ABSTRACT
Plato has explained how we can negate both predications and identifications. He has explained how both those ways of speaking about what is not are perfectly legitimate and free from paradox. His explanations seemed plausible enough, so far as they went . But did they go far enough? In particular, did they go far enough to solve our problem about falsehood? Plato thought not . By Sophist 258 b 7 he has legitimated talk of what is not. It is not however until Sophist 263 d 4 that he takes himself to have legitimated talk of falsehood. In the meantime, much other work is done; and even though the problem of falsehood was that to charge someone with falsehood requires talk of what is not, nevertheless the eventual solution to that problem is not a simple application of the earlier result that talk of what is not can make perfecdy good sense . Why does Plato proceed in this way? Why does he not declare the problem of falsehood solved the moment he has given his account of negation?
