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Gorgias the Sophist on "Not Being": How to Interpret Gorgias, by Michael Bakaoukas, M.Sc., Ph.D. (continued)
So the question raised by Gorgias is "how can two minds have the same perception?" or "is perceptual identity or sameness possible?" According to Mourelatos, to solve this puzzle Gorgias uses a metaphysical device. He says that two different subjects do not have the same perceptions (tauton) but similar ones (homoion). He substitutes similar (homoion) for numerically the same (tauton). So, as Mourelatos put it, "and since similarity admits of degrees ... perceptions may not be exactly similar, after all" (Mourelatos, 1987: 144). So, on Mourelatos' Gorgias, if we assume that meaning is mental (or sensory) image, "there would always be doubts as to whether a given word has the same meaning when used by different speakers, or when used by the same speaker at different times" (Mourelatos, 1987:154). This phenomenological reading is justified by Kerferd's view that what concerns Gorgias is "the status of objects of perception ... with primary reference to phenomenal objects" (Kerferd, 1955: 5, 24). For Mourelatos, "Gorgias has denied the proposition that language has the function of 'representing' or 'exhibiting', or 'setting forth" (parastatikos) something that is extra-linguistic (first half of the concluding statement in section DK B3 85)" (Mourelatos, 1987: 160). The Sophist does not espouse an ideational theory of meaning either. So what is left is a behavioural theory of meaning. In Mourelatos' words, "it is rather uncanny how closely the vocabulary of section 85 resembles the vocabulary of modern behaviourist theory. External objects ... 'fall upon us' or 'make an impact on us' or 'impinge upon us' (prospiptonton, hypoptoseos)" (Mourelatos, 1987: 163). So, according to Mourelatos, Gorgias espouses a behavioural conception of meaning. Gorgias believes that a word has effect on other speakers of the language. For example, he says: "in response to the happy and unhappy occurrences affecting things and bodies that are not one's own, the soul comes itself to experience a certain emotion, through logos" (Helen 9 - tr. Mourelatos, 1987: 156-7). For Mourelatos, this Gorgianic position "is an illustration of the conception of words as substitute stimuli (Mourelatos, 1987: 157). Furthermore, Gorgias compares the power of logos with that of drugs ("just as different drugs draw different humours from the body ... so too with logoi" (Helen 14 tr. Mourelatos, 1987: 157). As Mourelatos put it, "if only we changed the archaic expression 'drawing out humours' to the behaviourist idiom of 'eliciting a physiological reaction' this sentence could just as well have been written by such advocates of the stimulus-response conception of meaning as Leonard Bloomfield, or B.F. Skinner, or C.L. Stevenson" (Mourelatos, 1987: 158). Furthermore, Kerferd interprets DK B3 83-85 as follows: "communication is exclusively by means of speech or words, and the externally existing objects are not words. There is no possibility of converting things into words, and as a result there is no possibility of communicating things through, or by means of, words. This sets up an unabridged and unbridgeable gulf between words and things" (Kerferd, 1984: 218; cf. Mazzara, 1983: 130 ff.). The text speaks clearly about words being ontologically different from things (Kyrkos, 1993: 299; Jaekel, 1988; Adrados, 1981); and such a gulf or difference implies that a referential theory of meaning is ungrounded or at least that words are not "related to things as proper names - onomata" (Kerferd, 1984, 218). For Kerferd this passage proves (a) that Gorgias rejects "a referential theory of meaning- the view that words possess meaning, because they refer to (externally existing) things", and (b) that words, according to Gorgias, couldnot be used to communicate information about objects outside us, so that the possibility of communication by means of logos is eliminated (Kerferd, 1984: 218). In addition, Gorgias says: "if anything exists, it cannot be known, and if it is known, no one could show it to another; because things are not words, and because no one thinks the same thing as another" (MXG 980b 17-19). For Kerferd this Gorgianic view posits a gap between the logos and the sense impressions or thoughts (Kerferd, 1981 [b]: 324). So, on Kerferd's view, "Gorgias has introduced a decisive breach into the relation between words and things, and by so doing also between words and sense-impressions. Yet from Parmenides onwards it was part of the received wisdom that words must refer to something ... all thinkers in the fifth century BC were still imprisoned in the constraints imposed by the search for a referential theory of meaning; ... in default of any other possible objects of reference for words [Plato] ended up by proposing fresh entities, the Platonic Forms. No such solution was available to Gorgias. The furthest that he was able to go was to suppose that it is thoughts in people's minds which function as objects of reference" (Kerferd, 1981 b: 325-6). What both Mourelatos and Kerferd accept is that Gorgias espouses a theory of meaning. So Mourelatos' and Kerferd's research conclusion is that we can interpret Gorgias' thought in terms of a theory of meaning. To conclude, as shown, scholars have to deal with multiple frames of interpretation before they can offer any settled account of what Gorgias meant to say to his audience.
Dr. Michael Bakaoukas studied Ancient and Modern Philosophy at the University of Ioannina, Greece, receiving his Bachelor's degree in 1993. He received his Master's in Philosophy from the Philosophy Department of the University of Edinburgh, in 1995 working with Dr Theodore Scaltsas at Project Archelogos. He obtained his PhD in Ancient Greek Philosophy from the Department of Methodology, History and Theory of Science of the University of Athens. His MSc dissertation was entitled "The Argument from Illusion in Gorgias' Treatise On What is Not; his Ph.D. dissertation was entitled "Gorgias; treatise on what is not or on nature. An epistemological analysis. The philosophical controversy between the Eleatics and the Atomists and the intervention of Gorgias." Dr Bakaoukas is to work as research scholar at the University of Crete or at the Aegean University.
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(1916), Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Bonn, 1916. Rodriguez, Adrados, F. (1981), "La teoria del signo en Gorgias de Leontinos," in Geckeler, H. (ed.), Logos Semantikos. Studia linguistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriou, Berlin- Madrid, 1981. Schiappa, H.-Hoffman, St. (1994), "Intertextual Argument in Gorgias' On What is Not: A Formalization of Sextus, Adv. Math. 7.77-80," Philosophy and Rhetoric 27 (1994), 156-161. Thom, P. (1986), "A Lesniewskian Reading of Ancient Ontology: Parmenides to Democritus," History and Philosohy of Logic, 7 (1986), 155- 166 Untersteiner, M. (1954), The Sophists, trs. Kathleen Freeman, Osxford, 1954. Walters, D.F. (1994), "Gorgias as a Philosopher of Being: Epistemic Foundationalism in Sophistic Thought," Philosophy and Rhetoric 27 (1994), 143-155 Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations, trs. G.E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, 1953. Zeller, E. (1963), Die Philosophie der Griechen, Erster Teil, Zweite Abteilung, Hildesheim, 1963.
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