Name and Meaning in Plato’s Cratylus 384A8-391A4: The Technical Model of Language as a Solution to the Controversy between Naturalism and Conventionalism
Keywords:
Name, meaning, essence, naturalism, conventionalismAbstract
I aim to show that in the Cratylus Plato develops a model for names and meaning that offers alternative solutions to some of the problems in linguistic naturalism and conventionalism. I will focus chiefly on the reconstruction of the argument at 384a8-391a4 and on the later refutation of the crude naturalism at 428dff. The aim is to explain Plato’s two main theses on names according to which (a) names are instruments made by convention in order to perform some specific action, and (b) they have a semantic-normative external source lying in the natural essences of things. In addition, I aim to show that Plato’s Cratylus initiates the descriptive theory of meaning which Aristotle continues in De Interpretatione.
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