• Striking features of the Sophist.
• The middle is in striking contrast to the "outer parts"
  
• The outer parts:  (beginning to 237) The efforts to define what a sophist is, including the 7 "definitions" (summarized at 231c-233d) and the "method of division"
• Ostensibly, the dialogue is an effort to say what a sophist is, but it's not clear to those who take it seriously philosophically that it accomplishes that or whether it does so in a philosophically interesting way.
• the "method of division" is perhaps interesting as a way to classify, and classifying is a very important way to understand the world.
• also, there is a big problem with "persuasion," because it can create confidence and strength of conviction, and that is certainly a part of any discussion about belief or knowledge.
• BUT persuasion does not need truth or accuracy. Thus while it creates conviction and strength of belief, it does not necessarily create true or reliable or accurate belief.
• 223a: the sophist is the person who exchanges virtue or some other excellence for money: it looks like education. The sophist markets his wares (virtue and other skills) and then teaches those who decide to purchase his wares (there were no female sophists that I know of, although Diotima or Aspasia might be mentioned here).
• note that in ancient Greece, there was not a clear division between lawyers, legislators, politicians, marketing experts, etc. The sophist basically claimed to teach all those sorts of skills.
• Brown thinks there is no successful attempt to define sophist in the dialogue and that one problem with that is the assumption that sophistry is an expertise.
  
• The middle, starting at 237: the efforts to untangle false statements, predication, being, the five great kinds, etc.
• This middle is presented as a digression, but it contains what most people think is the most interesting part of the dialogue.
• Brown concentrates on two problems and thinks that the Eleatic Stranger offers a solution to both
  
• The "Late-learners'" problem: also called the Opsimath's problem
• The problem of false statement
  
• The mode of presentation is a character presenting teachings, also known as 'didactic'
  
• The Eleatic Stranger (henceforth ES) is teaching: this is not like the Republic where the fiction is that it is a joint inquiry. Here, ES teaches
• A clear reference to the Parmenides at 217c: seems like the Sophist must have been written after the Parmenides. It's setting is the day after the Theaetetus.

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT IN THE CENTRAL SECTION OF THE SOPHIST? How 'common' things (remember the Theaetetus) such as 'change' and 'being' and 'sameness' and 'difference' relate to each other and to other things and how we talk about that in a correct way. How true and false statements work and what kinds of statements there are and how they relate to reality.

• Some interesting moments I noticed, but are not necessarily discussed in Brown. I.e. some extra highlights for this class:
• 227b: the Eleatic Stranger says that the menial, everyday skills are no more nor less to be considered and analyzed than the elevated, sophisticated skills: compare the Parmenides, when Parmenides told Socrates that he would eventually come to think there is a form of mud, hair, and other lowly or "ridiculous" things.
• 228b-229a: partition of soul and analysis of vice and virtue via symmetry/dissymetry in the soul: disease versus deformity as two types of evil.
• no soul is voluntarily ignorant of anything?
• ignorance is perversion of process of understanding
• answer to all vice is education: either correcting education or exercising education
• 230b and f.: description of Socratic method?
• and they refuse to call that sophistry at 231a
  
• 237c: the impossibility of identifying "nothing"
• 238e  or even referring successfully to "nothing"!
• this is a moment when you have to say "but it's obvious that we can talk about things that are not" and so think that there MUST be something wrong here, some puzzle to be solved! OR a common idea (that we can think/discuss what is not) to be discarded
  
• 242d-243b ++: a vague description of all the presocratic philosophers: elementalists, strife v. love, monists, etc. No names given, but clearly referring to Heraclitus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, etc.
• The upshot is that talking of "everything" or "reality" is just about as impossible and self-contradictory as talking about "nothing"!#%*@?&!
  

• The structure of the middle part (the part Brown analyzes) 237 and following:
• NOTE WELL: the 10 points listed right below this bullet point are not meant to be easily understood or self-explanatory: they are like a table of contents rather than an attempt to explain the contents. After this list, you will find some of the points explained in the rest of these notes.
  
1. Problems about not being or what is not (237d-241c)
• Resolve: to show that what is not really is in some respect, and that what is really is not in some way (241d-242a)
  
2. Problems about being (242b-251a)
• Upshot: we're in as much difficulty about what is as we are about what is not (250e)
• do names exist in addition to what they name? if so, then the all as a name exists and the all as the referent exists, and so there are two things, not one thing, and the referent does not include all? The name cannot be the same as the thing, because then it cannot be the name of something, says ES at 244d. Why can't it be the name of itself? well, then we can ask whether the name is all there is to it? if so, then there is nothing else. If not, then it is at least two things, two separate things, and the person trying to refer to everything at once failed.
• could its name be a part of itself?
• a thicket of difficult arguments that shimmer between being profound and being silly, but are more likely profound.
• they add up to the claim that talking about reality is no more clear or obvious or not puzzling than talking about nothing.
  
3. A new problem: the Late Learners' prohibition on saying that one thing is many things (251a-c)
4. "Partial mixing" must be the correct one of three possible theories, since we can rule out "no-mixing" (Late Learners) and "total mixing" (251d-253b)
• Greatest Kinds: A Four point program laid out (254b-d2)
  
5. Five "greatest kinds" selected (point 1) and proofs offered that they are five (254d-255e) (point 2)
   
6. Points 3 and 4: The Communion of Kinds--investigation of how change combines with the other four kinds; demonstration that change is and is not being; and that being is, in a way, not being (255e-257a)
7. Negation, negative expressions, not being and the parts of difference (257b-258e)
• Upshot: we have shown that, and what, not being is (258e-259e)
• Remaining tasks: to show what statement is and that falsity in statement, judgement, and "appearing" is possible (260a-261b)
  
8. What statement (logos) is; the difference between "names" and "verbs" and between naming and saying (261c-262e)
9. True and false statements (262e-263d)
10. False judgement and false "appearing" (263d-264b)

• Late Learners (point iii above)
  
• "ES: Well, when we speak of a man we name him lots of things as well, applying colors and shapes and sizes and vices and virtues to him, and in these and thousands of other ways we say that he is not only a man but also good and many other things. And so with everything else: though we assume that each thing is one, by the same way of speaking we speak of it as many and with many names.
• Tht. What you say is true.
• ES This habit of ours seems to have provided a feast for the young and some old folk who've taken to studying late in life. For anyone can weigh in with the quick objection that it is impossible for what is many to be one and for what is one to be many, and they just love not allowing you to call a man good, but only the good good and the man a man. I dare say, Theaetetus, that you often meet people who are keen on that sort of line. Some of them are getting on in years, and their intellectual bankruptcy makes them marvel at that sort of thing and suppose that in this they have made an exceptionally clever discovery."
• Brown's summation of the late-learners:
• They allow only identity statements
• They do not allow predication, or "sharing in"
• Plato's task here is to explain predication in order to show that it is possible that a thing can be what it is not:
•  "K is L" and "K is not L" are both true statements (because K is different from L).
  
• For example: the two statements "Human is a species." and "Human is not a species" are both true!
• "Human is a species" is true if it is a predication sentence and means that there is a species to which humans belong and 'human' refers to that species and that there is such a thing as species, many of them, among which is the human species, and so human is a species.
• Predication attributes one thing to another in a specific way.
• often it means "L is in the set of things that are L"
• "Human is not a species" is true if it is an identity sentence and means that there is a species 'human' and there is such a thing as a species, but human refers to a particular species whereas species refers to the generic type that species refers to, and the particular human species is not the same thing as the generic type species.
• Identity statements are like equations in math.
• They mean that K and L are the same thing, that they are identical.
• This is not so much about the meaning of "is" but rather a problem about types of sentences: identity sentences versus predications. Whether the sentence has "is" in it is not decisive, but many such sentences do have 'is' in them.
• Others have said that Plato here uses a distinction between an "is" of identity and and "is" of predication and thereby in meeting the late-learners' argument also solves a problem that Gottlob Frege later re-solved.
• Brown rejects the notion of a special sense of "is" for identity in Plato (and probably elsewhere).
• But that interpretation is not really a bad one, just not Brown's preferred one. It may still be in play.
  
• "Communion of Kinds" as the solution to the Late-Learners' problem (point vi above)
• Point iv above: "Partial mixing" must be the correct one of three possible theories, since we can rule out "no-mixing" (Late Learners) and "total mixing" (251d-253b)
• Greatest Kinds: A Four point program laid out (254b-d2)
• draws analogy between letters and kinds: some letters combine with others, some do not: vowels act in certain ways, enabling the joining of letters. Vowels join with any letter, consonants do not.
  
• Point v above: Five "greatest kinds" selected and proofs offered that they are five (254d-255e) (i.e. points 1 and 2 of the four point program)
• Five greatest kinds are being, change, rest, stability, same, different.
• Here, ES promises to say how they combine and promises that will help get a grasp of being and not being, which in turn will show how it is safe to say both "K is L" and "K is not L".
• PLATO'S FOUR "QUARTETS"
• 255e10-256a1
  
• 1a change is different from stability
• 1b so, change is not stability
• 1c but Change is (in a stable way and therefore Change is stable)
  
• 1d because Change shares in being
• 256a3-b1
• 2a Change is different from the same
• 2b so Change is not the same
• 2c but Change is the same
• 2d because Change shares in the same
• GOT TO ROUGHLY HERE
  
• 256c5
• 3a change is different from different
• 3b so change is not different
• 3c but change is different
• 3d because change shares in different (not in text)
• 256d5
• 4a Change is different from being
• 4b so change is not being
• 4c but change is being
• 4d because change shares in being
• the pattern:
• a K is different from L
• b so K is not L (denial of identity between K and L, since it follows from a)
• c but K is L (L is predicated of K, as shown by paraphrase at d)
• d because K shares in L
• Apparent contradiction between b's and c's above
• the contradiction occurs because each of the Kinds can be either an adjective (as in c's) or a noun (as in b's)
• this argument, however, is not about parts of speech: rather it is about what underlies them: some things out there in the world can be thought of or referred to by a noun (an isolated being) or thought of or referred to by an adjective (a being that bears some relation to another being)
  
• given that the contradiction is only apparent, it can still be true that "K is L" and "K is not L" because L is used in different ways in each of those sentences.
• Brown maintains this is about sentence types, not about different senses of "is"
  
• the types are identity statements versus predication
• Identity statements look like "X=X": example "I am Jacques" or "X=some thing appearing to be other than X that really refers to the same thing as X" "I am the father of Isidora"
  
• Predication statements look like X + a predicate: examples "I am male," "I ride bike," "My sandwich smells funny."
• I.e. they are a subject plus the rest of a simple sentence, where what the rest of the sentence refers to is not identical with the subject.
  
• And yet, contrary to Brown, here are those who distinguish between senses of "is" to solve the problem between the b's and the c's
• They claim that in "K is L," the "is" is one of predication, whereas
• In "K is not L" the "is" is one of identity
• Gottlob Frege made a distinction like this which is famous (I won't speak to it: it's beyond my scope here and beyond my area in general)
• Those who champion this interpretation say that "is" is the common element between the b's and c's and is the locus of ambiguity.
• Brown points out evidence that it's about the type of statement, not the "is":
• the way Plato phrases the b's and c's and their difference does not actually always use "is" or anything like it at crucial places. Thus it cannot really be about uses of "is."
  
• Brown's solution has two versions:
• Owen's version: the word "is" is common to the b's and the c's, but each pair of b's and c's shares another term: in 2b and 2c for example, they share "same," and that is a locus of ambiguity.
• Greek does not say "This is the same" but rather "this is same," which enables the ambiguity: were Greek parallel to English and required "the," the problem would dissolve.
• In other words, "same" is an adjective in one and a noun in the other, and there is no ambiguity, but there appears to be in Greek, but not in English.
• Brown cites as support of this version that it makes better sense of some otherwise difficult lines:
• ES: and if this very thing, change, were to participate in any way in stability, it would not be at all odd to call it stable (adjective)
• Tht: Very true, if we are to agree that some of the kinds are willing to mix with one another and others are not (256b6-10)
• ES is saying that change does NOT share in stability, but IF it did, it would not be odd to call it stable.
• The Greek draws attention to the difference between "stability" and "stable" in a way that it cannot/does not do with the other terms, so Plato may be drawing attention to the adj./noun distinction here.
• Others object to Brown's interpretation by pointing out that the meaning of both adjectives and nouns that are paired up is fixed: they refer to Forms, and so the ambiguity cannot be located in that difference.
• Brown's more modest version:
• Brown will settle for the observation that the sentences are of different forms: one is an identity statement, the other is a predication, and that will suffice.
• What is more, the objections that apply to Owen's solution do not apply to this more modest version. Those objections are ...? that the difference between adj. and noun is not a good thing to hang one's hat on?
  
• Frede's alternative (Michael Frede, not Dorothea)
• The ambiguity is in the verb "is," but it's not one of "identity" versus "predication"
• The ambiguity is between an is that "is" referring to what a thing is in itself VERSUS one referring to what a thing is in relation to something else.
• Did you note the interesting parallel between what "Young Socrates" in the Parmenides wanted (an explanation of how the one itself is also its opposite?
  
• Socrates is white (not insofar as he is himself, but in relation to color)
• BUT
• The color white is white (in itself and not in relation to something else)
• So the difference seems to be between predicates that are analytic of a term versus those that are synthetic, if I may use those words.
• Brown objects that 1b (change is not stability) would have been "Change is not in itself stability" if Frede's alternative were right
  
• that is not the case, and the most natural interpretation of 1b is that it is a non-identity statement, not that it is a predication.
• Unfortunately, this appears to me to be quibbling and perhaps this is a difference without a distinction.
• but there is also a strong likelihood that I have misunderstood a nuance here
  
• There are those who find this whole problem of the late-learners phenomenally silly and not worthy of Plato
• Brown points out that we can point to serious philosophers in antiquity and modernity who maintained something like the late-learners thesis:
• the late learners problem rests on one or both of the following
• a metaphysical view of what the world consists in
• a view of language that sees naming as the only function of bits of language
• There is also a problem in that the Late learner's statements are all about particulars, but ES' statements are all about kinds.
• Brown points out that in either case, we have statements that one thing is many things AND that it is what it also is not.
• The claim that particulars are many things fits fine with Plato's metaphysics, BUT the claim that kinds are many things does not fit so clearly, and Plato concerned himself with kinds.
• The account of false statement
• Brown skips over vii above, which was:
  
• Negation, negative expressions, not being and the parts of difference (257b-258e)
• Upshot: we have shown that, and what, not being is (258e-259e)
• Remaining tasks: to show what statement is and that falsity in statement, judgement, and "appearing" is possible (260a-261b)
• She does note that it concludes with the claim to have found what not being is
• Showing that kinds mix solved the problem of "K is L" and "K is not L" both being true.
• But showing that kinds mix is not enough to solve the problem of false statements.
• Because 'statements' are something different than their referents: statements that "K is L" and "K is not L" are different from what is meant by "K is L" and "K is not L"
• one big difference would be that if statements have a single reference that they relate to, then they either successfully refer or they don't (back to the problem that Theaetetus and flying both successfully refer, but flying Theaetetus does not), while insofar as they are examined and considered as statements, truth or falsity is at issue, not reference.
  
• apparently Brown means that "K is L" and "K is not L" to refer to K's that actually are (not) L by means of statements in addition to simply being statements.
  
• What is needed is a clear account of what statement is.
• The account is really just a start, an account of what predication is, not an account of all statements.
  
• If other statements are reducible to basic predication, then the Sophist accomplishes something quite important.
• But surely conditionals, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc. are not simply reducible to predications.
• Still and all, an account of basic predication is pretty important.
  
• This section of the dialogue (261c-264b) is the section that most people agree is the most serious contribution of the Sophist
  
• There are words used to name kinds, but words and kinds are not the same as each other.
• Words are divided by this dialogue into two varieties: 'names' and 'verbs' (aka "predicates").
• "verb" means not the part of speech, but rather "predicate," whatever is being applied to the subject of a statement, whether that is a verb, a copula plus an adjective, or something else.
• examples of such 'verbs' are:
• "is running"
• "met Joe at the restaurant"
• "exists"
• "is not white"
• "has an unusually shaped blemish on its left upper nostril"
  
• "names" are not just proper names, but any word that refers to something and can be the subject of a statement.
• Examples of "names" are"
• "Joe"
• "Humans"
• "Being"
• "This"
• "Despicability"
• "Dining"
• can they also be more than one word? e.g. "Joe's sister's Humvee"? That seems reasonable.
  
• A statement is a combination of a name and a verb.
• Names alone can't form statements
• neither can verbs alone.
• interweaving a name with a verb succeeds in saying something
• The account of false statement
  
• So "Theaetetus sits" and "Theaetetus flies" are both statements.
• One is false, the other true.
• Because out there in reality, outside of language, it is not the case that Theaetetus flies, but it is the case that Theaetetus sits.
• The false one says different things about Theaetetus than the things that are in reality.
• That is, it says of things that are not that they are.
• But it also says things that are but are different from what is true about Theaetetus.
• "...flies" is a perfectly real phenomenon that applies to all sorts of things that really do fly.
• it's just that in reality, Theaetetus does not fly.
  
• The true one says something that concerns you and is.
  
• This deals nicely with the claim in the Theaetetus that speaking falsely is simply not speaking.
• Remember how the Theaetetus argued for that: it said that saying is like touching. Touching what is not is not touching at all. I think we said "grasping what is not is not grasping at all"
  
• The problem with that approach is that it treats touching as a unified thing that is incomposite (cannot be taken apart and analyzed by components), and it treats stating the same way. For touching, that analysis seems to work, but the Sophist's account of stating makes it a composite thing: stating mixes a noun with a verb. So there are at least three things there: the noun, the verb, and the mixing act. The noun can be and the verb can be, but the mixture of the two may not be.
  
• Thus one can successfully make a statement that is false by mixing a noun and a verb together. The noun secures the reference of the statement, and the verb does refer to something, but that something does not hold true of that noun.
• 263b7: "The false statement says different things from the things that are."
• This amounts to saying that the false one says things that are not.
• We can replace the plurals with singulars to make things clearer/simpler:
• The false one says something different from what is.
• A false start: What if I say "Theaetetus is talking" while Theaetetus is sitting.
• I have said something that is different from something that is about him.
  
• But he may be talking AND sitting.
• So it can't be the case that Plato is claiming that simply stating one thing of a subject that is different from some thing that is true of the subject is a false statement.
• Better options:
• The Oxford Interpretation: Crivelli as well as Keyt opt for this one
• A false statement says something about a subject that is different from everything that is about the subject.
• Maybe even better: A false statement mixes something with a subject, but that something is not in the set of all things that are about the subject.
  
• The incompatibility interpretation:
• A false statement says something about a subject that is incompatible with what is about him.
• Both options provide a working solution to the problem of false statements and how they can occur and be statements. They solve the problem slightly differently.
• There are objections to each:
• The Oxford interpretation:
• supplies an "every" which has no counterpart in the Greek.
• and does not go well with 263d1-4, which contains a formula for false statements:
• Namely, 263d1-4 says that in a false statement, "concerning you, different things are said to be the same, and not beings are said to be beings."
• We can substitute singulars: "concerning you, something different is said to be the same, and something that is not is said to be something that is."
• To make the Oxford Interpretation work, Brown says, we need to supply a few things: "something different from everything that is is said to be the same as something that is."
• Brown finds this awkward, "impossibly awkward", but admits that it gives a fine solution.
• In reply to Brown's 'awkwardness' objection, one might point out that much of the Sophist just is incredibly awkward. It's subject matter is incredibly difficult to talk clearly and precisely about.
  
• The Incompatibility interpretation:
• It requires Plato to mean two things with the one Greek word "heteron" (same word as is found in "heterosexual" or "heterodoxy"). At most places, it needs to mean simply "different," but then at another point, it needs to mean "incompatible," which is a specific kind of otherness, not just generic otherness.
  
• I Plato is using a word to mean two different things within one argument, he is guilty of what is called "equivocation." It renders arguments invalid. Bad stuff, logically.
  
• That would be problematic.
• Brown's suggestion:
• Modify the Incompatibility Interpretation slightly:
• "Incompatibility range"
• Earlier, at 257b1-c3, ES distinguished between what is contrary (enantion) and what is just different (monon heteron): he introduced the idea of a range of incompatibility options:
• What is not F may not be the contrary of F, but may still be something (within a certain range of things) that is not F
• For example, the ball that is not white may not be black, but may be red, which is still not white, and yet is not the contrary of white.
• And maybe the incompatibility range would not include being pizza-like or having little fuzzy bits on its ears: it could be confined to colors?
  
• Another example: what is "not large" is not necessarily small. It is just some size other than large: it might be "medium-sized."
• And what is not large would not be just anything that is not large, like my mother's memory of her long dead brother or the temperature of the ground in a specific place, which are both not large in a way.
  
• A range of incompatibles may have any number of members.
• So, we take the incompatibility interpretation (A false statement says something about a subject that is incompatible with what is about him.) and substitute back in "different," which is what the Greek heteron has meant all along.
• BUT in doing so, we can import the distinction made at 257b1-c3 which says that "different" may refer to a range of options which are mutually incompatible.
• To sum up, let's look at the two accounts of false statement we've looked at before:
• One is 263b7: The false one says different things from the things that are.
• Here, "different" means "something in the relevant incompatibility range"
• The other is at 263d: in a false statement, "concerning you, different things are said to be the same, and not beings are said to be beings."
• Brown now thinks this second one will work without any awkwardness or equivocation, if we mean by "different" things that are within the incompatibility range.
• An objection to Brown's Idea:
• This gives Plato a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for false statement.
• "Virtue is a square" is false, but virtue is not some other "different" thing within the same incompatibility range as "square." 
• Other examples of such false statements: "Ted divides without remainder into 1000" or "The square root of 6 looks like a pizza" or "My Aunt Margie has been fitted out on her upper deck with an externally mounted gun that can fire at a rate of 600 shells per minute and a range of 15 miles." or "The kitchen floor wants to be loved for itself, not its money."
  
• Thus Brown's idea does not cover the ground well enough: it does not account for false statements that use inappropriate "verbs" of "nouns."
• "The book is reproducing at a fast rate" or "My hair enjoys cheeseburgers" are both such false statements: there is no "verb" within the incompatibility range of "reproducing at a fast rate" that applies to any book, and similarly with my hair and enjoying cheeeseburgers.
• What if we say that in that case, the Oxford Interpretation works? The objections to it still stand as an interpretation of Plato, but it might work independently of whether or not Plato thought of it...
  
• Brown thinks this is a serious objection, but she thinks Plato is in good company:
• At a 1929 conference on negation, published as The Proceedings of the Aristotle Society IX (supplement), 1929, the following exchange occurred:
  
• Gilbert Ryle made the same mistake: "when a predicate is denied of a subject, that predicate must always be thought of as one member of a disjunctive set, some other member of which set (not necessarily specified) is asserted to be predicable of the subject."
• Price objected that "virtue is not a square" and "the soul is not a fire shovel" were both meaningful and true, but resisted analysis in terms of incompatible properties.