ABSTRACT

Socrates’ account of mimetic correctness is immediately followed by a ‘reexamination’ of naturalism, through a complex sequence of arguments which seem both to depend on the naturalistic account and to undermine it. This issues in a vague and unsatisfying conclusion: Socrates claims to prefer that, insofar as possible, names be like [homoia] their objects (435c2-3), but adds that “we must also bring to bear this vulgar thing, convention, on the correctness of names” (435c5-6).