From: Lin Xiaofeng (Vincent)

To: Dr. Jean P. Tan; Philo 250 Date: 11/10/2010

NAMING, BRIDGING TOWARD THE UNIVERSAL FORM FOR SOCRATES

In Cratylus, Socrates encounters two theories of meaning, which are conventionalism and

naturism. For Hermogenes, names are just given by conventions and agreement. “Whatever

name you give to a thing is its right name; and if you give up that name and change it for

another, the later name is no less correct than the earlier, just as we change the names of our

servants.” Hence, there is no such a thing as “correctness of name.” (384d-e) However, Cratylus

holds an opposite argument. He believes that names are given according to the nature of matters

by the sages since beginning, so people must always follows this way to obtain knowledge.

Facing these two contradictive claims, Socrates does not give his own answer at first. He

goes back to observe the etymology in different aspects of Greek, such as God’s names and

names of creatures. He reflects them in the realm of epistemology. Then, he found that both

naturalism and conventionalism have certain proofs in Greek. However, he discovers that neither

conventionalism nor naturalism is true since they make knowledge impossible. Thus, none of

them get the full image of the whole context of etymology, and are able to clarify the relationship

between words and their indications. By this, Socrates lifts up his own theory that reflects his

central ontological insight of “Logo.” Names or words should relate to the Form or the Logo of

the world, so that knowledge is possible, but naming a thing also requires the participation of the

convention. Thus, etymology becomes a bridge connecting two major philosophical fields,

ontology and epistemology. Although such an interpretation over Cratylus is disputable among

scholars,1 I would like to argue that Socrates holds this theme on his way knocking down the

naturalism and conventionalism.

In the dialogue with Hermogenes, Socrates first tries to overthrow the extreme

conventionalism, which totally rejects any connection between a word and its meaning. He puts a

1
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato's Cratylus, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-cratylus/.
name, such as a “man” or a “horse” in a logical valid sentence to observe a word and its

indication. Since a true speech has to be true as a whole, a noun has to be true in a sentence, too

(385b). However, this contradicts to the conventional idea of etymology, which regards “no

name belongs to any particular thing by nature, but only by the habit and custom of those who

employ it and who established the usage.”(384d) Thus, judgment cannot be made, and

knowledge is impossible.

In this pondering, Socrates equates a valid judgment in human reasoning to the essence of

the nature. He simply puts a logical valid and etymological valid as indivisible unity, so he can

jump from a valid judgment of a speech to correctness of a word. This is based on platonic

realism that claims that correct human reasoning can knows the universal Form. Corrects words

can show the essence of the world, and people grasp the Form via learning them, so the meaning

of a word become a bridge of mind toward the Form.

However, many words do not have this capacity, since Socrates believes that naming is

not a common act, and it requires certain quality of intelligence. “The names of things were

originally assigned to them by one or more of our early ancestors… the original name-makers

will have encoded in their products their own insights— some better, some worse—into the

natures of the things they were naming.”2 Thus, it is possible that many words do not reflects the

essence of the world (397b). From here, Socrates challenges Cratylus naturalistic idea, not only

because the foundation of Cratylus argument, the Universal Flux, makes knowledge impossible,

but also because he ignores the limited length of a syllables and the enigmatic sounds of a word,

which can only be overcome by conventions. Thus, Socrates manages to reconcile the naturalism

and conventionalism in his realistic understanding of etymology.

2
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato's Cratylus, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-cratylus/.