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.