අර්ථය
දාර්ශනික භාවිතයේදී
තවද අර්ථය යන්න ප්ලේටෝ ගේ සංවාදයක් From Plato By R. M Hare We may illustrate this point…from his treatment of the Socratic search for definitions. When Socrates asked questions like 'What is justice?' or 'What is The Just?', there are at least three things which we might take him as wanting. Does he want a definition of a word or of a thing; and if of a thing, of what kind of thing—of something we might come across in this world, or of something which is only available to thought? Let us try constructing a little dialogue to shed light on this question, without making Plato say anything which will not go into Greek. ENGLISH STRANGER: When Socrates says in the Theaetetus that mud (or clay) is earth mixed with water, is he saying what the word 'mud' means? PLATO: Yes, of course. And what the word means, the thing mud, is what one has to be able to define if one is to show that one knows what mud is. As Socrates says, 'Do you think anybody understands the word for anything, if he doesn't know the thing, what it is?'. E.S.: But what is this mud he has to know? Is it what one gets on one's boots? Plato: How can you expect me to think that? One only gets particular bits of mud on one's boots, and one can touch and see them, but not know them in the sense I'm after. I am after what Mud is in itself, not after particular bits of mud. In the Parmenides I made Socrates reluctantly aware that, even with so down-to-earth a thing as mud, there is this Mud-in-itself that one has to know if one is to have knowledge what mud is. E.S.: So when Socrates says mud is earth mixed with water, is he defining a word or a thing? Plato: I don't see the difference. To define the word is to say what the thing is that it means. But this thing isn't what one gets on one's boots; it is what the mind has before it when one thinks of mud. E.S.: Perhaps we could make the matter clearer if I asked you whether Socrates' definition is the sort of thing that would go into a dictionary. A dictionary is a collection of definitions rather like that first one you or your students compiled and which got into your works under the name Definitions. We have very big dictionaries now; the biggest is produced in Oxford and it defines 'mud' as 'a mixture of finely comminuted particles of rock with water' (you see, we like to be more exact nowadays). Other definitions in it which are very like those to be found in your Definitions are ‘even: the latter part or close of the day'; 'wind: air in motion…usually parallel to the surface of the ground'. And you might find the following familiar: 'circle: a plane figure…bounded by a…circumference, which is everywhere equally distant from a point within, called the centre'; at least there is something very like this in that famous Seventh Letter attributed to you. Plato: Your dictionary does sound as if it were after the same sort of things as I am after, namely statements in words of what other words mean; and of course what they mean are Ideas. Without prolonging the dialogue, I think we can claim that it is simply not profitable to ask Plato the question 'Are you defining words or things?', because he would not understand what we were asking. In general it is very unclear, and contentious even among philosophers today, whether metaphysics, logic and linguistics are separate disciplines (we would not get a straight answer from either a logical positivist like Rudolf Carnap or an idealist like F. H. Bradley); and therefore it is not surprising that Plato cannot tell us which he is doing… Source: Hare, R. M. Plato. Past Masters series. © 1982. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. අනුව දාර්ශනික ගැටලුවක් ලෙස විමසුමට ලක්වේ."උදාහරණයක් ලෙස ඔහුගේ සංවාදයක දැක්වෙන 'මඩ' පිළිබද විග්‍රහය සලකමු.""මෙහිදී “මඩ“ යනුවෙන් කුමක් සැලකිය යුත්තේද? යන්න විමසා බැලේ.""මඩ යනු ජලයද නොවේ. මඩ යනු පස් ද නොවේ. මඩ යනු ජලය හා පස් යන දෙකමද නොවේ.""මඩ යනු කුමක්දැයි(සංකල්පීයව) නොහඳුනන්නෙකුට, මඩ ස්පර්ශ කලද, ඒ පිලිබඳ වැටහීමක් වේද? ( මැණික් නොහඳුනන්නාට තිරිවානා මෙන්)"