If I were really clever, I'd have made another post titled "Hiatus!" that contained an in-depth analysis of the state of the stylometry literature.
Today's reading is roughly two-thirds of the way through the long discussion of _is_, _being_, _not-being_, and related items/predicates/names. At 251b and following we get a famous (I think) argument against the "Late-Learners'" view that, because "it's impossible for that which is many to be one and for that which is one to be many," there are no strictly accurate predications of the form "X is Y" whenever Y is a different name than X. (Key example at 251c: it's wrong to say that man is good; what is proper is to say that man is man and that good is good.) The problem is that their view presupposes that _being_ (and--see 252c--_separate_, _from others_, _of itself_, "and a million other things") is predicated of things (in the X-position above) that are not _being_.
There's a funny connection between this whole discussion of being and not-being and Parmenides and modern philosophy: if I'm recalling correctly, people get really worked up on the issue of what the empty set refers to; perhaps they're combining causal theories of reference with sensible worries about the causal efficacy of nonexistent things. (I really should reread Russell's "On Denoting" if I want to get this stuff right.)
Finally, in Sunday's reading I encountered a new favorite line in Plato, at 239b-c:
VISITOR: "[...]Try to say something correct about that which is not, without attaching either being, one, or numerical plurality to it.
THEAETETUS: I'd have to have a strangely large amount of enthusiasm for the project to try it myself after seeing what you've gone through.
Happy reading!
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