True and False Names in the "Cratylus"

Recent commentators on the Cratylus have typically passed one of the following (equally condemnatory) judgments on the passage 385 B-C, in which Plato asserts that words can be true or false: Plato has given us a patently bad argument, Plato is confused, or Plato does not mean what he says.' I think that an examination of the text will vindicate Plato of all of these charges. In this paper I shall attempt to show that the charges are unfounded by arguing that only if one supposes that Plato means by 'logos' in the passage in question something like what contemporary philosophers mean by 'statement' can orne advance the arguments used by the aforementioned commentators in support of their verdicts, and, further, that it is most unlikely that the text can support such an interpretation. The major burden of this paper will be to try to give a reasonable analysis of the passage in question without imposing on it the contemporary philosophical use of the word 'statement'. Let us begin by examining the context in which the passage appears. Cratylus and Hermogenes have been arguing about the correctness of names.2 Both hold that there is such a thing as the correctness of names, but Cratylus has been defending the thesis that things have correct names by nature, while Hermogenes holds that the correctness of names is a matter of convention. One gets the impression, from Hermogenes' complaint that he has been asking Cratylus to explain his position and can extract from him no explanation or even discussion of the matter, that Cratylus and Hermogenes have been merely exchanging the slogans, 'Correct naming is a matter of convention', and 'Correct naming is a matter of nature', without attempting to spell out the positions or trying to construct arguments for or against