 As stated above, indirect arguments try to bolster the case for meaning holism by undermining the case for its most obvious rivals. Molecularism about meaning may initially be the most appealing alternative to holism, and indeed, finding a principled way of trying to stop the “spreading effect” that seems to follow from taking inferences as relevant to meaning has long been one of the main objectives for molecularists about meaning (Devitt 1993, 1996; Dummett 1973). Molecularist theories typically try to keep the idea that meaning is tied to inferential role, but insist that only some of the inferences involved with a term constitute its meaning. However, drawing a clear line between the meaning-constitutive and non-meaning-constitutive inferences/beliefs seems to commit one to a version of the analytic/synthetic distinction that has been out of favor since Quine’s attack on it (Quine  1951),[7]  and it is a familiar criticism of molecularism that it is an unstable resting point between atomism and holism, so that once you give up the former, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find compelling reasons not to move all the way to the latter (Fodor and Lepore 1992, but see Devitt 1996).