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TAKING THE TOOL ANALOGY SERIOUSLY: FORMS AND NAMING IN THE CRATYLUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2014

Imogen Smith
Imogen Smith*
Affiliation:
University of the West of England (UWE)
*
*E-mail: imogen_e_smith@icloud.com
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Abstract

It has been suggested that the so-called tool analogy passage of Plato's Cratylus presents us with a moderate linguistic naturalism that can stand or fall independently of the more unpalatable etymological and mimetic theories advanced later in the dialogue. This paper offers a reading of the tool analogy which argues that Socrates' employment of Forms (and in particular Species-Forms), together with a careful distinction between the types of knowledge associated with making and using tools, aims to establish a radical linguistic naturalism that constrains the intrinsic properties of names. This should be clear if we take Socrates' claim seriously that names are tools: tools in general can only function successfully if they exhibit the relevant structural, compositional and (to some extent) material properties. Since Socrates claims that names are a class of tools and not merely like tools in some respects, as many have supposed, then what holds for tools in general must also hold for names.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 60 , 30 April 2014 , pp. 75 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Cambridge University Press

Introduction

The Cratylus begins with a disagreement about names.Footnote 1 Cratylus believes that names have to be naturally correct for their objects if they are to be those objects' names, while Hermogenes, on the other hand, believes that we may call objects anything we like: no one name is more correct for an object than another. Socrates is enrolled in the discussion to help them find out which one of them is right. Most of the ensuing discussion finds Socrates appearing to take the side of Cratylus by expounding a theory that attempts to show why a name has to be naturally correct for the object that it names, and that offers an explanation of what such natural correctness amounts to.

Hermogenes' own view is deeply grounded in his belief that names are arbitrary. He claims, against Cratylus, that a name is simply ‘a piece of voice’ (τῆς … φωνῆς μόριον) which is uttered (ἐπιφθεγγόμενοι) (383a7).Footnote 2 To say that names are arbitrary is to say that their intrinsic properties could have been otherwise without detriment to existing reference relations. Moreover, Hermogenes holds not merely that a name could have been different but that it can in fact be different: if one sets down a new name for something, that new name is ‘no less correct’ than the original, ‘just as when we change the names of our slaves’.Footnote 3 In contrast, Cratylus denies that names are arbitrary: he denies that ‘Hermogenes’ is Hermogenes' name, we may suppose, because ‘Hermogenes’ can be analysed to yield a particular description, ‘offspring of Hermes’, which is not true of Cratylus' interlocutor.

For the purposes of this paper I will characterise the salient negative feature of Hermogenes' position I wish to start from as follows:

  • • If linguistic naturalism were true then names would be non-arbitrary. Since names are arbitrary, linguistic naturalism is false.

If names are arbitrary, some mechanism is required by means of which members of a linguistic community can coordinate the use of these arbitrary sounds so as to enable successful communication. Convention, or intra-community agreements to use certain sounds in certain ways, seems to be the most promising candidate to fill the gap.Footnote 4

However, many have considered Hermogenes' brand of conventionalism, which allows for conventions to be made by individuals alone, untenable. Accordingly, some have suggested that Hermogenes stands refuted within just a few pages, since his conventionalism about names is shown to entail a relativism about things that he is not prepared to commit to.Footnote 5 Recent work, however, has demonstrated that Hermogenes' conventionalism is a more substantial thesis than had been previously thought, does not entail a general relativism, and that, instead of attempting to refute Hermogenes by proving as much, Socrates rather argues that linguistic naturalism follows from certain objectivist premises he agrees to.Footnote 6

However, if Socrates wants to disabuse Hermogenes of the belief that linguistic naturalism is false, then he must either (a) demonstrate to Hermogenes the falsehood of his belief that names are arbitrary, or (b) advance a linguistic naturalism that holds even if names are arbitrary (and thus show that linguistic naturalism does not entail that names are non-arbitrary). Of course, (b) does not amount to a proof of linguistic naturalism, it merely defeats Hermogenes' particular objection to it. Nevertheless, in context, this should leave Hermogenes more amenable to an alternative, naturalist thesis.

Socrates' positive naturalist thesis comes in two parts. The discussion of 386d–390e, known as the ‘tool analogy’, comprises a largely deductive argument making appeal to the Forms and proceeds from a rejection of a traditional Platonic concern, Protagorean relativism.Footnote 7 Socrates then advances (391b–427d) an etymological-mimetic theory of naming which appeals to the evidence of the phonetic and structural properties of actual Greek names in an attempt to show Hermogenes that names are non-arbitrary since their internal constitutions render them ‘correct for’ the objects they name.

Some commentators have supposed that the tool analogy and the etymological-mimetic theory of names are susceptible of independent evaluation: they need not stand or fall together.Footnote 8 The tool analogy, on these interpretations, typically provides a general, functionalist account of names aimed at demonstrating the truth of linguistic naturalism (in some form or other) to Hermogenes; the etymological-mimetic account (which clearly pursues strategy (a)), provides one, but not the only possible, articulation of that theory's details. Thus if the details advanced by the etymological-mimetic theory are rejected, the general framework of the functionalist account may be left unscathed.Footnote 9 Moreover, this leaves open the possibility of reading the tool analogy as providing a different argument in favour of naturalism: one which pursues strategy (b), by advocating a moderate linguistic naturalism which constrains certain naming practices while at the same time allowing for arbitrary names.

One typical such reading envisages a moderate linguistic naturalism that requires merely that a name must (if it is to be a name) separate out a natural kind. On such a theory, as Fine suggests, ‘[i]f, for example, our language contains the word “trock”, to be applied indifferently to trees and rocks, yet trees and rocks are distinct natural kinds, “trock” is an incorrect name; it does not divide up reality correctly’.Footnote 10 Irwin supposes that it is a conventionalism that allows this sort of error that Socrates seeks to reject.Footnote 11 Thus so long as distinctions between names map genuine distinctions in nature, the intrinsic properties of an individual name could, we may suppose, be arbitrary. On this line of interpretation the conclusions of the tool analogy, which allow for arbitrary names, can survive the rejection of the etymological-mimetic thesis.Footnote 12

This paper provides considerations against reading the tool analogy in this way: properly understood, the tool analogy argument is intended to show that names are non-arbitrary. Key to this interpretation are both Socrates' introduction of Species-Forms (389b8), which finely circumscribe the features of the specific tools that instantiate them, and his careful distinction between the crafts of the expert name-maker, the νομοθέτης (or ὀνοματουργός), and the expert name-user, the dialectician. Traditionally, little has been made of this distinction by the defenders of moderate naturalism.Footnote 13 Moreover, Ademollo, in his recent commentary on the Cratylus, has dismissed the distinction as unreal; yet, as I will suggest, taking the distinction seriously is required to give substance to his (to my mind, correct) suspicion that the notion of Species-Forms ‘may be, as a matter of fact, much more tightly connected with the purpose of naturalism than is usually supposed’.Footnote 14

The specialised ability afforded to the name-maker in looking to the Species-Form of each name and setting it in sounds and syllables is at the core of the conclusion of the tool analogy (390d7–e5), where Socrates does not claim to have shown (merely) that Hermogenes' conventionalism is wrong, but that ‘Cratylus speaks the truth (ἀληθῆ λέγει) when he says that names exist by nature for things’ (390d11–e1). It will be to the detriment of any interpretation, then, not to give the craft of name-making its due.

In section 1, I suggest that Socrates' discussion of successful actions at the opening of the tool analogy constitutes no objection, by itself, to Hermogenes' original claim that we can call objects by any name that we like. The agreement elicited that naming, as all actions, is subject to objective success criteria does not entail that those criteria themselves could not be determined by conventions or something similar. This early passage at most demonstrates that a name's use must be in accordance with what it was established for.

In section 2, I suggest that Socrates' subsequent introduction of a ‘Species-Form’, which a name must possess in order to be a name for a particular object, sets natural constraints on naming-conventions themselves. The Species-Form accounts for a particular name's necessarily having the particular function that it does (say, the function of naming a cat rather than a dog) and strictly constrains how it may subsequently be used. However, I suggest, we must take more than mere functions into account if we are to make sense of the claim that the name-maker's unique skills afford his names authority alone.

Thus, in section 3, I go on to suggest that the Species-Form, understood in the context of the toolmaker's craft, must not only constrain a name's function, but must also constrain its structural features: what it must be like in order to function as a name for its nominatum. If a tool's user knows how to use a tool (and so primarily has knowledge of its function) and the maker's knowledge is distinct from this, then there are grounds to suppose that the maker's knowledge includes, inter alia, knowledge of facts about what a tool must be like in order to perform its function. Moreover, the requirement for collaboration between maker and user in tool production cannot be easily made sense of unless Socrates intends us to view Species-Forms as determining the structural properties of names. I then suggest that by examining certain claims in the opening passages of the etymological discussion (391c10–395a2), we may best understand the name-maker's task of embodying the Form in the matter as his encoding informational content in sounds and syllables, in virtue of which a name so created can perform its intended task. Apparent minor differences in the informational content of names that Socrates claims to be ‘the same’ can thus be explained in terms of the approximation of particulars to the Forms that they instantiate.

In the concluding section, I make some tentative suggestions as to the implications of this reading of the tool analogy for our understanding of the Cratylus as a whole.

1. The ‘tool analogy’

I attach the traditional label of ‘tool analogy’ to the first part of Socrates' naturalist thesis, but here I introduce a caveat: the tool analogy passage is not an argument by analogy. It is important to recognise that Socrates does not claim that names work analogously to tools; he claims that they are tools. Consequently, we cannot interpret the relevant passages as if Plato thought of names as sui generis entities that merely happen to share certain properties with tools, so that a discussion of tools may shed light on some aspects of names – as if, when it serves to make Plato look more hospitable to modern semantic doctrines, we may ignore the constraints imposed by the general claims made about tools in the passage.Footnote 15 We risk misinterpreting Plato here unless we acknowledge that the so-called tool analogy classifies names as tools, and not merely as like tools in some respects.

In the first stage of the tool analogy (386d8–389a4) Socrates makes some remarks about tools, and names as a class of tools, which together imply certain facts about naming. These can be set out as follows:

  1. 1. All objects exist independently of us; they have their own independent, stable natures. (386d8–e4)

  2. 2. Actions, as a class of objects, also have their own independent natures. (386e6–8)

  3. 3. In order for an action to be successful, it must be performed according to its own nature, the nature of the object that the action is performed upon, and with the tool that is naturally fitted for the purpose, not merely according to the wishes of the agent. (387a1–b4)

  4. 4. Speaking is a class of action, and is subject to the success conditions of 3. (387b11–c4)

  5. 5. Naming (ὀνομάζειν), as a part of speaking, is also subject to the success conditions of 3. (387c6–d8)

  6. 6. Each type of action requiring a tool for its performance requires a specific type of tool (weaving requires shuttles, boring requires trepans etc.). (387d10–e3)

  7. 7. The tool required for naming is a name. (388a6–7)

  8. 8. Naming is defined as dividing things as they are and teaching something to one another. (388b10–11)

  9. 9. Therefore, the function of a name is to divide up reality and teach something to another. (388b10–c1)Footnote 16

Although ὀνομάζειν may appear to be ambivalent between name establishment and name use, the parallel with weaving and boring (which use tools), suggest that name use is intended here.Footnote 17 There are, we are told, objective conditions which govern what counts as a case of successful name use: whether I use the vocabulary available to me successfully is not simply a matter of my own whim, I must use it in such a way as to separate things as they are and teach something to another.Footnote 18 Likewise, my successfully driving a screw is not merely a matter of my merely deciding that I have done so: if, Socrates proposes at 387c, we use the tool that is not naturally suited for our intended task we will ‘go wrong and accomplish nothing’.Footnote 19

Although Socrates has elicited agreement that there are necessary connections between tool, action and object to be acted upon, no reason has yet been given as to why, in the case of names, these necessary connections cannot be constituted by something like convention or agreement.Footnote 20 A typical conception of names and naming today would accommodate the idea that the fact that names are conventional is not in itself dependent on us, rather it is only the individual naming conventions themselves that are dependent on us. The fact that conventions determine name use could itself constitute part of a name's nature. Nothing that Socrates has said so far, therefore, rules out the possibility that successful use of a name may still be use in accordance with linguistic conventions, particularly those conventions made at establishment (dubbing) events.Footnote 21

At 388d6–e3, we are told that names available for our use derive from νόμοι set down by the νομοθέτης.

Soc: Whose work does the teacher use when he uses a name?

Her: I don't know.

Soc: Don't you know this either: who provides us with the names we use?

Her: Indeed I don't.

Soc: Don't you think that νόμος is the provider of these things?

Her: That's likely.

Soc: So whenever a teacher uses a name, he uses the name of the νομοθέτης.

388d6–e2

The claim that a name-maker is the originator of names implies the rejection of the antithesis between νόμος and φύσις. To use a name well – which, we can infer from 387d4, means to use it in the naturally correct way – is to use a νόμος in line with the purpose for which the νομοθέτης created it. Footnote 22 Thus we see that the φύσις of a name is not independent of νόμος, but is at least in part constituted by it.

The claims so far imply no more than that a tool is used successfully if it used in accordance with what it was made for. Since we have not yet been told how a name should be made, Hermogenes can thus far accept that names should be used in line with νόμοι that have been set down; the question of whether the names set down by the name-maker are themselves arbitrary is yet to be addressed.

2. Constraints on name-making and the Species-Form

When the discussion moves from using names to making names it becomes apparent that the successful establishment of νόμοι is itself subject to external, natural constraints. Socratic ‘naming conventions’ – at least as far as this dialogue is concerned – are not ‘up to us’, but rather, like tools, they must be manufactured in the correct way to succeed as naming conventions at all. The expert name-maker knows how to create a name just as the expert shuttle-maker knows how to create a shuttle. The question is, then, in what does this knowledge consist? Once this is established, the natural constraints on name-making will become clearer.

Socrates first convinces Hermogenes that a tool must be made by the relevant craftsman. This craftsman is the only person who can make that tool because only he has the requisite expertise (τέχνη). The making of shuttles is the province of the carpenter; analogously the making of names is the province of the νομοθέτης, the name-maker.

Soc: Does everyone seem to you to be a νομοθέτης, or only the one who has the skill (τέχνη)?

Her: Only the one who has the skill.

Soc: So the setting of names is not the province of everyone, Hermogenes, but of a particular name-maker (ὀνοματουργός). And this man, so it seems, is the νομοθέτης, who is the rarest of craftsmen in the human race.

Her: So it seems.

388e4–389a4

Socrates next claims that each class of tool (names, trepans, shuttles etc.) has a Form, described as ‘that sort of thing which has the nature of φ-ing (τοιοῦτόν τι ὃ ἐπεφύκει κερκίζειν)’ (389a7–8), ‘the Form (τὸ εἶδος)’ (389b3) and ‘the x itself’ (αὐτὸ ὃ ἒστιν [x]) (389b5). This Form is most likely envisaged as a paradeigma or ‘pattern’ which the craftsmen looks to as he fashions his tool (389a5).

Finally, Socrates posits a further kind of specific φύσις that renders specific tools within a class appropriate for a specific product. The shuttle must have the Form of a shuttle, but, in addition, it must have the specific nature required to weave a particular type of cloth (cotton, for example).

Soc: Now, when it is necessary to make a shuttle for light garments or thick or woollen or linen ones, or some other kind of clothing, all the shuttles must have the Form, but whatever nature is best for each type of woven product, it is necessary to put this nature into each tool.

389b8–c1

A tool's specific nature is described in the text as:

  1. 1. ‘The nature of a tool such as is naturally finest for each product’: οἵα δ' ἑκάστῳ καλλίστη ἐπεφύκει … [ἡ φύσις].Footnote 23 (389b10)

  2. 2. ‘The tool naturally suited by nature for each product’: τὸ φύσει ἑκάστῳ πεφυκὸς ὄργανον. (389c4)

  3. 3. (Later) τὸ προσῆκον εἶδος: ‘The proper/fitting Form’ (390a7).Footnote 24

I will refer to this as the Species-Form, because it explains the difference between species of a genus of tool, rather than between genera of tools.

The Species-Form is unique to the Cratylus in the middle-period dialogues and there has been some debate as to whether to count these Species-Forms among the Forms proper.Footnote 25 However, the similarity in language between the description of the Species-Forms and more traditional generic Forms and, moreover, the similarity between their qualities and those favoured by Plato in his accounts of traditional Forms (they have independent existence and are objects of knowledge (389c6–8)) suggest that they are conceived of as types of Forms.Footnote 26 Merely for a name to be modelled on the generic form will not do. Just as a shuttle must have the Species-Form appropriate to weaving wool in order to be used to weave woollen products, a name for a dog, it seems, must likewise have the Species-Form appropriate for naming dogs.Footnote 27

Thus the introduction of Species-Forms for individual names appears to collapse the distinction between a name's being a correct name for an object and its being a name for that object at all.Footnote 28 A putative name for x will not be a name for x if it does not ‘have’ that correct Species-Form.Footnote 29 It is likely, then, that one cannot press a name created to name one thing into service of naming something else for which it was not created.Footnote 30

We are further informed that the setting of the Species-Form into the matter is the province of the special expertise of name-making. The expert name-maker must know how to set this Species-Form in his sound-matter, and only names constructed on this basis have legitimacy.Footnote 31

Soc: Well then, dear man, must the νομοθέτης not also know how to set that name suited by nature to each object in sounds and syllables, and mustn't he make and set all the names while looking to that-thing-which-the-name-itself-is, if he intends to be an authoritative (κύριος) setter of names?

389d4–d8

Many have supposed that in claiming a name-maker must embody a Species-Form Socrates merely supposes that he must embody a certain specific function: the name of a dog, say, must simply have or embody the function of naming a dog.Footnote 32 This explanation is unsatisfying. The Forms have been introduced to explain to Hermogenes why names are naturally correct; however, identifying Species-Forms with functions leaves us with the bland suggestion that, once the craftsman has embodied this ideal function in matter, the tool will be capable of performing whatever real function the craftsman has constructed it to perform. An informative answer to the question ‘Why does this name name this object?’ must be more than ‘because this name has the function of naming this object’.Footnote 33 Species-Forms have to be more than functions if they are to explain those functions.Footnote 34 More pertinently, it is unclear what knowledge of a Species-Form an expert name-maker can have if it is characterised purely in terms of function: a wool-shuttle maker cannot make a wool-shuttle purely in virtue of his knowledge of what a wool-shuttle does. It would be wise, then, to consider further what knowledge is involved in the making of tools in general, and names in particular.

3. Name-making and name-using

We have seen Socrates establish that making tools belongs to the province of expertise or τέχναι. To be an expert – to have a τέχνη – is to possess a particular body of knowledge; the expert is in a position to know, and give an account of, the objects of his expertise, thus communicating his knowledge to others, making more craftsmen like himself.Footnote 35 The claim that name-making is a τέχνη implies that there is a special kind of knowledge involved in the construction of names distinct from the knowledge involved in using them. Given that names are classed as tools, considerations derived from toolmaking in general might elucidate what such knowledge might be.

A carpenter knows how to make a shuttle. Socrates and Hermogenes have just agreed that a shuttle is for dividing weft and warp at the loom. The carpenter, however, must know a lot more than this in order to make a shuttle. Importantly, he must know what a shuttle must be like in order to divide weft and warp.Footnote 36 In other words, he must know what properties a shuttle must have in order to weave a particular kind of fabric. He must know something about what a shuttle does, of course, but his discovery of the Form of the shuttle (389c4) does not involve learning how to weave. That is the province of the weaver.

Thus it should be clear that we cannot straightforwardly identify the Form of F with F's function: the Form of a shuttle, for example, is not weaving, just as the Species-Form of a wool-shuttle is not wool-weaving. If Socrates' account of toolmaking is intended to identify success conditions for tool production, the equation of Form, or Species-Form, with function alone cannot make sense of it. Rather, when Plato speaks of the Form of a tool that the craftsman looks to, it is likely that he means us to understand it as the object of the craftsman's knowledge about shuttles, which includes, inter alia, the characteristics that a tool must have in order to perform its function: its shape, composition, and, perhaps even to some extent, material properties.Footnote 37 I will term such properties structural properties. It has already been agreed that names are tools; a fortiori the Forms of names can also be so characterised.

As the passage proceeds, we see that the refining of a tool is not a one-man operation, according to Socrates: the toolmaker lacks some of the required knowledge, which only the professional user has. In the case of names, the expert user is the dialectician.Footnote 38

Soc: Now who then will know whether the proper Form of the shuttle has been set in the wood – whatever kind of wood it is? The one who made it, the carpenter, or the one who will use it, the weaver?

Her: It's reasonable to say that it's rather the one who is going to use it, Socrates.

Soc: Who is it that will use the work of the lyre-maker? Is not this man the one who knows best how to oversee the making of the lyre and who would know whether it has been well made or not?

Her: Certainly.

Soc: And who's that?

Her: The lyre player.

Soc: And who will be best placed to know about the products of the shipbuilder?

Her: The captain.

Soc: And who would be best placed to oversee the work of the νομοθέτης and judge his work – both here and abroad? Is it not the one who will use it?

Her: Yes.

Soc: And this is the man who knows how to ask questions?

Her: Of course.

Soc: And also how to answer them?

Her: Yes.

Soc: And would you call the man who knows about asking and answering questions anything other than a dialectician?

Her: No, this is what I'd call him.

Soc: So then: the job of the carpenter is to make the rudder under the supervision of the captain, if he intends the rudder to be a fine one.

Her: It appears so.

Soc: And the job of the νομοθέτης is to make a name under the supervision of the dialectician, if he intends to set down a name well.

390b1–390d7

The expert user, then, oversees the maker during the production of a tool and judges the finished product. The wording here is very careful: Socrates does not say that the user knows the Species-Form but that he knows whether that Form has been set in the matter. The maker was earlier described as having discovered the Species-Form, and knowing how to set that Form in matter. The knowledge of each is characterised differently.Footnote 39 Although the user is depicted as overseeing the maker, clearly they both know something, since they are both characterised as practitioners of crafts.Footnote 40 And since they both know something, they must stand in some relation to a corresponding Species-Form.Footnote 41

Since the toolmaker's knowledge primarily concerns the structural properties of a tool, I will speak of him as knowing the Species-Form in its structural aspect. Since the user's expertise primarily concerns a tool's use, it would be most natural to suppose he knows the Species-Form in its functional aspect. However, in the tool analogy, the expert user's role is not exhausted by merely using the maker's products. Socrates tells us that he must collaborate with the toolmaker in producing the tool, and judge whether the tool is well made once it has been produced: he must be qualified to know whether the form has been set in the matter. Thus even the expert user's knowledge cannot be reduced to knowledge of function alone. A weaver telling a shuttle-maker that such-and-such a shuttle fails to discharge a particular function does nothing to help the maker improve on his efforts. In order to supervise the construction of a tool, the user must, then, also have knowledge of a tool's structure, at least in so far as it conduces to a particular function, to explain to the maker what alterations must be made to improve a tool's performance.Footnote 42

It would be difficult to see why Socrates makes a distinction between maker and user if knowledge of the Species-Forms of names amounts only to knowledge of their functions. Nothing here would qualify the maker over the expert user in the making of tools. Nor would the user's judgement aid in the collaborative process if he could not direct the maker to improve the structure of his tools. Since a name is a tool, the expert user's knowledge of a Species-Form of a name must also involve knowledge of the structural features that they lend to their particulars.

In considering further what kind of structural features might support a name's function let us return to 388b–c, where we are told that when we use names we ‘teach something to one another and divide things as they are’ and, thus, that a name is a tool for instructing and dividing ousiai. We might plausibly infer from this, as Sedley does, that if the function of names in general is to separate ousiai, the function of a particular name must be to separate out the particular ousia of an object that a user intends to pick out, where ousia need not be understood in any strict sense as essence (although this might be the ideal), but in a ‘weaker and more inclusive sense’.Footnote 43 Thus a name will separate out its nominatum/nominata from the rest of reality by identifying some unique feature of it.

The competence of the dialectician to judge whether names are well made also depends largely on his knowledge of the nominata (or their ousiai) that they will be used for. Yet if this knowledge is to have any substantive role in his judgement of whether a particular name can perform its intended function, then it would seem that there must be some corresponding feature of that name which can be judged in the light of the nature of the nominatum.

Socrates suggests precisely such a feature in the pages following the tool analogy, where he claims that a name, decoded in the correct way, should yield informational content that captures the ousia of its nominatum. The etymological discussion shows this informational content to be a form of identifying description, which the name-maker compresses and encodes into a name. So, for example, the identifying description for ‘wisdom’ (411d4–5), φορᾶς … καὶ ῥοῦ νόησις (‘intellection of motion and flow’), is compressed and encoded to yield the name φρόνησις; ‘moon’ (σελήνη) appears to be an Atticised version of σελαναία, in turn compressed from σελαεννεοάεια, which is itself an encoding of the description, σέλας νέον τε καὶ ἕνον ἔχει ἀεί (‘that which always has old and new gleam’) (409b–c).Footnote 44 The skill of the name-maker does not stop here, it would seem; if a name can be analysed into a description, and the names in that description can be analysed into further descriptions, we risk an infinite regress. Socrates therefore proposes the existence of certain primary or atomic names into which these compound names are ultimately resolved (421d–422b). These primary names imitate their objects at the atomic level. In effect, when somebody makes a name they work in much the same way as someone who tries to represent reality through painting, blending together pigments to imitate his object (424d ff.). Thus we are told, for example, that rho indicates motion, tau, rest and binding, and omicron, roundness. The knowledge of the name-maker, then, also includes knowledge of the classification the imitative properties of these primary name-sounds, and the primary classes of being they track (424c6–425a2).Footnote 45 The dialectician, in his particular capacity of overseeing the name-maker and judging his products, on the other hand, need not know how to encode names, rather he must know how to decode them.Footnote 46 Once he has done this, he may see whether the informational content contained in a name identifies his desired ousia: whether the Species-Form has been embodied in the matter.

There is good reason, then, not to dismiss, along with Ademollo, Socrates' carefully made distinction between name-maker and dialectician as unreal. While voicing his suspicion that ‘the notion of the specific forms of name may be, as a matter of fact, much more tightly connected with the purpose of naturalism than is usually supposed’, Ademollo nevertheless considers the distinction between name-maker and name-user to be of merely dramatic significance: it sets up Socrates as the dialectician who is competent to judge the efforts of the name-maker (and thus decide whether his names have been well made or not (cf. 390b6)) in the etymological investigation that is about to come.Footnote 47

Ademollo believes that Socrates does not seriously intend the distinction between name-maker and dialectician because the name-maker must have ‘some sort’ of knowledge of the nature of the thing named in order to appropriately embody a name for that thing in the sound-matter, – ‘which we should expect to be the dialectician's hallmark’.Footnote 48 This, however, seems to be a weak ground for discounting the distinction in the particular case of names. It ignores my warning to take the claim that names are tools seriously; any toolmaker would struggle to make his tool if he had no knowledge of the use to which it would be put: the same is a fortiori true of names. Footnote 49 Moreover, Socrates has made explicit the distinct role of the dialectician in superintending the work of the name-maker while the name is being produced.Footnote 50 We should see both crafts working in tandem: the dialectician identifies the object to be named and provides the name-maker with the information that needs to be embodied in a name for it.Footnote 51

Ademollo further suggests that from the perspective of the dialogue the name-makers have ‘got things wrong’ precisely because they were not supervised by the dialecticians: this relies on his interpretation of the long etymological section that sees name-makers as erring across the board in their name-making.Footnote 52 If true, however, this strengthens the case for the dialectician to supervise the name-maker if the names are to be well made. Yet it is not indeed clear that name-makers erred across the board. Sedley informs us that those words relating to cosmological themes are, in fact, judged to be correct by Socrates: only the ethical etymologies are misguided.Footnote 53 One might therefore respond to Ademollo, modulo Sedley, that, perhaps, a name-maker's knowledge of the things to be named is indeed sufficient to construct some, but not all, names passably well.Footnote 54

Moreover, maintaining a clear distinction between name-maker and dialectician offsets another of Ademollo's worries: namely, that one can acquire the information that a name must supply about its nominatum to perform its function from the Form of that nominatum alone, therefore one would not seem to need a separate Form of its name.Footnote 55 However, the distinction between the expertises of name-maker and name-user shows us precisely why Species-Forms of names are required. The dialectician does not have the knowledge to make names; he does not know how to embody the relevant information into a name by blending sounds together to represent, by imitation or description, the complex ousiai that he wishes to separate out. There is something distinctive about the name-maker's abilities: this is his unique capacity to embody structures in sounds, thus creating a tool that can separate out an ousia. This knowledge comes from his acquaintance with the Species-Forms of names, not the Forms of objects for which those names are intended.Footnote 56

The informational content of names can be encoded in such a way that it is only apparent to the expert. At 394a5–b7 Socrates sets up an analogy between ‘the one who knows about names’ (here, the dialectician) and the doctor.Footnote 57 Names that are ‘really the same’ (τὰ ἀυτὰ ὄντα), might, in their superficial phenomenal differences, mislead the layman into thinking that they are different. However, drugs that are ‘really the same’ (τὰ ἀυτὰ ὄντα), but appear different to the layman because of additions or variations in colour or smell, do not deceive the doctor who examines (σκοπουμένος) their dunamis, but appear the same to him. Likewise, the ‘one who knows about names’, the dialectician, can examine a name's dunamis and is not confused if some letter is added or changed or removed, or even if ‘the dunamis of the name is in completely different letters’ (394b3–6).

It has to my mind been comprehensively shown by now that in no way does this passage seem ‘to make the name into a ghost that may take any form’, as Robinson suggests.Footnote 58 Simply because the informational content may be embodied in different ways, this does not suggest that any concatenation of sounds will do: the name must nevertheless be susceptible of being decoded into the right informational content. We may suppose, then, that the informational content a name must provide will indeed also constrain the phonemes in which it can be embodied.Footnote 59

It is not, however, immediately obvious what Socrates means by claiming that a name has a dunamis, which, typically in Plato and elsewhere, has connotations of ‘power’ or ‘capacity’.Footnote 60 Socrates' claim, by way of illustration, that the names ‘Hector’ (‘Holder’) and ‘Astyanax’ (‘Town-lord’) (394b7–c1) share a dunamis, does not initially appear to help in deciding the matter conclusively. Sedley, considering these proper names to be ‘chosen to pick out types, not individuals’, suggests that both names pick out the same type (let us suppose here, a kingly nature), yet Socrates cannot consider them to be strict synonyms, since they yield partially different information concerning that type. Thus, he infers, the two names ‘share the same power … by being extensionally equivalent’.Footnote 61 Sedley also claims that when particular names share a dunamis ‘we must assume that they embody one and the same species form of name’, which he has identified purely with their function. Informational content is thereby relegated to the means by which a name discharges its function, and any number of different means (although not every means), we might suppose, would serve this end equally well.Footnote 62

If Socrates did consider ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ to yield different informational contents, but have the same Species-Form, my identification of informational content with what I have called the structural aspect of the Species-Form looks implausible, since then the Species-Form would appear to contain all possible sets of informational contents that might be used to pick out an object.Footnote 63

However, it is not clear that Socrates does indeed view the two names as expressing different informational contents. In these same lines Socrates tells us that ‘Astyanax’ and ‘Hector’ signify the same thing (ταὐτὸν σημαίνει), despite the fact that they share none of the same letters except for tau. Since the examples of ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ are offered to clarify the claim that phenomenally different names share a dunamis, we may suppose, then, that two names share a dunamis in virtue of signifying the same thing. Thus we must consider further what Socrates means by ‘signifying the same thing’, and what, precisely, we are to understand as being signified.Footnote 64 Sedley understands a name to signify an object by designating it in a complex way, ‘by embodying in a sound the ideal function of the name of x, a function which is summed up as that of “separating the being” of x’, and notes that ‘this function may be discharged in a number of ways’.Footnote 65 However, Ademollo, in a careful analysis of the appearances of σημαίνω in this dialogue, observes that it governs, either implicitly or explicitly, a ‘that clause’, from which he infers that what is signified is not, in fact, some object (or type), but the informational content (or etymological sense) that a name conveys. Thus (to use Ademollo's example), anthropos ‘signifies that [σημαίνει … ὅτι] the other animals do not investigate anything of what they see … whereas the human being [no sooner has he seen it – that is ὄπωπε– than he investigates (ἀναθρεῖ) and reflects upon what he has seen]’ (399c).Footnote 66 If this is correct, then, pace Sedley, when Socrates tells us that ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ signify the same, he does not mean that two names signify the same thing by means of different informational content, but that they signify the same informational content. Footnote 67 If so, then Socrates supposes the names to be more strictly synonymous than Sedley would have us suppose. Moreover, since two names ‘signifying the same’ is offered as an explanation for their sharing a dunamis, then sharing a dunamis does not look to be merely tantamount to extensional equivalence either. As Ademollo notes, Socrates never claims that ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ contain different informational content, only that they contain different letters.Footnote 68 Furthermore, as we have seen, Socrates not only says that names that share the same dunamis, but, explicitly, that they are the same name (394a7): it would seem difficult to make sense of this on an interpretation that sees them as merely co-extensive, and in fact conveying different informational contents.

The analysis of σημαίνω is strong evidence in favour of Ademollo's interpretation of dunamis as informational content. We can also make sense of the idea that the names ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ share informational content by appeal to the earlier claim that names instantiate Species-Forms. While Sedley observes that these two names ‘achieve their designating function’ by providing partially different information in the process of identifying the nominatum, it is clear that the feature of the nominatum that Socrates claims they identify is the same in each case (a kingly nature); this far, at least, they appear to be providing the same information. Compare this with the case of ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’, whose associated descriptions (e.g. ‘star that is seen in the evening’, ‘star that is seen in the morning’) clearly pick out different features or aspects of one and the same object.Footnote 69 We might learn something new by being told that Hesperus is Phosphorus. It is not clear that, given ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ both signify a kingly nature, Socrates would consider them to differ relevantly in cognitive significance: in so far as they both mean (etymologically speaking) a kingly nature, nothing new can be learned by their identification.Footnote 70

This being so, more general considerations concerning the relationship between Forms and particulars might explain such minor differences between their informational contents. Socrates had earlier stated that (393a8–9) that the words ‘hectōr’ and ‘anax’ signify ‘virtually the same (σχεδόν τι ταὐτὸν σημαίνει), in that both names are kingly’, for, he supposes, if one is a lord (anax) of something, one is also a possessor (hectōr) of it. Ademollo glosses this as a sufficiency condition: being a ‘town-lord’ entails being a ‘holder’ but not vice versa. Since ‘anax’ (thus even more so ‘Astyanax’) seems to contain more specific informational content than ‘Hector’, it is possible, then, that the names qualifying as the same names on Socrates' account do not yield informational content concerning different features of the type in question, but informational content that more or less finely circumscribes the same features.Footnote 71 This looks to cohere nicely with the idea that the names are instantiations of a Species-Form, and, as such, approximate that Form to varying degrees. We would not expect two wool-shuttles to be identical to each other, just as they would not be identical to the Form.Footnote 72 Socrates' apparently weaker claim that ‘Hector’ and ‘Astyanax’ are ‘close to each other’ (παραπλήσιον) and ‘signify roughly the same’ (σχεδόν τι ταὐτὸν σημαίνει) can also be made sense of in this light: if particular names are shown to have minor differences in informational content, which results in their describing their putative objects in a more or less fine-grained manner, this is merely a consequence of their condition as particulars.Footnote 73 Nevertheless, two names would be the same in so far as they had the relevant features in common (such as containing information pertaining to a kingly nature), and thus share the same Species-Form.Footnote 74

Ademollo himself concedes that Socrates' claims about the sameness of names would be ‘all the more pregnant’ if we could read it in the light of Socrates' discussion of Forms in the tool analogy.Footnote 75 It is perhaps odd, then, that Ademollo views Species-Forms to have been replaced by a new theory by this point, reasoning that Socrates does not mention them again after the tool analogy. However, this argumentum ex silentio does not provide strong grounds: neither do we get any indication from Socrates that he has dropped them from consideration. Furthermore, we must not ignore the clue of Socrates' choice of dunamis, which in Plato's works is closely related to phusis (one of the terms we saw used to characterise Species-Forms), and also the strong parallel between Socrates' claim in the tool analogy (389d–390a) the name-maker may set the Species-Form in different sounds and syllables, and his subsequent claim here (393d–e) that the name-maker may set the same dunamis in different letters.Footnote 76 At any rate, the fact that Form-talk drops out of the discussion at this stage should not cause us concern. By telling Hermogenes at the start of the etymologies that the next task is to examine the correctness of names ‘with those who know’ (391b9), Socrates signals a shift from an account of naming and name-making in the abstract to an account from the perspective of the craftsmen themselves: one would not expect any craftsman to describe how he practises his craft in the abstract language of the Forms.

One surprising consequence of reading σημαίνω in line with Ademollo is that Socrates does not appear to use any term to express designation in the passage under discussion. I suspect it might help us here to recall a name's classification as a tool. Tools are used by someone for a particular task. We might reason accordingly that names do not designate their nominata per se, just as a wool-shuttle does not weave a woollen garment by itself.Footnote 77 Rather it is the name user who uses a name to designate an individual. This in turn resolves a worry about how a proper name that only yields quite general information can ‘designate’ an individual.Footnote 78 It does not. The user designates an individual: the informational content a name gives up only lends it the capacity to be so used.Footnote 79 Thus, by investigating the dunamis of a name, we might suppose the user indeed discovers a capacity: what it can be used to designate, rather than what it designates per se.Footnote 80

Conclusion

The tool analogy, on this interpretation, advances a radical linguistic naturalism which follows from the conjunction of certain key claims, namely: (1) objects in the world, including actions, have an objective and stable existence and are mind-independent (these claims merely exclude extreme subjectivism about naming); (2) names are a class of tools; (3) tools (at least) have both generic Forms and Species-Forms, and it is in virtue of participating in these Forms that they can successfully perform their intended functions and be the tools that they are; (4) the making of names requires a specific expertise distinct from that of using names. I have argued that the distinctive expertise of the name-maker primarily concerns the structural features a name must have in order to perform the function required of it. Since his knowledge is said to be of the Species-Form, correspondingly, the Species-Form must determine the structural features of a name.

Understanding the Species-Form of a name as governing structural as well as functional features of particular names has the advantage of rendering the conclusions of the tool analogy non-trivial, and the tool analogy itself a substantive case against Hermogenes' claim that names are arbitrary concatenations of sounds, ‘pieces of voice’ whose namehood is conferred on them by agreement or fiat alone. Only a reading such as this respects the distinction between the expertise of the name-maker and of the tool-user, and the superior epistemic position of the name-maker in constructing and establishing names. It is, after all, the unique qualification of the name-maker to make names that Socrates points to when summing up his refutation of Hermogenes.

Soc: It is likely then, Hermogenes, that the setting of names is not a trivial business, as you think; nor is it the province of insignificant men or anyone who pops along. And Cratylus speaks (ἀληθῆ λέγει) when he says that names are by nature for things, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names, but only he who looks to the name which is natural for each thing and is able to set its form in letters and syllables.

390d7–e5

The claim that Species-Forms determine structural features of names also dovetails nicely with the view, expressed in etymological thesis, that names yield informational content when decoded. Since there is no indication in the text that Socrates has changed theoretical tack between the tool analogy and the etymologies it is surely to any interpretation's credit if it does not require him to.

Although the jury is out on Plato's final verdict on naming in this dialogue, a popular line of interpretation sees the mimetic theory thrown out, and agreement reinstated as the mechanism for securing reference towards the end of the dialogue at 434c ff.Footnote 81 A case study is made of the word σκληρότης, which is agreed to reveal hardness to those using the word, yet is found not to contain the mimetic properties that should enable it to do so. Cratylus is left to respond that he understands what the name picks out through ἔθος, which consequently must overrule the natural imitative properties that the name has. If this is so, then the etymological-mimetic theory of naming must be rejected: the mimetic properties of a name cannot explain its successfully picking out a nominatum because they are neither necessary nor sufficient for it doing so.Footnote 82

What is less remarked upon, and, I hope, should be suggested to the reader on the interpretation of the tool analogy offered here, is that the rot runs deeper than this: if custom, agreement or habit can fix reference, the claim that names have Species-Forms cannot be saved either. This is because having the Species-Form of name-for-hardness suggests certain structural constraints on what a name could be like: σκληρότης fails to meet such requirements – perhaps it is the linguistic equivalent of trying to use a silk-shuttle to weave wool. Yet σκληρότης nevertheless succeeds in picking out the intended referent. Since we cannot explain how this occurs by appeal to the name's Species-Form, Species-Forms end up failing to explain the very things they were introduced to explain in the first place.Footnote 83

If the claim that names have Forms entails strict naturalism in naming and that naturalism is subsequently rejected, then it follows that the claim that names have Forms must be thrown out as well. Since the claim that names have Species-Forms is central to the argument of the tool analogy, it is difficult, then, to make sense of Ademollo's claim that the tool analogy is designed to ‘admit of a reinterpretation in favour of conventionalism’ once we have been apprised of later developments in the dialogue.Footnote 84 To reinterpret the tool analogy in this way, I submit, would involve ignoring, not reinterpreting, the claim that names are tools and, in particular, the idea that name-making and name-using are distinct expertises. Only if Socrates has radical naturalism in mind in the tool analogy is this distinction intelligible at all.

It may be that Plato instead intentionally leaves the reader with a methodological question as to what role the Forms can play in an account of linguistic phenomena. The dialogue as a whole would therefore reveal a concern that certain phenomena may not be susceptible of an explanation that appeals to the Forms, since the resulting account cannot accommodate the certain features of actual linguistic practice. This is not tantamount to a rejection of the theory of Forms, or even, necessarily, a substantial criticism of it. Nothing follows for the explanation of other classes of particulars: it is quite possible that Plato views linguistic expressions, at least, as a special case. Perhaps, as Aristotle suggests, we are meant to conclude that it is a mistake to class names as tools.Footnote 85 Or, perhaps, taking our cue from Aristotle again, we might suspect that Plato's concerns here cover a broader class of objects. Names, and tools in general, are also artefacts. Yet Aristotle testifies that Plato ended up denying that artefacts had Forms; one might then speculate that this dialogue exposes an early worry that may ultimately come to concern the possibility of artefactual Forms in general.Footnote 86

Footnotes

I would like to thank Prof. M. M. McCabe, Prof. Malcolm Schofield, Dr James Doyle and the anonymous referees at the Cambridge Classical Journal for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.

1 It has often been noted that the Greek word ὄνομα has broader signification than the English ‘name’; my use of the English ‘name’ in this essay should be understood broadly to encompass all referring terms, and, furthermore, ‘referring term’ should be understood to encompass both names of objects and predicate terms. (For further discussion of this point see, e.g., Ackrill (Reference Ackrill1997) 36; Fine (Reference Fine1977) 291 ff).

2 The root verb φθέγγομαι need not denote meaningful speech but rather a sound or a noise that could be produced by an animal or even an inanimate object. (LSJ, s.v. I 2,3; cf. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 25)

3 Cra. 384e.

4 Laurence (Reference Laurence1996) 273 describes our pre-theoretic notions of conventionalism as follows: (1) Linguistic properties are not intrinsic properties of the utterances which have them. The marks and sounds we use could have (or could have had) linguistic properties other than those they in fact have; (2) Though we might speak any of a large number of possible languages, the members of a given linguistic community have a common interest in linguistic coordination (i.e., in speaking the same language), because they have a common interest in communication. The traditional source for modern views on conventionalism is, of course, Lewis's seminal discussion in Convention (Reference Lewis1969); however, it would seem that Lewis would not have a problem with a Crusoe language whereby an individual could establish his own naming conventions (182).

5 For examples of those who see Hermogenes presented as an extreme, or naive conventionalist, or swiftly refuted, see e.g., Baxter (Reference Baxter1992) 18; Fine (Reference Fine1977) 295; Gold (Reference Gold1978) 242 ff.; Kahn (Reference Kahn, Lee, Mourelatos and Rorty1973) 158–9; Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 136; Reeve (Reference Reeve1998) xiv. However, Hermogenes may get some sympathy from Davidson, (Reference Davidson1984) 265 and (Reference Davidson1992) 114, who has denied that the arbitrariness of linguistic expressions entails that their meanings are necessarily fixed by conventions. While accepting that linguistic coordination, in the sense of adhering to a common set of conventions, facilitates successful communication, he denies linguistic coordination is necessary for it. It may be the case that Hermogenes, like Davidson, denies that conventions – understood as interpersonal agreements – are necessary for successfully picking out and communicating states of affairs in the world to another, while accepting that interpersonal agreements nevertheless facilitate communication (he makes no attempt to diverge from common Greek linguistic practice in the dialogue (cf. Barney (Reference Barney1997) 154)).

6 Cf. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 81; Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 54.

7 See, e.g., Ackrill (Reference Ackrill1997), Gold (Reference Gold1978), Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979), Kahn (Reference Kahn, Lee, Mourelatos and Rorty1973), White (Reference White1978), and (to some extent) Barney (Reference Barney2001) e.g. 47. I maintain that this argument is largely deductive, contrary to, e.g., Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 138, who suggests the argument is analogical. The reasons for this will become apparent during the course of the discussion.

8 Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 143 suggests that the tool analogy is primarily aimed at refuting conventionalism, while the remainder of the discussion of naturalism promotes a ‘theory of meaning’, which can stand or fall alone. See also, e.g., Ackrill (Reference Ackrill1997) 46–51; Barney (Reference Barney2001) 47; Gold (Reference Gold1978) 245–6; Kahn (Reference Kahn, Lee, Mourelatos and Rorty1973) 173; Silverman (Reference Silverman1992) 44 and White (Reference White1978) 271n.12.

9 Many suppose the etymological-mimetic thesis, which takes up about half the dialogue, is not intended in earnest. See, e.g., Arieti (Reference Arieti1991), Baxter (Reference Baxter1992), Brock (Reference Brock and Craik1990), Gonzalez (Reference Gonzalez1998), Keller (Reference Keller2000), Levin (Reference Levin2001), Nightingale (Reference Nightingale and Michelini2003) or Sallis (Reference Sallis1996). Others, consider the etymological tour de force is intended to show that Plato can best anyone in this literary genre (Barney (2000)). See Sedley (Reference Sedley1998) for an opposing view.

10 Fine (Reference Fine1977) 296. See also Kretzmann (Reference Kretzmann1971) 131–2.

11 The evidence for this view is sought by Irwin (Reference Irwin and Fine1999) and Kretzmann (Reference Kretzmann1971) at 394d, where Socrates claims that it is fitting to give the offspring of a lion the name of a lion. There is no doubt that the interpretation of the tool analogy presented here would support this claim, but it is not the only consequence of it; rather this follows a fortiori from the stronger conclusions I suggest.

12 Prima facie, it is unclear on this view, however, which of Hermogenes' original claims are being attacked. Hermogenes suggests there is no reason why a particular object (or kind) should be called one name rather than another; nowhere does he claim that it is legitimate for one natural kind to share a name with a different natural kind. Hermogenes' agreement, at 385a, that one may call one and the same thing ‘horse’ in private and ‘man’ in public should not be taken to imply that two distinct kinds can share a name in the relevant sense: he never claims that the same name could be used of both man and horse in the same context of use, be that public or private. Furthermore, the mention of Greek and barbarian languages at 390a can but call to mind Plt. 262d ff., where the Stranger notes that dividing human beings into classes with the names ‘Greeks’ and ‘barbarians’ is a mistake since it fails to cleave nature at the joints. Pace Irwin (Reference Irwin and Fine1999) 148, ‘barbarian’, in the Statesman at least, nevertheless appears to succeed in picking out its mongrel class when so used.

13 Silverman (Reference Silverman1992) 39 suggests that the former is ‘rather simply each of us in our capacity as a dialectitian’. Robinson (Reference Robinson1969) 105 claims that the νομοθέτης ‘is there as a mythical device to make it easier to develop an abstract theory’. Keller (Reference Keller2000) makes no mention of the distinction between νομοθέτης and dialectician, save to say that a name (unlike other tools) lacks the specificity to require an expertise of making – it is rather like a paperweight (292–3), yet it follows from the claim that name-making is an expertise that names, on this account, have just that specificity.

14 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 138–44.

15 See, e.g., Evans (Reference Evans2011) 341–2.

16 I take the ‘function’ of a to be defined by the response to the question ‘what do we do when we φ with a?’

17 On ὀνομάζειν as name use in the Cratylus more generally see Schofield (Reference Schofield1972) 246–8; Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 145n.3, but cf. Barney (Reference Barney2001) 6n.8.

18 A name's ‘teaching something to another’ could, as yet, range from merely communicating something to another when used (and so provide another with new information) to the name itself teaching something to another by yielding arcane information when subjected to analysis (cf. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 101–2). ‘Dividing reality as it is’, in the etymological section of the discussion, becomes a matter of separating out a natural portion of reality by encoding a description of that portion of reality in a name, thus marking off what its object is from what it is not. Finally, in the mimetic stage of the theory, separating out a natural portion of reality by encoding a description in a name is redefined as combining elemental sounds (letters) that imitate the essential components of that portion of reality. The investigator can therefore learn something from the name in the stronger sense of ‘teaching something to another’; however, to understand the definition in the strong sense at this point would surely be to beg the question against Hermogenes.

19 Cf. Keller (Reference Keller2000) 291–2.

20 See Anagnostopoulos (Reference Anagnostopoulos1972) 710 ff. and Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 136 for further discussion of this point.

21 As Barney (Reference Barney1997) notes, Hermogenes does indeed make a distinction between name use and name establishment in his own conventionalist thesis.

22 See Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 105 for a discussion of καλῶς at 388c5–7 and 391b1 as equivalent to ὀρθῶς. Later (431c–433c), a clear distinction between ‘finely’ and ‘correctly’ is made with the possibility that names may vary in quality and yet still be names.

23 I take ἑκάστῳ to be anaphoric of the earlier λεπτῷ ἱματίῳ κτλ., and translate ἑκάστῳ as ‘each product’ rather than ‘each task’ (as Reeve (Reference Reeve1998) does). Contra Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 146n.9, there is no reason to think that ἑκάστῳ is not still anaphoric of λεπτῷ ἱματίῳ κτλ. at 389c4, since no new object has been provided. Furthermore, ὑφάσματος at 389d1 indicates the object of the task (the product), not the task itself.

24 These distinctions follow Calvert (1968) 29–30.

25 Cf., e.g., Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 117–18; Gold (Reference Gold1978) 233–8; but Anagnostopoulos (Reference Anagnostopoulos1972) 710 for an opposing view. We might see some connection with the mention of genus and species in the later dialogues, e.g., Sph. 258 and Phlb. 12–17. However, the mention of species in these places is not clearly connected to an exposition of the Forms as understood in the middle period dialogues.

26 According to Calvert (Reference Calvert1970) 26–34, Species-Forms are immanent, as opposed to generic Forms which are presented as wholly separate: such a distinction seems to be made and maintained quite rigorously through this passage. Yet while the objects are said to ‘have’ these Forms at 389b, ‘have’ expresses a vague relation: it does not follow from this that the Species-Forms are immanent or abstract. See Calvert, ibid., for a similar view of the vagueness of ἔχειν.

27 Silverman (Reference Silverman1992) 36 is thus mistaken in implying that a bad carpenter could make a generic shuttle.

28 Ademollo terms this the ‘redundancy theory’ of correctness (Reference Ademollo2011) passim, but esp. 24, 98. While Socrates suggests at 387a8–9 (cf. 387c3–4) that if we use the incorrect tool we will ‘go wrong and accomplish nothing’, this does not rule out the possibility that there may be different degrees of correctness (cf. 392a–d); Socrates may therefore allow that names embody a Species-Form to a greater or lesser degree of approximation, but, nevertheless, we might suppose there is a limit beyond which a name will not be able to function as a name for its nominatum. Cf. Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 142–6.

29 Williams (Reference Williams, Schofield and Nussbaum1982) 83, points out that Cratylus' theory collapses the distinction between a name's being correct and a name's being a name. However, he does not note that this is an implication of the claim that names have Forms. It is not then clear that Williams is correct in suggesting that Socrates' later distinction between correctness and reference is not made at the price of his own theory.

30 If Socrates were following the model of functions derived from the example of knives in R. 352d–353b, he could mark a distinction between correctness and success conditions for making a name: what something would best be called versus what something could be called at a pinch (cf. Millikan (Reference Millikan1984) 1–11). It is not immediately obvious how this characterisation of function (which is silent on the Forms) could be rendered consistent with the claim that artefacts have Forms: that would seem to entail that a screwdriver cannot become a wrench – even temporarily – any more than a sunflower can start growing apples. For a screwdriver to perform the function of a wrench, for example, it would somehow have to participate in the relevant Form – and on the model given in the Cratylus it is not immediately clear how this could happen. However, an anonymous referee for the Cambridge Classical Journal notes that given an inherent imperfection in a particular's instantiating a Form, this may allow it to sufficiently instantiate one Species-Form while simultaneously instantiating another ‘nearby’ Form. Thus a butter-knife might also cut fish passably well, say. It does not follow that it could thus instantiate the Form of a pruning-knife. For further discussion on names as imperfect instantiations of Forms, see §3.

31 I follow Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011, 135–6) in considering the name-maker to be authoritative (κύριος) in the sense of ‘legitimate’ (or perhaps ‘genuine’).

32 See, e.g., Ackrill (Reference Ackrill1997), Kahn (Reference Kahn1986), Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979), Sedley (Reference Sedley2003).

33 Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 143 acknowledges this consequence, but seems happy to accept it nonetheless.

34 Cf. Bestor (Reference Bestor1980) 314–15, for a similar point. One might attempt to make the answer more informative by specifying in further detail what the claim that a name's Form is a function amounts to. Some who attempt to do so equate a name's function with its meaning. Ackrill (Reference Ackrill1997) 43–4, for example, states that the name is identified solely by reference to the job it does and subsequently claims the Form of a name is its meaning (where ‘meaning’ is understood as some concept or other). He infers from this that structural considerations are of no account: the intrinsic properties of a given name have no role to play in determining what it picks out. On his interpretation, however, he has to concede that the tool analogy does nothing to refute Hermogenes. Nor can he provide a connection between the tool analogy and the rest of the dialogue, which he admits is largely devoted to identifying appropriate sounds.

35 Prt. 321a ff.; Men. 87b ff.

36 This is surely suggested by the description of the Form of shuttle as τοιοῦτόν τι ὃ ἐπεφύκει κερκίζειν: ‘the kind of thing that naturally weaves’, at 389a.

37 Cf. Patterson (Reference Patterson1985) 131–2:

[T]he fact that the intelligible realm determined by the Forms includes a functionally defined Form of Pruning Knife entails that to be a worldly pruning knife is to be something suited to serve a specific function having a place in the natural order. A sensible object can be this only if (a) there is a natural type of work or function to be performed, and (b) the object's (corporeal) parts are so constituted and distributed that it is suited to perform that work. When these two conditions are met, the piece of metal participates in the separate, intelligible Form of Pruning Knife ‘fixed in the nature of things’.

38 Given that we have already been told that the user of names is a teacher at 388c6, it would seem safe to identify him with the dialectician here.

39 This parallels Euthd. 289a–d, where the makers and users of artefacts are said to have distinct knowledge related to the same object: ‘the art which makes is one thing and that which uses is another; they are quite distinct although they deal with the same thing’.

40 There are similarities with R. 601c–602a, although there the maker is ascribed only true belief. However, the purpose of that passage is primarily to demonstrate the inferiority of the imitator (who does not even have belief): thus, as Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011, 142n.116) suggests, it is unwise to attempt to import the claims made there into this passage.

41 Cf. Aristotle Ph. 2, 194a36 ff.:

There are two skills that govern matter and have knowledge: the skill of using and the skill that directs the making. So the using skill is also, in a way, directive, but it differs from the other in that it has knowledge of the form, whereas the skill that directs the making has knowledge of the matter. So the helmsman knows the form of the rudder and directs, and the other, the maker, knows from what kind of matter and by what changes the rudder will come to be.

Accepting that Aristotle is using different categories from Plato (and so the comparison will not be complete in this way) we can nevertheless see him acknowledging that two forms of knowledge are associated with artefacts – corresponding to production and use. Charlton (Reference Charlton1970, n. ad loc.) suggests that Aristotle is referencing the Cratylus here.

42 Pace Silverman (Reference Silverman1992) 38.

43 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 84.

44 I thank an anonymous referee for the Cambridge Classical Journal for pointing me in the direction of this perspicuous example.

45 Cf. 426a–b: ‘It's clear that anyone claiming to be expert (τεχνικόν) in these matters must especially be able to give clear explanations of the primary names, or he can be sure that he will be talking nonsense about the compound ones.’

46 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 41 impresses upon us the distinction between the skill of encoding and the skill of decoding: ‘our job as etymologists is not to repeat the work of the name-makers, but to reverse it, decomposing what they composed and thereby decoding what they encoded’. I assign this decoding skill to the dialectician, in his supervisory role.

47 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 138, 144.

48 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 143 also considers the fact that the dialectician is not mentioned again after 391d speaks against a serious distinction between the two crafts. This is odd, since he holds – plausibly – that the role of the dialectician is precisely the one adopted by Socrates for the remainder of the dialogue. One might, at any rate, suspect it, contrary to Socrates' characteristic modesty to impress upon us that he is an expert in using names, yet I suspect that the dialectician is indeed mentioned again as ‘one who knows about names’ at 394b3–4 (see §3). Moreover, at 425a–b, it seems that Socrates, in his role as dialectician (judging whether primary and compound names have been set down correctly), clearly distinguishes his activities from those of the original name-makers.

49 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) has no trouble with the reality of the distinction in these other cases.

50 The dialectician may therefore be said to impart true beliefs to the νομοθέτης, but not knowledge (cf. Men. 97a–c).

51 I thank the anonymous referee for the Cambridge Classical Journal for suggestions relating to this point. It is also important not to confuse a distinction between the distinct crafts of using and making with the requirement that there be distinct practitioners of those crafts. Thus it is possible that the original name-makers were, indeed, also dialecticians, but it does not follow that the practitioners of the two crafts are co-extensive: not all dialecticians need have the knowledge appropriate to the name-maker.

52 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 143, cf. 207.

53 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) e.g. 98, 108–9.

54 It might be helpful here to recall the Phaedrus' (263a–266d) distinction between disputed words, and words whose meanings all agree on; dialectic is only pressed into service of disambiguating the latter.

55 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 138.

56 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 82 notes that the Species-Form of a name is clearly distinct from the Form of its nominatum ‘and rightly so, since anyone trying to embody the Form of table in matter, even if that matter were vocal sound, would be making a table (albeit in this case unsuccessfully), not making a name’.

57 Since the doctor is primarily an expert in using drugs, and he is presented as examining drugs, not making them, I take the ‘one who knows about names’ in the analogous case of naming to be the one who uses names, viz. the dialectician.

58 Robinson (Reference Robinson1969) 116.

59 The notion that the Species-Forms constrain the phonetic structures to the degree suggested here is also consistent with other passages in the Cratylus where Socrates appears to suggest that there is more than one phonetic structure capable of instantiating a name. At 389d4–390a, Socrates states that words of the same semantic type can have different phenomenal characteristics in different languages just as the smiths in these different countries may render the same Form ‘in different iron’ (ἐν ἄλλῳ σιδήρῳ) (390a1). Hence, we might infer, it is possible that, say, ‘cheval’, ‘horse’, ‘equus’ and ἵππος are all correct names for a horse. I follow Sedley (Reference Sedley2003, 130–1) in supposing different languages use different matter because they have different systems of basic sounds. It does not follow, then, that one can use any old matter. The key is to tighten up the definition of ‘arbitrary’ in play here. Socrates' radical naturalism allows for the possibility that the name of Hector could have been otherwise: it could have been ‘Astyanax’, for example. But to say that a name is arbitrary is not to say that a name could have had some other particular linguistic properties, but rather that it could have had any other particular linguistic properties whatsoever.

60 Barney (Reference Barney2001) 88n.6 provides a good overview of the uses of dunamis. I do not view the interpretation of dunamis that will be suggested here as entirely divorced from the more typical use; after all, the relevant structural properties of a name are just those properties required for it to be capable of performing a particular function.

61 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 84. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 175 glosses Sedley as follows: ‘perhaps we might rather take the power to be something like the reference of a term as distinct from its referent.’

62 Cf. Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 85. Sedley carefully points out that the means cannot be dispensed with on his account.

63 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 134n.98 agrees that names instantiating the same Species-Form of name must supply the same information about their object, since otherwise, ‘the form would have to be – rather unpalatably – a repository of all conceivable information about X.’

64 I focus on σημαίνω here; however, as Ademollo, I treat it as equivalent to δηλόω in the contexts of use that interest us here. Although δηλόω appears to have wider application than σημαίνω in this dialogue (cf. 433d–e), the two terms are used interchangeably in the etymological discussion (e.g., the use of δηλόω in the etymology of ‘ἥρως’ (398c)). I will therefore use the English ‘signify’ to translate both terms. See Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 165–7 for a fuller discussion of δηλόω, and the synonymy of δηλόω and σημαίνω at 394c.

65 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) 85.

66 For similar appearances of σημαίνω see, e.g.: 395a–b, 413e, 415c–d, 419e, 437a–b. For Ademollo's full analysis see Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 155–76 and especially Ademollo's (174) discussion of οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢβασιλέα σημαίνει (394c3–4) as ‘signifying an individual object as a king – i.e. it signifies that its referent is a king’, since the lack of article here suggests that it does not refer to a universal object or kind (pace Sedley). It might be tempting on my interpretation to translate σημαίνω here as ‘connote’ or ‘give up the informational content of’. Cf. Ketchum (Reference Ketchum1979) 142.

67 Cf. Socrates' earlier claim (393a8–9) that the words ‘hectōr’ and ‘anax’ signify virtually the same (σχεδόν τι ταὐτὸν σημαίνει): given Sedley considers proper names as identifying types – does he suppose that ‘hectōr’ and ‘anax’ have ‘almost the same’ extension? Yet they would both identify exactly the same class on his reading.

68 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 173; for further criticisms of Sedley's reading see, ibid., 175.

69 Compare also with Socrates' claim at 392c–e that the women of Troy call Hector's son ‘Scamandrius’ while the men call him ‘Astyanax’. Although the latter is said to be more correct than the former, both are acknowledged to be names for him (cf. Fine (Reference Fine1977) 297). It would seem that these names are co-extensive then, yet nowhere does Socrates appear to suggest that these two names have the same dunamis.

70 Of course the layman might learn something new, but that would be precisely because he is confused into thinking that they are different names because he cannot see through the sounds and syllables to their underlying informational content.

71 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 159. As for Socrates' other sets of ‘near-synonyms’: the more specific informational content in Iatrocles (‘Doctor-Fame’) likewise seems to entail that encoded in Akesimbrotos (‘Mortal-Healer’) (but not vice versa) (cf. 394c6); if one is a ‘War-Leader’ (Polemarchos) one would thereby be a ‘Leader’ (Agis), and the expectation would certainly be that one was ‘Good-at-War’ (Eupolemos).

72 E.g. Phd. 74d, R. 597a–b.

73 Cf. Cra. 432a ff.

74 Cf. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 171: ‘It is a genuine Platonic view that things sharing a common feature or form are the same in respect of that feature or Form. Thus at Men. 72a–c Socrates claims that bees, which are many and different from each other, “do not differ at all but are all the same” in so far as they are bees’.

75 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 172; cf. Kretzmann (Reference Kretzmann1971) 131.

76 On the relation between phusis and dunamis see Barney (Reference Barney2001) 88n.6, and cf. e.g. Sph. 247d ff. In the parallel between setting a Form and setting a dunamis, note the similarity of the language of ‘setting’ in both cases: εἰς … τίθησιν (389d9); ἐντιθῶμεν (393e3).

77 Cf. Silverman (Reference Silverman1992) 28.

78 Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) may seem to fare no better here, since he suggests that the personal names Socrates offers as examples are chosen to pick out types. In virtue of what, then, does ‘Hector’ designate the son of Priam, rather than some other qualifying individual? Cf. Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 173, and 166 on a different, but related point.

79 The etymology given of the name Pelops (as reported by MSS βΤδ) might speak to this: we are told it ‘signifies (σημαίνει) that the one who sees what is near is worthy (ἄξιον) of this appellation’ (395c3–4). The etymological analysis of this name appears to inform us who it is appropriate to use the name to designate.

80 Strawson might be sympathetic to such a view: he denies expressions have meanings per se, but considers the significance of expressions to be ‘general directions for its use to refer to or mention particular objects or persons’ which ‘cannot be identified with the object it is used, on a particular occasion, to refer to’ (Reference Strawson1950) 327, and, ‘“Mentioning” or “referring” is not something an expression does; it is something that someone can use an expression to do’ (326).

81 Following others, such as Bestor (Reference Bestor1980), Robinson (Reference Robinson1969) and Schofield (Reference Schofield, Schofield and Nussbaum1982), I take the dialogue to reinstate conventionalism. See, for example, Kahn (Reference Kahn, Lee, Mourelatos and Rorty1973), Kretzmann (Reference Kretzmann1971) and Sedley (Reference Sedley2003) for opposing interpretations.

82 While this passage shows that the appropriate mimetic properties of a name are not necessary for its picking out an object, it is not as immediately obvious that they are not sufficient either; however, on this point see Smith (Reference Smith2008) 133–4:

Likeness cannot even be sufficient for reference. Since convention can override any already-existing putative mimetic link, there must be a further condition for successful reference: either there is a convention in place which accords with the natural relation of likeness or a supplementary understanding between two interlocutors (a convention) that no convention is in place at all. If one can use names to refer to nominata that they are unlike by agreeing upon the reference, then one must also secure agreement to get a name to attach to an object that it is like rather than an object it is dissimilar to.

83 Even on a view of Forms as specifying functions alone, unpalatable constraints on names would still result. For example, at 432 ff., our ability to successfully use a name, which was created for one object, to pick out another, such as successfully using the name ‘Hermogenes’ to pick out Cratylus ought not be possible if names had Forms that strictly specified their functions (say the function of picking out Hermogenes).

84 Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 424.

85 Aristotle Int. 4 16b33–17a2.

86 Aristotle Metaph. A 991b, M 1080a, L 1070a. Oddly enough, Ademollo (Reference Ademollo2011) 116 maintains that Aristotle is mistaken to suggest that Plato denied artefactual Forms given that his reports conflict with the passage under consideration here, yet expresses suspicions (125) that we need to dispose of the idea of the Forms of names, given the conclusions of the dialogue. Yet if the Forms in question are ultimately to be thrown out, then our passages may not represent Plato's own considered views on the matter.

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