Nombre y significado en Platón, Crátilo 384a8-391a4: el modelo técnico del lenguaje como solución a la controversia entre naturalismo y convencionalismo

FABIAN MIE

Rio de Janeiro

Simposio; Coloquio Platao e Aristóteles; 2014

Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro

I aim to show that in the Cratylus Plato carries out a model for names and meaning by which he offers an alternative for solving some problems arrising from some naturalist as well as conventionalist theses about language. I will focus chiefly on the reconstruction of the argument at 384a8-391a4 and on the later refutation of the rough naturalism at 428d ss. So, I will try to explain Plato?s main theses on names according to which (a) they are instruments made by convention in order to perform some specific action, and (b) they have a semantic-normative external source lying in the natural essences of things. Besides them, I aim at showing that Plato?s Cratylus makes a start with the descriptive theory of meaning which Aristotle continues in De Interpretatione.