sayre sophist 263b revisited

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Mind Association Sophist 263B Revisited Author(s): Kenneth M. Sayre Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 340 (Oct., 1976), pp. 581-586 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253042 . Accessed: 03/02/2015 18:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press and Mind Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mind. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 168.176.5.118 on Tue, 3 Feb 2015 18:38:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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  • Mind Association

    Sophist 263B RevisitedAuthor(s): Kenneth M. SayreSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 340 (Oct., 1976), pp. 581-586Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253042 .Accessed: 03/02/2015 18:38

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

    .

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    .

    Oxford University Press and Mind Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Mind.

    http://www.jstor.org

    This content downloaded from 168.176.5.118 on Tue, 3 Feb 2015 18:38:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

  • Sophist z63B Revisited

    KENNETH M. SAYRE

    Plato's account of false judgment at Sophist 263B is terse and elliptical. Of the two statements 'Theaetetus sits' and 'Theaetetus flies', the Stranger says, one is true and the other false:

    And the true one says of things-that-are that they are with reference to you (AE'yEc 3s av-rC3v o ytEv dArq0rS ra o'vTa cag Ecaztv 7E,epc aof). The false [says of] other than things-that-are [that they are] [with reference to you] (o 3s 02 0&Ev)3)S ,EEpa -rCv o'vrcv). So it states things-that-are-not as things-that-are (ra /tr) o'vT' apa coSg o'v-a AE'yE). But at any rate [it states] things-that-are, different from things-that- are in your case (vTcov 8E' yE o'vra e-Epa 7TEpC aofi). For we said that there are many things-that-are in each case, and also many things- that-are-not (7ToAAa ytEv yap EOaqlev o'vPTa 7TEpC Waa-rov Etvac 7TvO, 7ToAAa' 3 OVK o'vTa).

    This passage has posed problems for sympathetic commentators. One is the problem of mere intelligibility.' A more basic problem has been that of reconstructing from the passage a credible account of true and false judgment. In Plato's Analytic Method (Chicago, I969) I offered an interpretation which, although I believe accurately directed, is potentially flawed in an important respect.2 The difficulty with this interpretation stems from a mistaken assumption, which most commentators share, about the nature of not-Being in the Sophist account. Correcting this mistake yields an interpretation which is more fully Platonic both in content and elegance, and which is considerably more faithful to the text of the dialogue.

    In examining this amended interpretation it will be helpful first to consider why Plato chooses not to rely upon a more direct account of true and false judgment already available in the middle dialogues. In conjunction with his discussion of the method of Ao'yos in the Phaedo,

    A sensitive discussion of syntactical ambiguities in these sentences may be found in David Keyt's 'Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263B,' in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Humanities Press, New York: I973), to which I am indebted in the translation above. Robert Vacca also is to be thanked for advice on Plato's use of us eEanv.

    2 I say 'potentially flawed' because, although the interpretation in the book is literally compatible with what I now believe to be the correct account, its further elucidation in my 'Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist,' Nous, iv (I970), 8I-9I, brought the flaw to the surface. I am indebted to Alvin Plantinga for drawing the problem to my attention. This interpretation was developed originally in response to difficulties with other accounts of false judgment in the Sophist, which need not be reviewed for present purposes.

    58I

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  • 582 KENNETH M. SAYRE:

    Plato develops (99C-Io2B) a theory of causation according to which individual things take on particular features by participation in relevant Forms. According to this theory, the reason Theaetetus is sitting is his participation in Sitting, and the reason he is not Flying is his failure to participate in Flying. A simple and thoroughly Platonic explanation of truth and falsehood appears on the face of this observation. Why is it not the case for Plato simply that 'Theaetetus sits' is true if and only if Theaetetus participates in Sitting, and false otherwise; and in general that 'X is a' is true if and only if X participates in A, and false if it fails so to participate? There is no reason to think that Plato rejects this theory of causation in the later dialogues. Why, then, does he not adopt this simple answer?

    It is possible, of course, that Plato bypasses this answer merely because he has not been talking in this context about participation of individuals in Forms, and because the answer does not lend itself particularly well to a discussion of the topics toward the end of the Sophist. But in fact there are much stronger reasons, having to do with the treatment of negative statements. If 'Theaetetus flies' is false, then 'Theaetetus is not flying' is true, and presumably for the same reasons. But if so, then failure to participate in Flying is the source of the truth of the latter; and this is quite different from the case of 'Theaetetus sits', which is true because Theaetetus participates in Sitting. A satisfactory account would not make participation the cause of truth in one statement type (affirmative), and failure to participate the cause of truth in another (negative). A related difficulty is how to treat statements like 'Theaetetus is dissatisfied'; should their truth be conceived as caused by participation (in Dissatis- faction) or by failure to participate (in Satisfaction)? Parallel difficulties arise for the analysis of falsehood.

    A means of establishing parity of truth conditions between affirmative and negative statements is to introduce the notion of 'negative Forms', according to which not-A is the Form consisting of all Forms other than A. Since not-Flying consists of all Forms save Flying, we may then under- stand the truth of 'Theaetetus is not flying' (elliptically, 'Theaetetus not-flies') as caused by Theaetetus' participation in not-Flying, parallel to participation in Sitting as the source of the truth of 'Theaetetus sits'. Similarly, 'Theaetetus is not sitting' would be false by reason of failure to participate in not-Sitting, parallel to the falsehood of 'Theaetetus flies' by failure to participate in Flying. It appears that Plato is moving in this direction with his definition of 'that which is not' (ro p71 o'v: 258C). 'What is not' in this sense consists of 'parts of the Different': the not-Tall, the not-Beautiful, and all similar Forms set in contrast (avrerEOv: 257E) with other Forms that exist.

    Even with 'not-Being' thus construed in his conceptual repertoire, however, Plato must avoid this way of establishing parity, for it leads to consequences that are wholly intolerable. According to this amended account, 'X is not a' is false if and only if X does not participate in not-A. But X participates in not-A by participating in any Form other than A itself. Hence, if there is even one Form other than A in which X participates, which for any X almost surely will be the case, then X participates in

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  • SOPHIST 263B REVISITED 583 not-A: consequently 'X is not a' would never be false. Moreover, if X participates both in A and in one other Form, X participates in both A and not-A, and both 'X is a' and 'X is not a' are true simultaneously. These results discourage the attempt to account for truth and falsehood in terms of participation alone.

    The interpretation developed in Plato's Analytic Method takes its lead from the remark at 295E that Ao'yos is generated through the com- bination of the Forms (-r6v ElI3WV caVPirTAoK)v). According to this in- terpretation, a statement about Theaetetus is true if nothing he is doing keeps it from being true, and false if nothing he is doing keeps it from being false. Put less truistically, in the language of participation and of combining Forms, 'Theaetetus sits' is true if and only if all Forms in which Theaetetus participates combine with' Sitting (as Running and Jumping, for example, do not), and 'Theaetetus flies' is false if and only if all Forms in which he participates combine with not-Flying. 'Theaetetus is not sitting', by the same token, is false if and only if all Forms in which he participates combine with Sitting (not-not-Sitting), and 'Theaetetus is not flying' is true if and only if all Forms in which he participates combine with not-Flying. A feature recommending this interpretation is that the same accounts of truth and falsehood apply to both affirmative and negative statements, and that the same conditions render a statement false as render its negation true. In general 'X is a' is true and 'X is not a' false if and only if all Forms in which X participates combine with A, and 'X is a' is false and 'X is not a' true if and only if all Forms in which X participates combine with not-A.

    There is a difficulty with this interpretation, however, which by now should be familiar. We have been assuming, with the commentators generally, that not-A consists of all Forms other than A.' As the Stranger insists at 257B, when we speak of 'that which is not' we mean not some- thing contrary (4'avrtov) to what exists but only something different (Erepov). But if not-A consists of all Forms different from A, then X participates in not-A if and only if it participates in some Form other than A. Thus X could participate in A and in not-A simultaneously, a con- sequence of which seems to be that A and not-A are compatible. This apparent compatibility between A and not-A is the source of our problem.

    According to the interpretation in question, 'Theaetetus flies' is false if and only if all Forms in which Theaetetus participates combine with (are compatible with) not-Flying, and 'Theaetetus flies' is true if and only if all such Forms combine with Flying. But assume that Theaetetus in fact is flying. If so, then all Forms in which he participates are com- patible with Flying, and 'Theaetetus flies' is true. Yet if so, it might be the case that all Forms in which he participates combine with not-Flying

    I The force of 'combines with' is 'is compatible with'. The application of the concept of compatibility to the Forms is discussed in Plato's Analytic Method, p. I95, fn. 68, but more remains to be said.

    2 The sense of 'negative Forms' that causes the problem is not specifically adopted in Plato's Analytic Method, although nothing is said to rule it out. It is explicitly adopted, however, in 'Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist', p. 82.

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  • 584 KENNETH M. SAYRE: also, since Flying itself is compatible with not-Flying. Thus, according to this interpretation, 'Theaetetus flies' might be true and false simul- taneously, an infirmity as severe as those examined above.

    The way out of this difficulty, as is the case so often in problems of Platonic interpretation, is more careful reading of the text. 'What is not', the Stranger emphasizes, is not what is bvavtLos- but what is E1rEpOS (257B, and again at 258B). We understand that by excluding the Evavitos Plato meant to exclude the opposite, in favour of the E'TEpos in the sense of what is only different. But there are several senses in which Forms or properties of things might be opposed, and no reason to think that all are being excluded indiscriminately. Properties might be opposed in the fashion of greater and smaller, such that nothing can possess the two simultaneously, but something nonetheless might possess a third property (equality) instead. Properties opposed in this sense are mutually exclusive, but together are not exclusive of other alternatives. Let us call this 'opposition in the nonexhaustive sense'. Properties miglht also be opposed, on the other hand, in the exhaustive sense of gaseous, liquid and solid, such that if something of the appropriate sort (physical substance in the aggregate) is one it cannot be another, but must be one of the several alternatives.

    Now it is almost certain that Plato used EvavtLos- to convey opposition in the nonexhaustive sense, and not in the other. Although there is no illustration in the immediate context of what he intended by the term, Evavir-os- is used in this sense throughout the dialogues.' Moreover, at Protagoras 332C we read that of everything that admits of an Evavtlos there is one such opposite and no more. One member of such a pair excludes the other (for example, larger/smaller); but as we have seen the pair itself need not exclude a third alternative (equality); hence a pair of such opposites cannot be assumed to exhaust all alternatives. More specifically, we are told in the Philebus that pleasure and pain are Evavtlos- (4iD), but that there are some things that are neither one nor the other (43D). Clearly, by the exclusion of Evavtlos- at Sophist 257B and 258B, opposition in the exhaustive sense in not being eliminated.

    Equally important is the fact that things might be E'FTEpoS in more than one sense also, and that in these passages Plato may be insisting upon the different in one sense but not in another. The customary interpretation of E'Epos is that simply of the other or the different. According to this interpretation, the Form not-A consists of all Forms different from A indiscriminately. But &'ErpoS can also mean 'other' in the sense of 'the one or the other' (or 'this, that or the other'), where the alternatives (possibly several) are intended as exclusive and collectively exhaustive. This is precisely the second sense of opposition mentioned above in the dis- cussion of 6vaviLos. There are two strong indications in the text that Plato intended this latter sense of E%rEPoS- in his characterization of 'that

    I Among many examples of properties that are designated Evavt0os in this sense are those at Lysis 2I5E (dry/wet, cold/hot, bitter/sweet, sharp/blunt), at Phaedo Io2D, E (short/tall) and Io3C (hot/cold); at Parmenides I49E (greater/smaller) and I55A (older/younger); and at Laws 889B (hot/cold, dry/moist) and 896D (good/evil, fair/foul, right/wrong).

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  • SOPHIST 263B REVISITED 585 which is not'. One is the repeated use of a form of dvvr-i0a-W/ in describing the relationship of 'that which is not' to what exists. This term carries the general sense of being set against, or opposed. At 257D, and twice again at 257E, the not-beautiful is said to be opposed to the beautiful. At 258B, and again at 258E, the nature of the different is opposed at least in part to the nature of the existent. Moreover, at 258B the natures of the different and of the existent are said further to be av1tKEqC[EVwv, a form Aristotle uses to convey the sense of contradiction.' The other indication is even more specific. The only example the Stranger gives of things that are not bvavrtlos- but only J1rEpoS is that of the exclusive and exhaustive properties tall, equal and short (257B). Thus there is abundant evidence in the text that the E'TEpoS which marks the nature of the different is not merely what is other than the Form in question, but what is opposed to it within a set of exclusive and exhaustive alternatives.

    The unavoidable consequence, as I see it, is that the commentators have been wrong in construing 'that which is not' as consisting of 'negative Forms' each of which includes all Forms different from a given existent.2 The 'negative Form' not-A includes not all Forms simply different from A, but rather all Forms related to A such that together they constitute an exclusive and exhaustive set. The Form not-Sitting, for example, thus consists of Walking, Running, Jumping, Standing, Lying, and so forth, one (but only one) of which must apply to any individual that is not in fact sitting, but none of which can apply to a sitting individual. This sense of 'that which is not' rescues the account of false judgment

    in Plato's Analytic Method from its logical difficulty. The difficulty arose in the course of the following considerations. To participate in not-A is to participate in a Form included in not-A, namely (I assumed previously) any Form other than A itself. But since an individual accordingly could participate in both A and not-A simultaneously by participating in A and a Form other than A, A and not-A must be capable of combining. Hence it is possible for all Forms in which Theaetetus participates while flying to combine with not-Flying as well as with Flying (since Flying itself would combine with not-Flying), and for both 'Theaetetus flies' and 'Theaetetus is not flying' to be true at once. But if not-Flying includes only Forms participation in which is excluded by participation in Flying, then Flying and not-Flying are expressly incapable of combination, and to participate in Flying is incompatible with participating in Forms all of which combine with not-Flying. Hence the danger of contradiction

    Significantly, for our problematic in connection with Sophist 257B and 258B, in On Interpretation I7B3-22, Aristotle contrasts Evav-isr1 and avT-naTLKa5SZ as contrariety and contradiction.

    2 Most, but not all commentators have interpreted Difference in such a way that not-A includes all Forms different from A. An interpretation more in line with the above is hinted at very generally in D. W. Hamlyn, 'The Communion of Forms and the Development of Plato's Logic', The Philosophical Quarterly, v (I955), 289-302. See also Keyt, ibid., where a similar interpretation is suggested for negative predication.

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  • 586 KENNETH M. SAYRE: SOPHIST 263B REVISITED disappears. The interpretation defended in Plato's Analytic Method remains viable. A statement of the form 'X is a' (or 'X is not a') is true if and only if all Forms in which X participates combine with A (or not-A), and false if and only if all such Forms combine with not-A (or A). In the context of the Sophist, Plato is able to maintain an account of true and false judgment formulated in terms of combining Forms and participation.

    By the same token, however, he would also be able to maintain an account in terms of participation alone. The discouragement in this approach examined above stemmed from the assumption that participa- tion in not-A is tantamount to participation in any Form other than A, from which follows not only that 'X is not a' would never be false but moreover that it could be true simultaneously with 'X is a'. With the sense of not-A by which that 'negative Form' consists of all but only Forms related to A as exclusive and mutually exhaustive, however, these problems disappear. The simple account is thus available: that 'X is a' (or 'X is not a') is true if and only if X participates in A (or not-A), and false otherwise.

    Why did Plato not opt for this simpler account in the Sophist? The question is counterfactual and the answer speculative. This simpler account is an extension of the theory of causation associated explicitly with the Phaedo, in which the Forms are depicted as incomposite and independent (78C). In the context of the Sophist, however, not only is the possibility of false judgment dependent upon the mingling of dis- course with not-Being (26oB), which itself is a combination of Forms, but moreover discourse itself, and with it philosophy, depends upon the blending of the Forms (259E). The simple account in terms of participa- tion alone thus appears unsuitable for a pair of related reasons. It carries misleading associations from the Phaedo of Forms that do not mingle, and it would not serve in a discussion of not-Being as it blends with discourse.

    By contrast, the somewhat longer account, with the clarification developed above, enjoys the distinct advantages not only of showing how discourse has its source in the combining Forms, but also of clarifying the sense in which the true states what is and the false what is different. That is, 'Theaetetus sits' is true because it says of Sitting that it is with reference to Theaetetus, while 'Theaetetus flies' is false because it says this of Flying, which in not-Sitting is different from Sitting. Thus 'Theaetetus flies' falsely states part of not-Sitting as Sitting-a part which nonetheless is, but which is different from what is in the case of Theae- tetus. Or as the Stranger puts it, speaking to Theactetus:

    the true one says of things-that-are that they are with reference to you, the false other than things-that-are. So it states things-that-are- not as things-that-are. But at any rate things-that-are, different from things-that-are in your case (263B).

    UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

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    Article Contentsp. 581p. 582p. 583p. 584p. 585p. 586

    Issue Table of ContentsMind, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 340 (Oct., 1976), pp. 481-640Front Matter [pp. ]Identity and Personal Identity [pp. 481-502]On What Sorts of Thing There Are [pp. 503-521]The Objectivity of Pain [pp. 522-541]Spinoza on the Mind-Body Problem: Two Questions [pp. 542-558]Wiggins on Identity [pp. 559-575]DiscussionsSpace and Time Re-assimilated [pp. 576-580]Sophist 263B Revisited [pp. 581-586]Negative Utilitarianism: Not Dead Yet [pp. 587-588]The Prescriptivism Incompleteness Theorem [pp. 589-596]The Identity of Laws: A Reply to Mr. Griffin [pp. 597-600]A Note on Belief [pp. 601-602]

    Critical Notice [pp. 603-610]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 611-614]Review: untitled [pp. 614-616]Review: untitled [pp. 616-619]Review: untitled [pp. 619-621]Review: untitled [pp. 621-624]Review: untitled [pp. 625-627]Review: untitled [pp. 627-630]Review: untitled [pp. 630-632]Review: untitled [pp. 632-634]

    Books Received [pp. 635-639]Notices [pp. 640]Back Matter [pp. ]