This paper offers an interpretation of Plato's Cratylus 427d1-431c3 that supports a reading of the dialogue as a whole as concluding in favour of a conventionalist account of naming. While many previous interpretations note the value of this passage as evidence for Platonic investigations of false propositions, this paper argues that its demonstration that there can be false (or incorrect) naming in turn refutes the naturalist account of naming; that is, it shows that a natural relation between name and nominatum (...) is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for reference. Socrates secures this outcome by using demonstratives and their concomitants to show how any putative natural imitative link between name and object may be overridden. Furthermore, Socrates' employment of demonstratives and context-dependent statements in his case-studies of false naming speaks in favour of a reading of this passage as primarily focussing on naming rather than on propositions in general. (shrink)

In the last century, philosophers turned their attention to language. One place they have looked for clues about its nature is Plato’s Cratylus, which considers whether names are naturally or conventionally correct. The dialogue is a source of annoyance to many commentators because it does not take a clear position on the central question. At times, it argues that language is conventional, and, at other times, defends the view that language is natural. This lack of commitment has led to a (...) longstanding dispute over the outcome of the dialogue. I argue that the Cratylus provides no clear resolution to this problem because it presupposes certain unexamined metaphysical commitments about the nature of reality, which are in need of thorough investigation. (shrink)

While the argument of Plato’s Cratylus supports both the claim that there is a natural correctness of names and the claim that correct names need not be descriptions or imitations of their referents, the protagonists of the Cratylus find it infeasible to reconcile these two claims. In my paper, I account for this puzzling observation by elaborating a novel interpretation of the Cratylus. I show that the protagonists of the Cratylus are unable to make sense of the results of their (...) joined investigation because they rely on a mistaken preconception of what a correct name is. Based on this diagnosis, I contend that Plato wants his readers to comprehend and overcome the dialectical predicament of his protagonists. I thus illuminate both the internal logic of the Cratylus and the philosophical agenda Plato pursues in staging a dialogue with this particular internal logic. (shrink)

In recent years the philosophy of information has emerged as an important area of research in philosophy. However, until now information’s philosophical history has been largely overlooked. Information and the History of Philosophy is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical questions around information, including work from before the Common Era to the twenty-first century. It covers scientific and technology-centred notions of information; views of human information processing, as well as socio-political topics such as the control and use (...) of information in societies. Organised into five parts, nineteen chapters by an international team of contributors cover the following topics and more: Information before 500 CE, including ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman approaches to information Early theories of information processing, sources of information and cognition Information and computation in Leibniz, visualised scientific information, copyright and social reform The nineteenth century, including biological information, knowledge economies, and information’s role in empire and eugenics Recent and contemporary philosophy of information, including racialized information, Shannon information, and the very idea of an information revolution. Information and the History of Philosophy is a landmark publication in this emerging field. As such, it is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, and library and information studies. It is also a valuable resource for those working in subjects such as the history of science, media and communication studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

Inspired by my reading of the conclusions of Plato’s Cratylus, in which I suggest that Socrates endorses the claim that speaker’s intentions determine meaning of their utterances, this thesis investigates a modern parallel. Drawing on observations that people who produce an utterances that do not accord with the conventions of their linguistic community can often nevertheless communicate successfully, Donald Davidson concludes that it is the legitimate intentions of speakers to be interpreted in a particular way that determine the meanings of (...) their utterances. This thesis investigates how we might interpret the non-standard utterances of another from the perspective of Davidson’s anticonventionalist picture of language. It proceeds by investigating the possible roles for radical interpretation and triangulation in explaining successful day-to-day communication, where non-standard language use abounds, and argues that - even from a Davidsonian perspective - a full account of the linguistic skills and knowledge that a language user requires to interpret utterances must ultimately appeal at least to regularities word use and expressions, if not full-blown conventions. (shrink)

The Cratylus’ main concern is to outline and evaluate the competing views of language held by two characters, Hermogenes and Cratylus, who disagree about whether convention or nature (respectively) are the source of onomastic correctness. Hermogenes has been thought to hold two radically different views by different scholars, one extreme conventionalism whereby all names are correct relative to their speakers, and another modest conventionalism according to which distinct naming actions – establishment and employment – explain why some names are correct (...) and others are not, depending on the speaker. In this paper I argue that, though Hermogenes ultimately endorses a conventionalism of the latter kind, it is a mistake to assign him this position from the outset. Rather, to understand the structure of the conversation about conventionalism, we must view Hermogenes’ position, and Socrates’ understanding of it, as developing instead of settled. For it is only by discussing the matter that Hermogenes comes to express a moderate conventionalist view and Socrates comes to appreciate the position Hermogenes actually holds. (shrink)

Near the beginning of the Cratylus (385e-387d) Plato's Socrates argues, against his friend Hermogenes, that the standards of correctness for our use of names in speech are in no way up to us. Yet this conclusion should strike us, at least initially, as bizarre. After all, how could it not be up to us whether to call our children by the names of our parents, or whether to call dogs “dogs“? My aim in this paper will be to show that, (...) although Plato's argument does not succeed in establishing this apparently bizarre conclusion, it may well succeed in establishing an equally momentous conclusion: that the standards of correctness for our use of concepts in thought are in no way up to us. (shrink)

Incorporating Gadamer and other thinkers from the continental tradition, this essay is a close and detailed hermeneutic, phenomenological, and ontological study of the dialectic practice of Plato’s Socrates—it radicalizes and refutes the Socrates-as-teacher model that educators from scholar academic ideology embrace.

I consider Plato’s argument, in the dialogue Cratylus, against both of two opposed views of the “correctness of names.” The first is a conventionalist view, according to which this relationship is arbitrary, the product of a free inaugural decision made at the moment of the first institution of names. The second is a naturalist view, according to which the correctness of names is initially fixed and subsequently maintained by some kind of natural assignment, rooted in the things themselves. I argue (...) that: 1) Plato’s critical challenge to both views anticipates considerations introduced by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations ’ consideration of rules and rule-following; 2) Understanding Plato’s appeal to the “form” [ eidos ] of a thing in resolving the problems of both views helps to explicate Wittgenstein’s own appeal to “forms of life” as the “given” ground of linguistic practice; and 3) We should not understand the grounding of language in form-of-life either as a basis in the plural practices of different communities, or as a biological/anthropological basis in the specific nature of the human organism. Rather, it points to an autonomous dimension of form, which articulates the relationship between language and life as it relates to the possibility of truth. (shrink)

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at (...) least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'. (shrink)