Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T10:36:31.765Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parmenides on ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’: a disjunctivist reading of the Poem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Erminia Di Iulio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A well-established tradition has argued that it is not legitimate to attribute to Parmenides a Fregean semantics, i.e. the distinction between ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’. Nonetheless, Parmenides claims more than once (B 8.53, B 9.1) that mortals do name reality, although incorrectly. As many scholars have emphasised, because it is fair neither to conclude that mortals’ names are ‘empty names’ nor dismiss Opinion's account (i.e., broadly speaking, the mortals’ account of reality) itself as meaningless, it seems that Parmenides is suggesting that some kind of distinction between what names refer to and what names mean must be drawn. In view of this, what is Parmenides’ account of names?

My suggestion is that in order to explain the Eleatic philosophy of language (and the Eleatic account of names) a step back is required. More specifically, Parmenides’ epistemology has to be taken into account. Indeed, if we assume that Parmenides is arguing for an ‘epistemological disjunctivism’ – such that the veridical and truthful state and the erroneous and deceptive state are essentially different – it will be clear that he is further arguing for what could be defined as a ‘semantic disjunctivism’, so that true speech and false speech are essentially different as well.

Keywords

Parmenidesnamesepistemologydisjunctivismlanguage
Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 96 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 205 - 227
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bredlow, Luis A., ‘Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Parmenides’ Theory of Cognition (B 16)’, Apeiron, 44 (2011), 219–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnyeat, Myles, ‘Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed’, The Philosophical Review, 91, 1 (1982), 3–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Alex, Logue, Heather, ‘Either/or’ in Haddock, Adrian, Macpherson, Fiona, (eds.) Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 57–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Alex, Logue, Heather, ‘Introduction’, Byrne, Alex, Logue, Heather, (eds.) Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), vii–xxix.Google Scholar
Calvo, Tomás, ‘Truth and Doxa in Parmenides’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 59, 3 (1977), 245–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherubin, Rose, ‘Λέγɛιν, Νοɛῖν, and Τὸ Εόν in Parmenides’, Ancient Philosophy, 21, 1 (2001), 277–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherubin, Rose, ‘Light, Night, and the Opinions of Mortals: Parmenides B8.51-61 and B9', Ancient Philosophy, 25, 1 (2005), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cordero, Nestor-Luis, ‘The “Doxa of Parmenides” Dismantled’, Ancient Philosophy, 30, 2 (2010), 231–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornford, Francis M., Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides’ Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides (London: Routledge, 1939).Google Scholar
Coxon, Alln H., The Fragments of Parmenides. A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary (Las Vegas, Zurich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2009).Google Scholar
Curd, Patricia K., ‘Thought and Body in Parmenides’, Cordero, Nestor-Luis, (ed.) Parmenides, venerable and awesome: (Plato, Theaetetus, 183e), Proceedings of the international symposium: Buenos Aires, October 29-November 2, 2007 (Las Vegas, Zurich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2011), 115–34.Google Scholar
Di Iulio, Erminia, ‘Identity's Sustainability. Parmenides on einai and noein’, Giovannetti, Lorenzo, (ed.) The Sustainability of Thought: an itinerary through the history of philosophy (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2020), 19–43.Google Scholar
Fronterotta, Francesco, ‘Some Remarks on NOEIN in Parmenides’, Stern-Gillet, Suzanne, Corrigan, Kevin, (eds), Reading Ancient Texts. Volume I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 3–19.Google Scholar
Furth, Montgomery, ‘Elements of Eleatic Ontology’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 6, 2 (1968), 111–32.Google Scholar
Hershbell, Jackson P., ‘Parmenides’ Way of Truth and B 16’, Apeiron, 4 (1970), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hussey, Edward, ‘Parmenides on Thinking’, King, Richard A. H., (ed.) Common to Body and Soul Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2006), 13–30.Google Scholar
Kahn, Charles, ‘The thesis of Parmenides’, The Review of Metaphysics, 22, 4 (1969), 700–724.Google Scholar
Kingsley, Peter, Reality (Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 2003).Google Scholar
Kirk, Geoffrey S., Raven, John E., Schofield, Malcom, (eds), The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laks, André, ‘“The More” and “the Full”. On the Reconstruction of Parmenides’ Theory of Sensation in Theophrastus, De sensibus, 3–4’, Annas, Julia, (ed.) Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1–18.Google Scholar
Leszl, Walter, ‘Un approccio “epistemologico” all'ontologia parmenidea’, La scuola Eleatica, La parola del passato, LXIII (1988), 281–311.Google Scholar
Long, Anthony A.,‘Parmenides on Thinking Being’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy, 12, 1 (1996), 125–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansfeld, Jaap, ‘Parménide et Héraclite avaient-ils une théorie de la perception?’, Phronesis, 44, 4 (1999), 326–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansfeld, Jaap, ‘Parmenides on Sense Perception in Theophrastus and Elsewhere’, Studies in Early Greek Philosophy, Philosophia Antiqua, 151 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018).Google Scholar
Martin, Michael G. F., ‘The Transparency of Experience’, Mind and Language, 17 (2002), 376–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, John, ‘Criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 68 (1983), 455–79.Google Scholar
Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., ‘Some alternatives in interpreting Parmenides’, The Monist, 62, 1 (1979), 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., The Route of Parmenides (Las Vegas, Zurich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2008).Google Scholar
Owen, Gwilym E. L., ‘Eleatic Questions’, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 10, 1 (1960), 84–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, John, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sassi, Maria Michela, ‘Parmenides and Empedocles on Krasis and Knowledge’, Apeiron, 49, 4 (2016), 451–469.Google Scholar
Searle, John, ‘Perceptual Intentionality’, Organon F, 19, 2 (2012), 9–22.Google Scholar
Tor, Shaul, ‘Parmenides’ epistemology and the two parts of his poem’, Phronesis, 60, 1 (2015), 3–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tor, Shaul, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology. A study of Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Parmenides, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vlastos, Gregory, ‘Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 77 (1946), 66–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vlatos, Gregory, ‘“Names” of Being in Parmenides’, Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., The Route of Parmenides (Las Vegas, Zurich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2008), 367–390.Google Scholar
Wedin, Michael, Parmenides’ Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodbury, Leonard, ‘Parmenides on names’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 63 (1958), 145–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar