. However, for local holism to work, even in Wittgenstein's case we need some general restrictions given by rules to navigate across contexts. 1. What Quine and Davidson took from Wittgenstein and the paradox of holism. The work of Wittgenstein is apparently characterized by a strong attitude towards a holistic view of language. Even in Tractatus logico-philosophicus- considered a program for logical atomism- we find reference to Frege's context principle: names have meaning only in the context of a sentence (TLP 3.3). Wittgenstein’s subsequent work seems to be a progressive generalization of the context principle. The Fregean principle is quoted as such at the beginning of Philosophical Investigatio