ABSTRACT
The emphasis of artificial intelligence on the design of data structures and of algorithms for transforming them has led to the development of rich concepts for thinking about issues of representation and meaning and its emphasis on operational models shows a way of making philosophical theories of language testable. A great deal would have to be added to the semantics of programming languages to get a non-translational theory of meaning. The strong holistic thesis can be taken to state that the meaning of a word is learned by learning all possible uses of the word in all sentences of the language. D. Davidson’s approach is a fascinating blend of a proposed application of Tarski’s theory of truth to natural languages, a commitment to the extensionalist view that meanings play no role in a theory of meaning, and a commitment to W. V. O. Quine’s “Hegelean” idea that meaning is basically a property of language as a whole.
