Nothing philosophically adventurous from me today. I just raise a few questions about this difficult dialogue.
384b: "But as I've heard only the one-drachma course...". I take it that he's being sarcastic, right?
384c-d: Hermogenes's position is a little less clear to me. Is it that each thing has a correct name, but its correctness is simply a function of people agreeing to use that name for the thing? That seems to be suggested by "the correctness of names is determined by ... convention and agreement" and "No name belongs to a particular thin gby nature, but only because of the rules and usage of those who establish the usage and call it by that name". So, he is not an eliminativist about the "correctness" of names. Rather, he's a relativist.
385d: "So whatever each person says is the name of something, for him, that is its name?" -- The relativism applies to individuals and not just communities.
386e: "And if things are of such a nature, doesn't the same hold of actions performed in relation to them? Or aren't actions included in some one class of the things that are?" Actions are included in the things that are-existentially? So, actions exist? Or, is there a veridical reading of this sentence such that he means that actions are true?
387a-c: Each action has a nature such that there is a natural way to do it. For example, there is a natural way to cut and burn something which will lead to successful cutting and burning. Speaking is an action. Therefore, there is a natural way to speak which will lead to successful speaking. I'm still unsure on why we're granting that there is a natural way to perform all actions, but OK.
385c: "Is a whole statement true but not its parts? -No, the parts are also true."
What is a statement and what are its parts? A proposition and its subject and predication?
Ian--Thanks for getting us started. A few brief thoughts:
ReplyDelete(a) It appears to me that privacy is just a sufficient condition for non-naturalness of names, not a synonym for it. But closer reading would be required for me to be confident of that.
(b) My guess is that the parts of a sentence referred to here aren't subject/predicate but rather something like the group of words, where 'word' is used in a somewhat idealized sense here. If there's a better term for something that picks out one semantic unit, I can't think of it at the moment. Also I have no idea if that claim is correct--I'm moved to assert it because of some dim memories of the _Theaetetus_.
(c) Yes, I think you're right to hear a lot of sarcasm/snideness/etc. in the 'one-drachma' comment. I thought it was pretty funny.
(d) I wonder whether we're meant to see pointers to the _Theaetetus_ here. Elements of language, Protagorean relativism along with certain refutations of it...
(e) Interesting that there's no frame, unless the first two lines count as a very brief frame.
(f) I wonder what a close study of the definition of truth at 385d2 would turn up. In particular, I wonder whether (i) some statements would end up as neither true nor false, and whether (ii) the referents of the terms of true statements would turn out to be Forms (or some similar privileged kind of entity).
Happy reading, everyone.
Interesting points, guys!
ReplyDeleteIanH: I think you're right; Hermogenes can't be an eliminativist about the correctness of names. He's got an interesting combination of constructivism and "Protagorean" relativism going on.
Nate's (f): I'm imagining a professor of mine spending a LOT of time on the definition of truth at 385d2. In particular, there would be extensive discussion of the (1) predicative, (2) existential, and (3) veridical uses of einai. Of course, the veridical sense in this context would be obviously circular and unhelpful. But it might be worth keeping in mind that the definition does not entail that existential claims (of the form "X exists") are either the most basic or the only truths.
A few more small points:
- I'm still confused about what exactly an "onoma" is. I don't have a well-formed question; I'm just confused about how we should understand the relationship between names and words, and between names-as-linguistic-items and names-as-(potentially)-private, maybe even inarticulable, mental entities.
- I'm also struck at the order of the argument from 386a-e: arguing against relativism about language and meaning by appeal to ethical realism or absolutism! Way to go, Socrates, for thinking that ethical realism/anti-relativism is so secure that it can be used to argue for other, less secure forms of realism/anti-relativism!
Colfert--Thanks. That's all useful.
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be some sort of grammatical system countenanced at least sometimes by Plato in which each word is either an _onoma_ or a _rhema_ (can't get the circumflex over the _e_ in _rhema_). Burnyeat (in his _Theaetetus_ introduction) points us to _Sophist_ 261d-262a for this view. Also see Socrates' 'Dream' in the _Theaetetus_ (which Burnyeat is discussing... I'm looking at p. 155 of that edition of the _Theaetetus_).
Of course, looking at these probably won't get us directly to addressing your questions about _onomata_... I might try to check this stuff out, though.