No.

4/1981

Mąria.n Przetęcki

. ON WHAT THERE IS NOT

It is a Te'cent reading 'of Plato's ,Sophźstthat made m'e put these

remarks on the semantic probl'ems of falsehood and not-being. r It is
quite astonishing and admirable how live rnost of what Plato says aibour,
these matters in his dialogue sounds to us nowadays. It is my cont'ention
(which I shall try to defend in what follows) that the text of the
dialogue contains thoughts and ideas trhat closely corr'espond to thos'e
charact'eristic of m;odern logical semantics. T,he difficulties w,hich Plato
is coping with and the solutions proposed by him find their explicit
ćou'nterparts in the discussions of conternporary logicians and semanti-
cists. This statement, however, needs som,e qualification. The text of
the dialogue is c,omprethensive and indefinite enough t,o allow for
different readrngs and interpre'tations. It is only some interpretatio,n
of som,e of its fragm,ents that may be said to yield that version of its
pr,oblem'swihich is suggested.below. I would, however, contend that the
interpretation advanced is a 'warranted one and the frag,ments so
interpreted ess,ential for th'e author's standpo'int. One more point should
be explicitly stated beforehand. Referring to what I call modern iogical
semantics, I mean by this a definite semantic theory: mod,el th,e,or,etic
semantics in its standard version, wlhich might be regarded a,s a ,'classi-
cal" form of contemporary logical semantics. Some deviati,on,s from
this use will be indicated rin wha't f'ollows.
T,he most important'philosophical c,ontent of the dialogue is contained
in its second part (esp. in t,he paragraphs 23?-264). The rną.in probl'ern
concerns the semanti'c characteristic of falsehood and, involved in it,
notion of not-being. Two main interlocurtors rin the dialogue - the
Eleatic Stranger and Thea,et'etus- arrive at these problems in tłheir
attempt to define the art of the Sophist. One of the deiinitio,ns identifi,es
it with "the art of making a,ppearan,ces" QSil.z But trhe not on of
appearanc'e, as well as, r,elated to it, notion of false sentence, or opinion,
turn out to be highly enigrnat'ic - unintelligible, or inconsistent-. "For
how.a thing can appear and,se,em,and not 6e, or h,ow a man can say
a thing which is not true, has always ,been and still remains a very
perpl'exing question. can any ore siy or think that falsehood really
r The present paper
owes its ,o,rigin t,o a serninar oonducted joirLily by
Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz and rnyself at the Instit,ute of Philosophy, Warsaw
University, in the academic year 1978/79. The semina,r, entiiled ,,The notion
oi existence in philosophy and logic", was in part devoted to a discussion of
Plato's Sophist.
2 Al1 quotations in
t'he text are taken from .t,he classical Jowett's traInslaŁi'on:
The Dźalogues oJ Plato translated into English rvith analy,ses and introductions
by B. Jowett, vol. IV (3rd edition), Oxf,ord 1892.
.''Ę1el

DIALECTICS AND HUMANISM

No. 4i1981

Marian Przełęcki

ON WHAT THERE IS NOT

It is a re'cent reading ,of Plato's Sop}r,ż,st tlhat made me put these

remarks on the semantic probl'ems of fals'ehood and not-being. r It is
quite ast'onishing and admirable how live rnost of w,hat Plato says abou.
these matters in his dialogue sounds ,to us nowadays. It is my cont,ention
(which I shall try to defend in wrhat foll,ows) that the text of the
dialogue contains thoughts and idoas that closely corr,esp,ondto those
characteristic 'of modern logical semantics. The difficulties which Piato
is coping with and the solutions propos,ed by him lind their explicit
counterparts in the discussions of conternrporary logicians and semanti-
cists. This statement, however, rreeds some qualification. The text of
the dialogue is comprerhensive and indefinite enough to ailow f'or
different readings and interpre'tations. It is only some interpretation
of some of its fragm'ents tłrat may be said to y.ield that version of its
pr,oblem'swlh,iahis suggested,below. I would, however, contend that the
interpretation advanced is a warranted one and the fragments so
interpreted ess'ential for the author's standpoint. One m'ore point should
be explicitly stated befor,ehand. Referring to what I call modern logical
semantics, I rnean by this a definite semantic theory: mo'de1 theo,r,etic
semantics in its standard version, wihich might b,e regarded a,s a "classi-
cal" form ,of contemporary logical semantics. Some deviati,ons from
this use will be indicated in what f,ollows.
T)he most imp'ortanf philosoph,ical c,ontent of the dialogu,e is c,ontadned
iu its second pant (esp. ,in the paragraphs 237-264). The ma'in pr,o,blern
concerns th,e semanti'c chalacteristic of falsehood and, involved in it,
notion of not-being. Two main i,nterlocu,tors rin the dialogue - the
Eieatic stranger and rhea,et,etus - arrive at these problems in tlheir'
attempt to define the art of t,he Sophist. One of the definitions identifies
it with "the art of making a,ppearances" (2SO).z But the notion of
appearance, as vinellas, related t,oit, notion ,of fals,e sentence, or opinion,
turn out to be highly enigmat'ic - unintelligible, or inc,onsistent. ,'For
how.a thing can appear and seem, and not ,be, or how a man can say
a thing wrhich is no true, has always ,been 'and" stili remai.rs a ,re.y
perplexing question. can any one siy or think that falsehood reallv

r The present paper orves

its o.rigi6r to a seminar oonducted join ly by
Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz and rn}"self at the Instit,ute of Philosophy, Warsaw
University, in the academic year 7978/79. The ,semina,r, entitled "The notiorr
of existernce in philosophy and logic", was in part devoted to a discussion of
P]ato.s Sophźsf'
2 All quotatiorrs in
the text are taken from the classical Jowett's translat.ion:
The Di,alogues of Plato translated into English rvith analyse.s and intr'oductions
by B. Jowett, vot. IV (3rd edition). Oxf,oird 1892.
124 Mą'rian Przełęcki
exists, and avoid being caught in a conitradiction? (...) He who says that
falserhood exists has the aud'acity to assert the being of not-being" '
(237). Whv this is said to be so becomes unders;tandable on the following
explication of a fals.e opinion: ..false opinion is that form of opinion włbich
thinks (...) what is not". Theref,ore, as Theaetetus conclud'ers,"things that
are not must, be imagined to exist in a certafn sense, if any degree of
false'hood is to be possible" (240).
The conclusion s,ounds convincing under some only of the admissible
interpretations of the above argument. It is to be n,oticed that what
might b'e considered the most lite,ral int'enpr,etationcannot be shown to
justifv Theaetetus' conclusion. According to it, a false sentence is to'
be c'once'ived ars a kind of existential sentence: a statement ass,erting
the existence 'of somethringwhich, in fact, does not exist. It is hard to
say, however, why it is just the falsit.y of sur'cha statement that ris said
to 'entail the existence of tłrose n'onexistent entibies. Besides, the
restrictlon of all false sentences to existential ones is quite
-of unwarranted.
Among other tvpes of such sentences, the negations existential sta-
tem'ents ;should certainlv be taken into account, being irreducible to
the existentiai ones. Plato seems to be aware of th,is when, at some
other plags in his dialogue, rhe is d,efining a false sentence by a formula
identical with the famous definition of Aris,totle: ,'a false. proposition
will be deerned to 'be ,one w,hich asserts the non-existence of th,ings
whi'ch are, and the existenc,e 'of things which are not" (240). It is
evident, h'owever, tha't the falsity of a statemet rł'lhich negates the
existence of factually exist'ing things can,not, in any straightforward
way, entail the existenrcc ,of some nonexi,stent ,en't,ities.
-Interpretation which makes Plato's orgum nt a cogent o'ne is of
a different typ'e. Being base'd on a semantics of faots (states of affairs,
or situations), it may be called a wi,ttgansteinian one.3 It is concerned
not with what er given sent,ence explioitly says, but with what it, as
a whole, refers to (or deno,tes). That ref erence (or denotation) is
conceived of a's s'ome state of affairs, or situation. What a sentenc,e
p rrefers to is identiified with a situation whioh may be named by the
clause: that p" Each ,meaningful sent,ence(each statement) is assum-edto
refer to a defin,ite situartion.This is said 'to hold not only for true, but
also for false statemen,ts.But while true sentences reier to existing
situations, false sentences are assum'ed to refelto situations which d6
not exist. The rtrue sentence "Theaete,tu,ssits" refers to an existing
state of affairs - the situation that rheaetetus sits. In c,on,trastto it.
the state of aff'air,s referre'd to by ,the false sentrence ,,Theaetetus is
flying" - the situation that Theaetetus is flying - is something that
does not exist. It is in this sense that false- opln on is said to be an
"opinion which thinks what is no,t". No wond,er then that ,,things
tihat are not must be imagined to exist (...) if farserhoodis to 6'e
possibl,e".
Pla,to sees, at th,is point, an analogy between statements and irnages.
True statements are gqrn'paredto ..Ilikenes5ę5''- true images of tihings,
false st,atementsto ..appealan'cę5''- false images of things. And Plato
3 In presenting it, I follow some suggestions made by B. WoJ,niewicz; see,
e.g. his paper: "Sytuacje jako korelaty semantyczne zdafr'r (Situations as the
semantic correlates of, sentences), Studiu Fżl'ozoJźczne,2 (147), |978.
On What There ]s Not 125
seems toassum,e that a false im,aBe of an existing thing is nothing 'else
but a trl.'e irnage 'of some nonexistent entity. Appearance might t'hus
be defined as a "likeness of whait is not". Tlhi's notion then, I'ike that
of falseho'od, involves the notio'n of "what'i,s not" and makes us "ass'ert
the being of not-being".
This is how the dia'logue enters iinto trhe fundame'ntal ques;tions
of not-being. The discussion oonc'erns the noti'on of nort-being i.n g,eneral
- independently of w,hether it i's taken to be a se'mantic cornelate of
false statements - and concenbrarte'son the semantic p'ro'bl'emsof our
..En'deavour with a1l your might to sp,ggĘ.g1
disoourse about not'being.
n,ot-being in a right mann,er" (239) - appeals the Eleatic Stranger
to hirs interlocutor. But just this proves to be impossible. The probl'em
has its counterpart in m,odern logical semantic's, and ,some of Plato's
sayings closely resemble the well-known formulations of Russell and
.iend.eavourt'o speek of not-being
Quine. The difficulty we m'eet rł/henwe
in a night manner" lies in the iogical struoture of simple pr'edicative
.way as
sentenc,es. This structure is c,o'nceivedby Plato in the sa,rne
in modern logicai semantics (based on cl'assicai logical oalculus). The
simplest se'ntence of the form: o is A requires that o b,e an indiviclual
name, i.e. a narne denoting ,exactly one existing object. We cannot
thus pred;i,cateanything of "what is n'ot". "A 'sentonce must and 'cannot
help having a subject (...)A rsentencewhich has ,no subject is impossibl'e"
(262-263). And subject is here understood semantically - as that
object of whj:oh tlhe given 5entenc'e speaks. In c,onsequence, the word
"rrot-being" 'cannot be treaTed as an individual name, say n, and our
judgments a'bout not-being cann,ot be ,expressed by ,s'entenoesof the
form: n is A, Speaking 'thus - saying tlhat not-being is such and
such - we would assum'e that not-being 'exists, would "attribute being
to not-being" (238). But tthis is said to be a contradiction whiclh one
cannot eBcape. The Eleatic Stranger expr'esses his conclusion ab'out
not-being just as a sen'ten'oe of the form: n ts A - "n'sf-ifusing is
unutterable, unspeakable, inderscribable" (238). And by do{ng this, he
"is c,ompelled to assert being o'f not-being" (2+L).
Is it then possible "to speak of no't.being 'in a righit rnanner"? It is
Russell's ,theory of description that 'is usually regarded as a solution of
this question. A'ccording to it, the notion of n,ot-being is to be
expresse'd not by an individual nam,e, but rby a (definite, or inde'finite)
des,cripti'on:"v;hat is no't" ('(what ,there is not", 'cwhat does not ,exist").
Expras'sions of this kind are actually used by the disputants in Plato's
dialogue. As it is kn,own, a descripti,on differs from an individual name
in that t is not assurn,ed to den,ot'eanything. A sentence c'ontaining
des'cription may thus be m,elaningful, althouglh there is nothing trhat
satisfies the d'escripti'o'n.And so, we can speak m,eaningfully of "what
is not" without "attributing being to not-being". A more radical solution
is suggested by Qurine's proposal to disp,ense wit'h any na'rnes and
descriptions and. admit predicates as the only nonlogical terms. The
notion of not-being will the,n be expressed by som'e predica,te N;
"nonexistent" ("is n.ot", does rrot exist"). Since (in co,ntradistinction
to a name) a predicate may well be em,pty, there is no problem in
formulating meaningtul, a,nd even true, sentences oontaining the pre-
dicate N. Stitl another solution is pr,ovided by a ,certain modificatiqn
of classical logical calculus, known under the narne of fnee logic. TLre
some A, is always B, for sorne B, and so "paltakes of b.eing". Plato's
arsumentation iJ based on the asrsum'ptionthat what is-not A is not-A,
f"l"g not-A means to be as mudh as beinrg A. "The negative
particles i...) when prefixed to words, do not implv 'orpposition,but only
"r,"a
diffutuno" (...) from the things r,Bpresented ,by the words wn'ioh follow
them" (25?). That idea is illus.trated by a numrber of examples. "The
not-great may be said to exist, equally with the greart (...) And, i'n the
same vlay, the just rrnust be pl'aced in the same catego,ry with the
not-jus,t - the one 'cannot be said to have anv rrlore existenc'e than
the other". So "thing,s w,hich ar'e not are" (258) - concludes the
Stranger.
Apart from his peculiar ter'rniraology, Plato's standpoint sounds
convi,ncing al,so today, though from tih'ep'oint'of vie,w of modern logical
semantics 'it needs some qualifi,cations. Generally speaking, it is true
tlhat if a predioarte A refe'r,sto a pro,penty (or kind) of o'bjects, so does
its negatiorn,not-A. But when the ,predioate A is universal, the predic,ate
not-A is ,emrpty a,nd refers to a property whic,h does n,ot belo'ng to
anything. Might then beirr,g not-A be Ńill consid'ered a kind of being?
Another difficulty arises whern the refer,ent of a rpred'icate is to be
interrpreted as a set -- in the stri'ct, set theor,etic se'nse of this term.
To be weII defined, the r'eferent o'f .pr'edicate not-A cannot then be
taken 'to be the set of anything which is n'ot A. It should be defined
as a ,subset of so'me fixed set U: the set of tlhose el'ements of U which
are not A, with U representi:rg our "u.nivense of discours,e".
Now, d,oes the r,elative notion 'of not-being defined as above allow
to iaccount for rvhat constitutes the main object of the Plato,nic
inquiry: tthe 'e,ss,enceof false sentences and ,opinions? The interlocutors
g ve a positive answer to flhis question. After having characterizsd the
structure of the simplesŁ senten.ces,they define a fal.se seryt,enc'e of that
kind, such as t{he sentence "Thea,etetus is flying", as a sentence that
"speaks of 'things whicth are not as if they were (...) and says that
things are ,r'eal of you wlhioh are not; for (...) in regard to 'each thing
or person, ther'e is m'ucrh that is and much that is n'ot" (263). The
only notion of not-being iinvolved in that expłi.cation is clairned to be
the uncontrover.sial r,elatrive notion. Whether this is th,e ca,se canno't
be said decidedly. The text is ambiguous and susceptible of different
interpretations. But it is my con-tention that there is, arnong them, an
interpretation which sa,tisfies the above claim. It is an interpretation
that closely r,esernbles the interpretation provided by model theoretirc
semantics. It explicates the falsity of a given sentence without resorting
to any nonexistent entities - th,ings or situations. The e:qglication
migłrt, i.n błief, be render'ed as foll'ow1s:a sentence ,.0"is A'' is false
if it is not the case that a ts A; and th,is holds if -o is not--A. This
final statem,ent refers to existing entitries ,onlv: to an individual o and
to a property (or kind) not-A, which ,r.s "not-b'eing" in the relative
sense only and, as such, is one of the kinds of being. Let us illustrate
the case by the 'example dl-scussed in the d'ialogue.-The statement to
the 'effect that the sentenc,e "Theaetetus is flying" is false can be sai.d
to mean the same as the statement "Theaete,tuJ is not frying", -andwhich
attributes to an existing 'person: Theae,tetus, a r,elative ,oniy, thus
existing, kind of not-being: not-flying. This is just how th;e falsity of
an atomic sentence is being defined within model thooretic semantics.
The main difer,ence ooncerTls the ontological c&raracteristics of the
entity referred to by the pr'ed'ioate n,ot-A: in tLre stanĄ-rd logical i
semantics it is usually iden'tified with a set, which can hardly be said
to p'rovide arn adequate interpreta,tion of the Pla'tonic "kiind". The
restriction of the a'bove 'explication to sentences of the simp'l'est, viz.
atomic, type 'i's of no esserr'tial impontance. The defi,nition of trutłr and
falsełroodis f.ormulated by modern semalntics in .1 recursive form, wthich
reduc,es truth and falsity of any sentence to truth and falsity of the
ato,m'icsentences.
Conclud,ing tihese remarks, I ,want to calrl attention to certa'in general
features of the appr.oach h'ere adva'nced. lt is an appr,oaoh free from
those assumptions whi'ch lie behind the m'ain paradoxes discussed in
the dialogu'e. One of tLre assumptiro,n,smight be sta't'ed in the iorm of
the following condition: a sen;tenc,efaisely describes w,hat is if and
only if it truly d'escribes what is not. The solution proposed does not
assume any such condition. A false senteinc,espeaks about the same
real world a,s a true one. To say that it descnib,es this world faisely
does not mean to say that it truly describes so'rne other world, whic,h
does not exist. Simrilarly, a false image o'f a'n existing obiect is not to be
identified with a true irnage of some nonexistent entity. In consequence,
thene is no need. to intnoduce any nonexistent sirtuations ars the rsernantic
correlates of false ,sentences.Moreover, no senrt,enice wlhatever - either
true, or false - b here assum,ed to refer to (or denote) a situati,on
(fact, .state of affa,irs). What a sent'enc'e d,escribes - some fragment,
or domain of realitv - is s6nseived as a system o'f things: concrete
and abstract objeots such a,s individuals, sets, rproperties, relations, and
so on. It is the norninal components of, ,a .sentence- nam,es,Lpr,edicates -
that denote Some 'of those objects. The sentence as a włr,ole - n,ot
being a name - does not denote, or r,e:ferto, anything. Its semantic
function consists in sornething else: in being true ,or false, not inr
refe'rring. And that funretion can w,eIl be ac'c,ountodfor within a ser-nantics
{
oj things, and nrot .siltuations. The text of the Sophźsć, int.erpreted in
the way rhere advanced, seems to confirm that conrtention.
Marźan Przeł,ęckż
d