Both literature and mathematics proceed from postulates, not facts; both can be applied to external reality and yet exist also in a “pure” or self-contained form. Both, furthermore, drive a wedge between the antithesis of being and non-being that is so important for discursive thought.
[Frye1957], p. 351.
Plato’s problem as a paradox
The problem can be put in the form of a paradox. This reconstruction of Plato’s problem as a paradox is hinted at in [Rorty 1981], but not presented as such. The labels are mine for I think Rorty’s labels are confusing as I will show in this section.
Here are three claims which can be argued for independently but lead to a con-tradiction if held together.
(Parmenides) In reality, being is and non-being is not.
(Representationalism) Language represents reality.
(Sophism) There are false discourses.
Assuming (Sophism), given the above definition of false discourses, it follows that in language sometimes non-being is. Hence, by (Representationalism), in reality sometimes non-being is. But this amounts to contradicting (Parmenides). Therefore, the three claims cannot be held together. As usual, one can resolve the paradox by denying at least one of these three claims.
But the three thesis are not equally likely to be denied. It appears that (Sophism) is by far the least likely to be denied, given that we have clear uncontroversial exam-ples of mistaken discourses as well as lies and linguistic fictions in the everyday use of language. Denying (Sophism) would lead to the conclusion that such discourses are actually not linguistic discourses but mere noise. This line of thinking seems hopeless. I do not know of any philosopher who seriously tried to deny (Sophism).
Denying (Parmenides), in contrast, is a very well-entrenched metaphysical posi-tion in philosophy. Indeed, at the time when Parmenides was teaching his doctrine, he was arguing against Heraclitus who defended the opposite thesis, according to which reality is a mixture of being and non-being. Heraclitus was just as influential as Parmenides and the debate between the two forefathers of Western philosophy arguably continues to this day.6 But there are many other ways of denying (Par-menides) than that of embracing Heraclitus’s world view. The Visitor in Plato’s Sophist is indeed led to reject (Parmenides) and offer a complex ontology where be-ing and non-bebe-ing do not exhaust the ontological space. This route is usually called the “parricide”, since the Visitor was a student of Parmenides.
Finally, denying (Representationalism) is probably the most intuitive way out of the paradox. It can be done in different ways and Rorty invites us to consider one very influential denial of (Representationalism) as put forward in the work of the late Wittgenstein on the concept of “language-games”. Here is what Rorty writes:
The language-game approach of theInvestigationsabandons this “pic-ture pic“pic-ture” of language precisely in allowing that whether a sentence has
6This is, for instance, one of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical thesis that the metaphysical de-bate between Parmenides and Heraclitus is definitional of Western philosophy, as put forward in [Nietzsche1908].
INTRODUCTION: IS IT REALLY A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM?
Back totable of content Page 22 of369
sense (i.e., can be intelligible and true or false) may be dependent upon whether another sentence is true. Since this possibility is paradigmati-cally actual in the case of fictional discourse [...], philosophical problems about fiction simply do not arise once the picture picture is dropped.
Nor, for parallel reasons, do sceptical problems about life being a dream, nor the problem of how scientific theories may be “philosophically” dis-tinguished from poems.
The common root of all these problems is the fear that the manifold possibilities offered by discursive thought will play us false, will make us “lose contact” with the real. This fear is, as Heidegger has argued, definatory of the Western philosophical tradition.7
Here is the crux of Rorty’s insight: there is a philosophical problem about fic-tional discourse only if one accepts (Representafic-tionalism). But one can deny it, e.g.
Wittgenstein’s theory of language-game does so. So, there is no “problem of fictional discourse” in general, only relative to one’s commitment to (Representationalism).
Shortcomings of Rorty’s claim
One can already see that focusing on (Representationalism) only is an arbitrary narrowing of the logical space. I suggest that we should consider all the necessary commitments for it to be a problem with fictional discourse.
In fact, in [Rorty1981] he conflates (Parmenides) and (Representationalism) into a single thesis called the “Parmenidean Picture Picture”. Roughly, he targets under this label all the semantics whose aim is to give a theory of “how words relate to the world”, as he himself puts it. I think what he has in mind, given what he says about it, is a referentialist semantics in which the basic building blocks involve direct reference to real individuals. In today’s language, he would target the idea of a truthmaker semantics.8
Consequently, Rorty claims that both (Parmenides) and (Representationalism) shall stand or fall together. But this is not true. Indeed, one can deny (Parmenides) while holding on to (Representationalism). The Visitor arguably does so in the Sophist. Another somewhat extreme example of such a strategy can be found in Montaigne’s essay “Du repentir” (III, 2) where he famously declared: “Je ne peins pas l’être. Je peins le passage.” In this essay, Montaigne defends a Heraclitean
7[Rorty1981], pp. 129-130.
8For a philosophical discussion of the so-called “truthmaker principle”, see [Armstrong1973], p.
11. See also Kratzer’s2019 Leverhulme Lecturesfor a linguistically motivated version of truthmaker semantics.
ontology in which everything is constantly changing and thus every being is always becoming non-being. But, in the same breath, he defends the view that language can represent this ever changing world.
One can also deny (Representationalism) while holding on to (Parmenides). In fact, Wittgenstein’s language-game theory can be interpreted in this way: it says that the truth and falsity of linguistic discourse does not depend on how language represents reality; but it says nothing about the ultimate nature of reality. It is perfectly compatible with (Parmedides) according to which reality is wholly on the side of being and involves no mixing of being and non-being.
The second shortcoming of Rorty’s claim is that are different ways of denying (Representationalism) which he does not consider. Actually, his choice of the late Wittgenstein can be seen as a very bad choice. Indeed, the late Wittgenstein is inter-esting because he criticises the project of a correspondence theory of truth for natural language. The idea that a theory of truth should be build on the notion of corre-spondence to reality is a very old and well-entrenched idea which was first forcefully defended as such in the work of Aristotle.9 Rorty claims that all the philosophers who accept the idea of a correspondence theory of truth should be grouped together and labelled: the Permenidean philosophers. Moreover, he interprets the notion of
“correspondence” so broadly in [Rorty 1981] that Russell and Meinong happen to both be Parmenidean. Consequently, Rorty heroically succeeds in reconciling Russell and Meinong (against the second Wittgenstein): both have a problem with fictional discourse.
One can now see that Rorty’s definition of the “Parmenidean philosophers” is much too coarse to even mean anything, for Russell and Meinong are clearly not on the same side. This suggests that Rorty very likely presents this result with his tongue in his cheek, although the irony is very subtle. Be it as it may, I think the reasonable conclusion is that the theses in Plato’s paradox are vague. Rorty’s text, unfortunately, does not help to clarify the concepts involved. Indeed, my reconstruc-tion of Plato’s argument, following Rorty’s hints, is more precise than Rorty text. So in order to make things more precise, I need to change the framework and historical background and shift from Plato to Brentano.10
9For a general presentation of such theories, see David, Marian, “Correspondence Theory of Truth”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),https:
//plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/truth-correspondence/.
10Jean-Marie Schaeffer, in the first chapter of [Schaeffer1999], also traces back the problem of imitationto Plato. However, he focuses on the philosophical problem concerned with thevalue of fictional discourse and other kinds of mimesis, for Plato famously proposed to deport the poets out of his ideal state (inRepublic X). So one can trace back to Plato’s work two distinct, though related problems about fictional discourse: that of the possibility and that of the desirability of
INTRODUCTION: IS IT REALLY A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM?
Back totable of content Page 24 of369