Denyer Notes, Chapter 1

Truth and Falsehood
Problems with Truth

• Problem of the External World: I have beliefs about this external world, and each belief implies that something exists external to me. Could there be nothing than myself?

• Problem of Other Minds: I believe that there are other things out there that hold their own beliefs and have emotion responses and even rationality. Any of this TRUE? Other people could be sentient robots or a mere extension of myself.

• Problem of the Reality of the Past: I believe that the world has been going on for a while, but it is possible that the world could have been created five minutes ago, then there would be no truth in these beliefs of mine.

• Problem of Induction: I extrapolate about the future using my beliefs and knowledge of the past, yet these extrapolations could be completely false

• CONCLUSION: “Beliefs are guilty until proved innocent, untrue until proved true.”

-Many Ancient Philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato did not succumb to this prejudice that there are false beliefs. On the contrary, Plato spent much of his skill and energy illustrating how we make false statements and have false beliefs.

-Modern Philosophers on the other hand have spent so much time devising and developing a long and sophisticated argument that they are hesitant to give up their claims and accept that some beliefs are false.

Realism and Idealism

Idealism: doctrine that there is nothing but ideas (perceptions and thoughts), and possibly minds or spirits that have them.

• Ancient Philosophers do not even take it upon themselves to accept or even deny Idealism because it just does not fit into the belief system of ancient times to consider it. For them “planets are gods” and so such beliefs would be hard to defend under Idealist terms.

• This is definitely a more modern philosophical discussion because it is a real option. A common pattern is to accept an aspect of Idealism, but the Realism of ordinary life can't be false because the Idealism that is true is transcendental. This brings to mind Kant's distinction between Transcendental and Empirical truths.

-At this point I don't really agree because the Ancient Philosophers did believe that we have our own ideas and that they can be true with no empirical, objective evidence outside of ourselves. I don't think they were extreme Idealists, but Plato did believe in Forms that even our Ideas were trying to become (not to anthropomorphize them). Then again, they weren't complete Realists as he purports, and he may just be basing this on later Ancients like Aristotle. If he is then shame on him because there is a much wider scope.


A Difficulty

He asks, “If modern philosophical problems are typically problems of truth, how can I expect to interest modern readers in the problem of falsehood?”No problem here, Plato provides a solution to how we can provide without paradox a false belief. Worth it to examine to philosophies of those who felt that falsehood is still an issue.

• Falsehood unproblematic poses other problems: Why did Plato spend so much time proving falsehood?

• Once questions are answered they are no longer considered philosophical, but falsehood even though answered remains in the realm of philosophy

I say this is because even though falsehood is explained we are nowhere near understanding truth itself. Also, “How can one say something if it isn't true, and thus isn't there to be said?” Just because something is false doesn't deny its existence?

• Looking at the problem of falsehood, we might learn something from ancient views about thought and language that will help solve modern issues of truth.

• The reason being that some ancient philosophers incorporated falsehood into their theories of truth and thus helping us examine the modern issues of truth and our assumptions that made is so problematic.

Sedley's Plato on Language

So Plato views langauge as a matter of names and descriptions, which could be described in modern terms of subject and predicates. The reason why we can't completely accept this is because Plato is mainly concerned with single terms which he wants to define. So a better modern day term would be nouns and verbs because in a sense that is what he is referring to. He definitely views language to be of utmost importance because Sedley describes it as a

"privileged means to philosophy, and thereby to the soul's salvation" (p.214).

So back to sentence structures, to utter a complete sentence we must name the subject and go on describing it. Beyond these two types of words the only other one Plato explores is the negation sign "not". Sedley explains though that this makes sense with the analysis of falsity in the Sophist.

So in the Cratylus, the best words are the ones that present a whole combination of messages creating a complex idea with one word. So, with the word 'Sun' it represents assembling people by its rising, always rolling around the earth, and finally by its motion gives variety to the things that grow on Earth. Already we can see how easily complex one word in a language can be, and this is only a name. So Plato claims that a name provides two things, instruction and separation of being. Instruction meaning the function of a name is the highest good it can bring about. This just follows the language Plato uses of Highest Good as a main goal in life. The Separating Being aspect of a name is basically marking off an object from all other things.

Plato also believes that with each name comes a Form of Name, which in turn comes with a Form for each Name itself like Form of the Name of Man. This is obviously very ontologically committed and filling, maybe an unlimited number of Forms could exist? Beyond this though, does this me that one Form of a Name is better than another? If each name in different languages for chair are basically the same, why bother having them, based on Plato's theory of Form?So I guess each language has its own set of Forms of Names that it uses language to move towards its perfection.

Hermogenes makes the claim that due to different conventions in one village they could use the word for 'man' in place for the word for 'horse'. Plato doesn't make any room for convention because of his specific rules for names. He claims that

"names are tools with a specific instructive function and therefore requires expert manufacture" (p.220)

Plato only makes room for convention in two situations. One is words that have an equal proportion of appropriate and inappropriate descriptive sounds. He uses the example of the word 'hardness' in Greek, which contains two sounds one conveying 'hardness' and the other 'softness'. The only way to solve this is to look at conventional ways in which the word is used. The second case is with names of numbers. I can't explain this very well because I don't really see how names of numbers can't be understood by his rules for what a name is. He claims something about how large numbers need to be conventionally understood.

So Sedley asks again the question "How can a dialectician be confident that the word currently up for definition is so firmly tied to a single properly demarcated concept that defining the word will lead to an understanding of the concept?" (p.222). Plato's Socrates responds to this in the Meno with the theory that the soul already possesses knowledge a priori (before birth), when we were born we forgot, and then throughout life we spend our time "recollecting" through the course of learning. I am not sure how well this really answers his question, but maybe it does. Of course we would be able to firmly tie a word with its definition to a concept because everyone already knows the firm definition of the concept. It is a matter of realizing it.

The problem I have with this theory is that there is so much room for error. Anytime I bring up how people could easily get things wrong with language, Plato would just respond well they just haven't fully recollected its Form of Name and its Form. Seems like too easy of a solution and obviously this universe must be FULL of Forms. We might need a few more universes.

The last section Sedley brings up Equivocation, which is using a word in a sentence but with varied meaning, and Synonyms. So what about words that are synonymous? No problem for Plato because it seems to cause no harm to the map of reality and we easily grasp synonymous responses. More specifically, Plato says that synonymous words all participate in the same Name-Form and thus have the same 'power'. Equivocation isn't an issue either because Plato views the world's objects each having an ultimate form, so for each many there must be an ultimate One. I am not sure if this really solves this issue of one word with multiple meanings rather it shows how Plato just ignored this issue altogether. Sedley goes into other possible arguments Plato might make based on short passages, but I think these might be somewhat of a stretch.

Permenides a Logical Atomist??

So Tilghman in Parmenides, Plato, and Logical Atomism tries to bring Parmenides theory within the context of Russell's theory of descriptions and language. He says that Parmenides had both a theory of meaning for words and sentences. His theory of meaning basically states that

"the meaning of an expression is what it names or denotes. If an expression does not denote anything it is meaningless, hence no expression apparently denoting a non-existent somewhat, "that which is-not," can be intelligible." p.153

This theory of meaning is central to his philosophy in that words are names and sentences are states of affairs. By applying this sentence meaning though it makes it harder for Parminedes to argue that the world is unchanging and homogeneous. Also embedded in each statement about change is a non-existent state of affair such as referring to the past in the statement "Jones is now fat." Implying both that Jones is now fat, but that at a certain time in the past fatness did not exist.

Tilghman's solution is to add a theory of prediction to Parminedes theory of meaning. So if we can talk about the various possibilities it allows us to discuss non-existent states of affairs. This seems to sum it up quite nicely for him, but I would have to disagree. He falls into an existential slum because everything is "equally meaningless" thus is homogeneous. Weird.

Mason's Parmenides and Language

So Parminedes view of mortal language is that we distinguish opposites and establish signs, and less specifically names for individuals; through his poems he implies this is erroneous or mistaken. Plato makes the point that "'the possibility and power of dialectic' depends upon individuation, without this indentification we could not make sense of each other. Parmenides isn't saying people can't make sense of one another, but merely that one cannot claim that mortals are speaking about reality. It is somewhat chronologically out of sync to suggest this, but he would agree with the view that the possibility of sense is unrelated to the success of reference. It must be understood though that in no way does this imply that he had some sort of ancient theory of meaning pertaining to language. It is a huge step to go from saying that Parminedes believed mortal language is misleading to saying that he believed it is meaningless because it has no reference.

Nussbaum believes that the true object of reference is in the goddess's discourse, but with the many individual references made in the discourse it is hard to push this argument for

"if 'nothing in the sensible world' can be a 'possible object of speech and thought' then even the goddess should not be able to make sense of her talk about the mares and the house." (p152)

From her discourses, it is argued that Parmenides never claimed that language is meaningless, thus he can't be accused of contradiction by making the goddess use the same mortal language. Gallop also suggests that she can speak correctly and truthfully because she is a goddess. Along those same lines, Reinhardt believes that the contrast should be made in terms of truth instead of meaningfulness. Mainly what we are trying to get to is solving how the goddess's discourses get beyond condemnation of other statements. Mason offers three possible solutions to this troubling issue. First, he suggests one view where positive statements about reality are allowable where as negative statements (false) are not. The most obvious response to this argument is that Parmenides wasn't making this distinction rather it was all language that pertained to individuation. This seems to bring about the case that no statement is a right one, and that Parmenides may have gone to far in making any kind of language impossible.

The next two views are about the same in that they don't present us with a viable answer to what the goddess is even saying. I keep wondering though, isn't it part of the goddess's job to be deceptive? Also, Parmenides points out that it is impossible to describe the REAL reality in linguistic terms because our language is based in the illusory world. So I think that the goddess's statements are perfectly explainable. She must communicate through our language so in doing so the faults with our language will be reflected in her own statements. She is merely showing us our own faults in our beliefs. So we err in our individuation and predications in our use of language and so

"[Our] alleged errors are therefore not basically linguistic, but derive from erroneous beliefs: for example, about the non-connectedness of things." p.155

Parmenides' View

He was born about 515 and was possibly a student of Xenophanes and studied with Pythagoreans. He is said to be one of the most controversial figures among the presocratics. He says that genuine thought and knowledge can be only about what is, for what is not is literally unsayable and unthinkable. What IS must be whole, complete, unchanging and one. In response to claiming the changing world is unreal, he gives us a cosmological account by a goddes named Doxa (beliefs/opinions) who claims to be deceptive in her account. He basically takes the Heraclitus view to the extreme in that everything is one in the same. Instead of in flux, everything is unchanging because it is one in the same and it is an unreal human distinction to think otherwise.

Straightforwardly, he gives us four characteristics of Being: imperishable, pure presence/eternal, unchanging, and all together/one/continuous. This Being is only accessible to pure thinking. Again, this view may seem the most far-fetched and bizarre, but it must be understood that he was one of the first philosopher's to separate his philosophical works as a conceptual analyst from real life experience. It would be a bad idea to try to live out his concepts. It wouldn't work in the slightest. I find it very courageous for him to take on such a philosophically radical concept in that it was so different from any of the other presocratics. I definitely see how Plato's forms were influenced by this theory of Being, he just took the one continuous Being and made them into many continuous unchanging Beings.

Heraclitus's View

He decided to take the Milesian World View and completely eliminate Being or Arche all together. He is an anarchist (literally meaning one who denies existence of a first principle) in a sense because he believes that nothing is stable, nothing endures. He suggests that our use of language might suggest a somewhat ontological dualism such as when we say rabbit it refers to the rabbit in front of us but also all rabbits. If our language is deceptive and nothing is stable how than be any rational account of this constantly changing reality? He persists in saying that “this logos always is but human beings fail to understand it” (p.34). For him though there is no timeless truths, there is no “right now”. These contradictions, riddles he points out are truth-giving for him, sort of like Zen Buddhist koans (Impossible to step into the same river twice).

Where I actually find a serious contradiction is in his view of logos. If he thinks that their is no arche or Being for nothing persists or endures. Life is ever-changing. He does say that logos rules and guides the cosmos, for it is a single, unchanging law. Also that there is a divine link between logos and the souls of human beings. Through this he claims that there is a possibility of acquiring sure and certain knowledge. So, he believes that we live in a constant flux, but beyond it there is something unchanging? This seems to be beyond contradiction and just plain fallacious argumentatively.