PLATO'S SOPHIST; FALSEHOODS AND IMAGES

The chief arguments of the Sophist occur in what is

sometimes called its "inner core . T h ~ e core is that
large section which begins after the dichotomies employed
to catch the sophist come to an impasse about "non-
being" and falsehoods, and which ends with the return to
dichotomous division after the account of "logos" in
the sense of "statement" has been given. This inner
core runs from 232B to 263E. The relations between
shell and core depend upon how seriously Plato is
thought to have regarded the method of "division"
( διαίρη<ής) . Such problems are not relevant to the
questions discussed here, nor does Plato's attempt
to catch the sophist appear to be entirely serious.
Rather, I want to discuss the puzzles about falsehood
and how these puzzles are connected with the hunt for
the sophist.
How does the problem of falsehood arise in the
dialogue? The participants in the dialogue try to
catch the sophist by trying to define the art he practises.
They do this by the series of divisions mentioned above.
This involves a description of those arts which produce
"imitations" (μιμτΐματα) or "images" (είδωλα). Painting
produces visual images and sophistry produces "spoken
images" (είδωλα λεγόμενα 234B-C) . The distinction is
made between images which are true likenesses of what
they purport to represent and images which are distor-
tions of what they purport to represent. Hence we get
a distinction which cuts across the seen-/spoken-image
distinction, a distinction between arts whose images genuinely
represent the characteristics of their objects (τέχναι
είκαστικαύ) and arts whose images are distortions of what
they purport to represent (τέχναι φανταστικά ι' - 236C) .
Sophistry clearly deals with the latter; it puts forward
distorted images. But if its images do not represent
correctly, then they are, in some sense, false. Thus
Plato seems to be saying that sophists are dealers in
falsehoods. But this, according to the Eleatic Stranger,
raises a problem. "You see, Theaetetus, it is extremely
difficult to understand how a man is to say or think
that falsehood really exists and in saying this not be
involved in a contradiction" (236E3-237A1). The
statement is a peculiar one. People obviously make
false statements all the time, and to deny that they do
or even to wonder whether their doing so is legitimate would
be to contradict an evident fact. How, then, does there
seem to be a contradiction in saying that there are such
things as falsehoods? By the stranger's account, to say
that there are falsehoods entails "hypothesizing that non-
being Ϊ3"(6ποθεΡθβι το μη δν είναι - 237Α3-4). And to say that
"non-boing is" has been expressly forbidden by no less
an authority than Parmenides himself (237A8-9).
There are several questions to be answered. First,
what is meant by the phrase which I have translated as
"non-being"? Second, how is this phrase connected with
falsehood? Third, how does a contradiction, or at least
the appearance of one, arise when the phrase is connected
with falsehood? In order to answer these questions
I shall first discuss the analogy between seen and
spoken images and then discuss another analogy from the

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 2.

Theaetetus, both of which will help to show why there seems to

be a problem about falsehoods for the participants.
Thus far in the Sophist the participants have deter-
mined that the sophist is a dealer in falsehoods and also
that his art is an image-making one. But the images
which his art produces do not correctly represent those
things of which they are supposed to be images. They are
like bad paintings with blurred or distorted outlines, with
colours which their subjects do not have, and lacking the
proper perspective. But instead of being made up of paint
and canvas, they are verbal; these images are painted in
words. Nevertheless, the verbal images are considered to
be distortions in the same way as badly painted images. They
too should be distorted images of what they purport to
represent. Both sorts of images are bad representations
of their subject matter and both are, in some sense, false.
The sophist deals in spoken images and, like the inadequate
painter, he portrays "what is not" or "non-being", whatever
might be meant by that phrase.
To take the case of painting f i r s t , the partic-
ipants seem to be saying that a bad painter (given, of course,
the view that the goal of painting is realistic represent-
ation) produces pictorial falsehoods. But in what way can
a painting be a pictorial false-hood? This is equivalent
to asking in what sense a painting can be called false.
If it is false, by the way in which the discussion has pro-
ceeded, we should be able to find some connection between
the painting which is said to be false and the phrase "what
is not" or "non-being" also. The painting purports to
represent a given object, but it only succeeds in distorting
the real proportions of that object. In such a case we
might say that the painting fails to represent the actual
features of the object, but can a sense of "what is not"
be found to fit this case? Suppose that the painting purports
to be a representation of Socrates, but instead of portraying
him with a snub nose, the painting portrays him with a more
ordinary one. It is clear that the real Socrates and his
representation in the painting are two different sorts of
things. In one sense of "what is not," that of non-identity,
the representation of Socrates is not Socrates himself. But
his could hardly be what the participants have in mind be-
cause by using this sense of "is not" every painting would
be non-identical with its subject matter and there would
remain no way of distinguishing between those paintings
which accurately portray and those which do not. If,
however, we expand the phrase, we can maintain that the
portrait of Socrates represents something "which is not the
case". It shows Socrates as having certain characteristics
which he does not in fact have.
But what about the usage of "false" in this situa-
tion? Is there any sense of "false" which can apply here?
We should have to find a way in which "false" can be assimi-
lated to "does not correctly represent". But is such an
assimilation legitimate? Suppose that there are several
paintings of Socrates. One shows him with blue eyes when
he has green ones in addition to having an ordinary nose
when he has a snub nose. Another shows him with all these
characteristics but also with a full head of hair when he
is bald. In these cases it seems possible to arrange the

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 3.

paintings in a series of more and less accurate representa-

tions. Here we are talking about degrees of correct or
incorrect representation. But if "false" is to be assimi-
lated to "does not correctly represent," then we should
also have to talk about one painting as more or less
"false" than another. It appears open to question
first as to whether the term "false" should be applied
at all. One might also question whether such a usage
of "false" as admitting degrees can be applied. Thus
although there seems to be an expanded sense of "what
is not" for bad representations in paintings, there
appear to be difficulties in talking about a painting
as being false (or true) at all. We speak about
truly or falsely representing, but we do not speak
about true or false paintings.

Such difficulties become magnified when we turn

from seen images to spoken images. Seen images re-
present what is not the case. But what is the connec-
tion between those spoken images called falsehoods and
"what is not"? Putting forward the analogy between
seen and spoken images leads the participants to hold
that the person who says that there are such things
as falsehoods must also hypothesize that "what is
not is." Although they do not spell out the imp-
lications, this seems to mean that stating a false-
hood is stating "what is not". Or, in Cornford's
words: "A common equivalent of 'speaking falsely 1
is 'saying the thing that is not" 1 . 2 This provides
a clue to why the participants find an analogy between
visual and verbal images which inaccurately represent
their subject-matter, and to why it is said that talk
about falsehoods is contradictory. It surely makes
sense to talk about images or paintings as representing
"what is not" when this is expanded to "what is not
the case". If there is a parallel here, then we
should also be able to talk about falsehoods as stating
or saying "what is not". But Cornford's comment just
quoted indicates a way in which we can see how one
could be puzzled about falsehoods. Just as images
represent "what is not", so, in a rather confused way,
one might say that a falsehood says "what is not"
or "the thing which is not". The English verb
"say" can take either a direct object ( e . g . , "he says
something sensible") or it can take a clause beginning
with "that" followed by an integral sentence, or it
can be followed by a quoted sentence. These do not
exhaust the ways in which the term can be used, but
there seems to be an important distinction here which
has parallel occurrences in Greek (for λέγω and
verbs of thinking, believing, etc.) and which seems
to get the participants as well as Parmenides into
trouble when they talk about falsehoods. Taking
just the direct object usage of "say" one might be
tempted to maintain that uttering a falsehood is
saying "the thing which is not" or saying "what is
not". Suppose now that "what is not" means "nothing"
or "something which is not at all". From here one
could go on and say that stating a falsehood is stating
nothing. But stating nothing is equivalent to not
stating anything at all. This might be what the
participants find to be contradictory in their talk
about falsehoods. Just as a bad painting represents
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4.

"what is not" (although this has to be expanded or similar

difficulties will arise), so a falsehood states "what is
not" or "nothing", and this appears to be impossible.
Or, in another way, when one speaks truly, one
says that what is,is, and when one speaks falsely, he says
that what is not, is. Before any clarification of "is"
and "is not" is given, it looks as if there are no d i f f -
iculties in telling the truth, whereas stating a false-
hood looks like an impossibility because stating a false-
hood is stating that what is not is. Thus stating a
falsehood is not a form of stating at all, or it is
contradictory; and the conclusion is that there cannot
really be anything which answers to the name of falsehood.
It appears that Cornford's comment is an accurate one.
since an account of falsehood similar to those I have
just given occurs in the Theaetetus (188C-189B), although
there, as it seems to me, Plato puts forward the account
to expose its difficulties.
The analogy between seen and spoken images, then,
seems to lead the participants to maintain that falsehoods
are like bad paintings. I have already pointed out that
this seems to lead them to maintain that bad paintings and
falsehoods are false in the same sense and that both in-
volve "what is not". The phrase has to be expanded and
clarified in order to apply to paintings. If it were
not, difficulties parallel to those which arise in the
case of falsehoods when the phrase is not clarified would
also arise, and then bad painting would seem to be impossible
also. I have not developed an argument for the case of
paintings because the participants do not. But when they
talk about falsehoods without clarifying the senses of "what
is" and "what is not", they do get paradoxical results.
Another reason why they get paradoxical results
is because they seem to assume that the direct-object sense
of "stating" (and "believing", etc.) is the only sense.
Borrowing again from the Theaetetus (188C-189B), the
participants seem to be making use of another analogy in
which the functions of stating, believing, thinking, etc.
are held to operate in the same way as the functions of
seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. The participants seem to
equate, for example, seeing and believing. To believe x,
on the analogy with seeing, is to be immediately aware of
something. What is seen or believed in each of these cases
is the same sort of thing. But what about cases of
mistaken seeing and believing? There is some plausibility
in saying that there are cases of seeing "what is not"
when the phrase is expanded to "what is not, on subsequent
inspection, found to have been there". But does this mean
that nothing was seen or that what was actually seen did
not exist, even though what was seen was an hallucination?
There are, of course, many problems about cases of mistaken
seeing, but it appears difficult to deny that what was
seen had certain characteristics and could be identified
and described in some way. Again the phrase "what is
not" would have to be expanded in order to be useful. But,
and it is at this point that the analogy causes its real
problems, can we say that what was seen, whether or n^*-
it was an hallucination, was true or false? The concepts

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 5.
of truth and falsity do not seem to be applicable to
what is seen, heard, etc. We do not see "true"
trees on one occasion and "false" trees on others
unless "true" and "false" are assimilated to "genuine"
and "non-genuine". Thus, even though there seems
to be an expanded sense of "what is not" which is
applicable to cases of mistaken perception, it appears
impossible to find senses of "true" or "false" which
are applicable to the objects of perception in the
same way that they are applicable to statements.
However, the participants do not seem to recognize
this.
But, to take the other side of the analogy, we
can find senses of "believe" which take an object
in the same way as "see" does. For example, I can
believe John, i.e. trust him on most occasions.
But what is believed here can be two different sorts
of things, and corresponding to these there are two
different senses of "true" and "false". In one
sense I can believe John and say that he is true.
What is meant by "true"is that John is faithful or
reliable. Thus believing can have a direct object,
namely John himself. And further, John can be
either trustworthy or untrustworthy; he can, in one
sense, be "true" or "false". But, in another sense,
when I say that I believe John, I can mean that I
believe what John says, the statement he makes.
In this sense, the concepts of truth and falsity apply
to his statements. However, if John continually
makes true statements, then I can say that John him-
self is "true" and mean by this that he give« reliable
information. But these two senses of "true" and
"false", one applying to persons and the other to
statements, scarcely mean the same for at least the
single reason that we can talk about John as being
more or less "true" than someone else in the first
sense, but we cannot say that one statement is more
or less "true" than another in the second sense.
And the same contrast holds for "false". The
participants in the Sophist however, do not seem
to realize (at the beginning of their discussion of
falsehood) that there are different senses of "true"
and "false" answering to different sorts of comp-
letions for "believing..." In fact the second
completion, where true and false apply to statements,
does not seem to be used at all, and this leads me
to maintain that they, at least implicitly, accept
the analogy between seeing and believing.
For the sake of convenience, I shall call the set
of assumptions which the participants seem to be
holding, either implicitly or explicitly, the "object"
view. These assumptions come from both the seen-/
spoken image analogy and the analogy between the
objects of stating or believing and seeing or hearing.
First, what is stated or believed is a kind of object
in the same sense as what is seen or represented.
It is not, on this view, a statement or proposition
about something, and stating or believing something
is like apprehending something by the senses. In
a briefer way, believing is a kind of mental seeing.
The use of the image terminology suggests that we
can apprehend Brought
a spoken imageof South
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we can apprehend a visual image.
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6.

stated or believed can be said to be true or false, and

we believe things called truths or falsehoods. But these
are objects like visual objects, and no distinction is
drawn between believing a person, say, and believing a
statement. And correspondingly no distinction is made
between the senses of "true" and "false". Third, in
cases of mistaken seeing or believing, we apprehend
something "which is not". And, as I have already pointed
out, this sort of apprehension, in one sense of "what is
not", turns out to be not a kind of apprehension at all,
and thus falsehoods are said to be impossible or to involve
a contradiction. These assumptions are all involved in
the object view and it can be seen easily that making
assumptions like these not only makes nonsense of false
believing and stating but that accounts like this of
true stating or believing would quickly lead to difficul-
ties also.
Corresponding to these assumptions in the object
view there are three points which need to be clarified in
order for there to be an adequate account of stating,
believing, etc. whether truly or falsely. First, a
distinction has to be made between what we see and what
we state or believe. Granted that both can take accusa-
tives, stating or believing can also take statements for
their objects. What we believe about things can be ex-
pressed in statements. Whatever one's views about the
sorts of things statements are, the minimal point is that
they are not like material objects. Their chief character-
istic, and this is the second point which needs clari-
fication, is that they can be called "true" or "false" in
a sense which cannot be applied to what is perceived. The
object view assumes that the concepts of truth and falsity
can in some sense be applied to those non-propositional
objects which are apprehended on the analogy with vision
and further that this is the only sense of these concepts.
Making the distinction between objects and statements gives
the location for truth and falsity in the latter. With
this distinction made many of the puzzles about false-
hoods disappear. In e f f e c t , falsehoods are seen to be
quite d i f f e r e n t sorts of things. They are not apprehended
in the way in which we apprehend the objects of the senses;
rather they, as well as truths, are stated, believed,
thought etc. Third, the ambiguous phrase τΌ μη δν
has to be clarified. If it is taken to mean "nothing" or "that
which in no way is", then there are further difficulties. But the
clarification must begin at a more basic point, namely by elaborating
the various senses of both "is" and "is not". Plato
realized that the object view is confused and contradictory;
in the remainder of the Sophist, he attempts to dispel it.
W. Bondeson University of Missouri

Notes:
1. Plato; The Theaetetus and Sophist ηιι trans. H . N . Fowler,
Harvard University P r e s s ( 1 9 6 1T7
) , p.337. Ϊ
F.M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, Liberal
Arts Press, 1957, p . 2 0 0 .
I have elaborated this point in my paper, "Perception,
True Opinion and Knowledge in Plato's Theaetetus",
. Vol XIV, No. 2 (1969), pp.111-122.
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