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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Erminia Di Iulio
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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
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Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2020

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