
HoP 029 - What's in a Name? - Plato's Cratylus
History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
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The Theory of Arbitrarily Dubbing
In the cratalus, plato considers how words get their power to communicate. One popular theory is that a given sound or set of symbols will represent some particular item. This is one of the theories that plato considers in the dialogue between socrates and hermogenes. Hermogenes adopts the theory of arbitrary dubbing while Cratylus argues that words have their meaning by nature.
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