Plato: Philosophy of Language

We start from a passage in Plato's Cratylus, 393b7–c7. For reasons which will become clear in due course, I give Burnet's text , which differs from that of the more recent OCT edition on an important detail.

The Cratylus is Plato's principal discussion of language, and has generated immense interpretive controversy. This thesis offers a new interpretation of the Cratylus, starting from the idea that it is essentially a normative enquiry, to be interpreted alongside Plato's ethical and political works. Just as the Statesman attempts to determine the nature of the statesman, so too the basic project of the Cratylus is to discover what constitutes a true, correct name. But this aim is doomed in the case of (...) language: names turn out to be a kind of imitation, and as such incapable of real correctness. ;The Cratylus discusses two theories of 'the correctness of names': conventionalism and naturalism. First, Socrates refutes the conventionalist thesis that any name anyone sets down for an object is correct. This thesis is, I suggest, of interest as a reasonable way to support the commonsensical assumption that all actual names are correct--an assumption which would preclude Plato's normative project. Socrates then elaborates naturalism, with an outsize, vaguely playful etymological discussion which has baffled interpreters. I argue that the etymological section serves above all as an agonistic display, establishing the authority of the philosopher to determine the value of etymologising and to treat the subject of names as he deems fit. ;Etymology is succeeded by the mimetic account of names as imitations. This is followed by a 'reexamination' of naturalism in which Socrates apparently turns against it, concluding with a partial rehabilitation of convention. This conclusion is the other major interpretive stumbling-block of the Cratylus. Here I argue that no rejection of naturalism is implied. Rather, its status is shown to be limited by its own consequences--a paradox, but one which does amount to or entail conventionalism. This reading is developed further by reference to the similar position expressed in the Seventh Letter. ;An End-Note discusses the explanation of false statement presented in the Sophist: I argue against the common view that it uses syntactic ideas in a way which represents a significant departure from the Cratylus. (shrink)

In the Cratylus, Socrates seems to present the Logos essentially as an always already present yoke binding us to our world. However, this prior and necessary bond does not entail that the world is revealed perfectly and completely in the terms and structures of our human language. Rather, within this bond, the Logos opens up a distance between being and appearance, insofar as it points to »what is« as the withdrawn possibility condition for the appearances ordered, gathered and separated according (...) to names. Plato presents the essential ambivalence of logos not only in Socrates' elenctic arguments, but also in the etymology of Hermes, where the possession of language is a cryptic message indicating to humans a divine wisdom. Thus, as essentially the recipient of such a message, as having been called toward being by the gods, the proper, indeed pious, human response is dialectical question and answer, Socratic searching and investigating together. (shrink)

In the Sophist Plato introduces a very peculiar character, the eleatic stranger who plays both for Theaetetus and for us the role of a perfect sophist. His terrific power simply comes of his refusal to understand the examples. He just requires his interlocutors that absolutely all what is to be understood by them must be explicitly said. And “all” means really all: even the most evident for everybody, all what is not necessary to say and perhaps is not possible either. (...) The eleatic visitor, in order to hunt the sophist whose role himself is playing, trays to say all indeed, even the most difficult: the meaning of words as being, not-being, same, other or similarity. In this way, the language shows oneself as a play of likeness and unlikeness. (shrink)

Modern philosophic study of names and naming focuses on issues of how it is that denotation and reference are achieved. Questions as to whether names can be correct or appropriate to their referents, are thought to fall outside the domain of philosophic inquiry; thus, the assessment of, for example, the sound symbolism suggested by the phonemes of a name, is thought to belong to non-philosophic disciplines such as onomastics and literary criticism. In this thesis, I will argue that the modern (...) philosophic study of names excessively restricts our understanding of names and naming, and that to gain a broader, more comprehensive understanding of the nature of names, we should look to theories which Plato presents in the Cratylus. I will attempt to demonstrate that the modern philosophic perspective on naming is too narrow to provide an adequate interpretation of the Cratylus. Instead, I shall argue that a proper understanding of the theories of the correctness of names which Plato presents in the dialogue, requires readers to have not only a philosophic understanding, but also an onomastic sensitivity, to the nature of names. (shrink)

This essay first differentiates the various meanings of the term as it appears in Plato's dialogues Theaetetus and The Sophist. These are: the colloquy of the soul with itself, a single sentence, a proposing aloud, the enumeration of the constitutive elements of a whole and the giving of a specific difference; further, opinion and imagination. These meanings are then related to Plato's determination of knowledge and therewith truth and falsity. One can be said to possess knowledge only when the universal (...) contents of thought - dialogical thought - are set in relation to the perceivable, imagination or opinion. Reflections on the principle significance of possibility as such - a thematic not addressed by Plato - conclude the essay. (shrink)

This monograph deals with Plato's Cratylus, a dialogue which advertises itself from the outset as an inquiry into the question of the correctness of names. In the prologue, the inquiry is cast as a confrontation between two competing theses on this question. Two participants in the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, seem to differ in their accounts of correctness. Cratylus reportedly holds that correctness obtains by reason of some natural relation between the name and the thing named; Hermogenes contends that correctness (...) of names obtains by reason of convention and agreement among those who make names. Since Socrates, the third participant in the dialogue, begins the inquiry by criticizing Hermogenes' "convention" thesis and later levels criticism against Cratylus' "nature" thesis, we are led to wonder whether Plato himself takes a position on the question of the correctness of names. Some authorities have said that the dialogue is aporetic and that, as in some of the soc-called "Socratic" dialogues, Plato takes no position on the dialogue's central question. Others have held that the Cratylus is little more than a sportive satire directed against the sophists. I reject both readings of the dialogue. ;My own interpretation entails two principal contentions. First, Hermogenes and Cratylus differ with one another but only over a relatively insignificant point about the correctness of names: how names come to have their unique physical configuration. At a more basic level, they stand in general agreement: their views reduce to a version of conventionalism. Second, we can disern in the Cratylus a positive statement of Plato's own theory of the correctness of names. Other interpreters have argued in one way or another for this second contention, but the specific account that I offer makes my verision of the contention unique. ;Plato's own position on the correctness of names is predicated on the notion that reality divides into discrete real units. Names are given, in part, in order to mark these "natural" units of reality. Plato, I argue, holds that a name is correct if it successfully picks out a real unit or kind or object, and if it correctly describes the entity that it names. (shrink)

The thesis proposes that there is a connection between Plato's views on language in the Cratylus and the Third Man Argument in the Parmenides. First, the thesis sets out to establish that previous analyses of the Cratylus, which concentrated mainly on the question of whether Plato adopted conventionalism or naturalism, are not completely satisfactory. Rather, it is argued that the Cratylus is concerned with discovering the conditions underlying the sign relation. As a result, Plato develops a distinctive theory of correctness, (...) where Forms are expected to function as both meanings and referents of words. ;The thesis then outlines Gregory Vlastos' seminal paper on the Third Man Argument. Alternatives to Vlastos' position have focused on how to interpret the Self-Predication Assumption, i.e. the belief that 'F-ness is F.' This dissertation, first, surveys some of the alternatives that have been offered over the years, and then, explains how these alternatives employ concepts like meaning and reference, either explicitly or implicitly. ;Finally, it is argued that the traditional reading of the Third Man Argument has a linguistic analogue, and that the puzzle generated in this linguistic analogue is a result of the theory of the correctness of names that Plato developed in the Cratylus. The linguistic version of the Third Man Argument that is presented illustrates one consequence of Plato's theory of correctness. Forms are supposed to provide the criteria for an individual's being included in the denotation of a term, while, at the same time, Forms themselves are included in the denotation without necessarily fitting the criteria. This occurs, it is suggested, because the theory of correctness was designed to account for the possibility of true and false statements about sensible particulars. It thus serves as a theory of predication for sensible particulars, but cannot explain predication in statements about Forms. (shrink)

Plato's "theaetetus" (187-200) raises puzzles about false belief. Frege's explanation of how an identity statement can be informative is often seen as a solution to socrates' puzzles. The strategy of frege's solution is to explain a "mistake" as a "mismatch". But it turns out that socrates' argument, In fact, Is aware of and rejects this strategy.

Plato's Cratylus is a brilliant but enigmatic dialogue. It bears on a topic, the relation of language to knowledge, which has never ceased to be of central philosophical importance, but tackles it in ways which at times look alien to us. In this reappraisal of the dialogue, Professor Sedley argues that the etymologies which take up well over half of it are not an embarrassing lapse or semi-private joke on Plato's part. On the contrary, if taken seriously as they should (...) be, they are the key to understanding both the dialogue itself and Plato's linguistic philosophy more broadly. The book's main argument is so formulated as to be intelligible to readers with no knowledge of Greek, and will have a significant impact both on the study of Plato and on the history of linguistic thought. (shrink)

In this thesis I offer a reconstruction of some of the foundations of Plato's Theory of Knowledge. This effort is based upon two Platonic theses: Thought is Language and The objects of different faculties of the soul are distinct. The thesis is an investigation of the inter-relation of these two claims. I argue that the former does not prompt Plato to abandon the latter, the so-called Two Worlds hypothesis of the Republic, but rather serves as a justification of that hypothesis. (...) In the first chapter I discuss Plato's philosophy of language. The vehicle for this is the Cratylus. Through a careful reading of the entire dialogue I present a new interpretation of the three naming-relations of the work, namely Natural Names, Conventional Like Names and Conventional Unlike Names. One element of this view is that the Cratylus' theory of names is in accord with the remarks of the Phaedo about the different ways in which Forms and participants bear the same name. ;The concern of the second chapter is Plato's Ontology. Although my focus is on the nature of the various beings that serve as the objects of the psychological attitudes, the aim of the chapter is to show how the three kinds of names discovered in the Cratylus can be mapped onto the three kinds of beings of Plato's Ontology, Forms, form-copies and material particulars such as Socrates. This results in a new interpretation of the relation between a Form and its essence, a new way to look at the Aristotelian Third Man argument and a new understanding of the separation of the Forms. I base my argument on the Phaedo, Republic and especially Parmenides. ;In chapter three I turn to the nature of the soul as thinker. In the first half of the chapter I concentrate on Plato's Theory of Aisthesis. I argue that it is not a faculty of the same part of the soul as knowledge and belief. In the second section I show how Plato's conception of the soul and his Ontology combine to allow language to serve as the vehicle for all the activities of the rational soul without violating the two worlds hypothesis. In the conclusion I offer a myth of the language-learner to bring out the interrelation of Psychology, Ontology and Language. The myth illustrates the various stages in the development of mind, shows how most of humankind comes to the stage of belief and suggests why they do not progress beyond belief to knowledge. (shrink)

[The natural correctness of names in the dialogue “Cratylus“].

At Cratylus 385b–c, Plato appears to argue that names have truth-value. Critics have almost universally condemned the argument as fallacious. Their case has proven so compelling that it has driven editors to recommend moving or removing the argument from its received position in the manuscripts. I argue that a close reading of the argument reveals it commits no fallacy, and its purpose in the dialogue justifies its original position. I wish to vindicate the manuscript tradition, showing that the argument establishes (...) that there is subject matter for investigation, and there is a correctness of names. (shrink)

We ought to combine the predicative and veridical readings of estin. Plato’s view involves a parallelism between truth and being: when we know, we grasp a logos which is completely true and is made true by an on which is completely (F). Opinion takes as its object a logos which is no more true than false and which concerns things which are no more (F) than not (F). This view, I argue, is intelligible in the context of the presuppositions which (...) underlie Socratic ‘What is F?’ questions. (shrink)

This study offers a ckomprehensive new interpretation of one of Plato's dialogues, the _Cratylus_. Throughout, the book combines analysis of Plato's arguments with attentiveness to his philosophical method.

A new reading of Plato's account of conventionalism about names in the Cratylus. It argues that Hermogenes' position, according to which a name is whatever anybody 'sets down' as one, does not have the counterintuitive consequences usually claimed. At the same time, Plato's treatment of conventionalism needs to be related to his treatment of formally similar positions in ethics and politics. Plato is committed to standards of objective natural correctness in all such areas, despite the problematic consequences which, as he (...) himself shows, arise in the case of language. (shrink)

A new reading of Plato's account of conventionalism about names in the Cratylus. It argues that Hermogenes' position, according to which a name is whatever anybody 'sets down' as one, does not have the counterintuitive consequences usually claimed. At the same time, Plato's treatment of conventionalism needs to be related to his treatment of formally similar positions in ethics and politics. Plato is committed to standards of objective natural correctness in all such areas, despite the problematic consequences which, as he (...) himself shows, arise in the case of language. (shrink)