Being, difference, and falsehood › How a statement can be false

The visitor now examines discourse. A string of names alone does not make an assertion. Nor does a string of verbs. A basic statement joins a name with a verb so that something is said about something. The point is not simply grammatical correctness: the combination introduces an assertion about a subject (Sophist 261d–262e).

The dialogue contrasts a statement that Theaetetus is sitting with one that Theaetetus is flying. The sitting statement is true in the conversation's situation; the flying statement is false. Both are about Theaetetus. The second attributes to him something that is not so about him, presenting it as if it were so (Sophist 263a–d).

Nothing here requires a mysterious nonexistent object called falsehood. The subject is available, the activity can be spoken about, and the predication misrepresents the subject. Difference and combination make it possible to explain an intelligible error. The false assertion has not disappeared merely because it fails to match its subject.

Return to the consultant's safety claim. A completed review may be a perfectly intelligible condition without applying to this system. Establishing that reviews exist somewhere does not validate the assertion. Nor does establishing that the system exists. We must investigate the particular relationship asserted. This is the practical difference between understanding a sentence and knowing that it is true.

The visitor extends the account to thought, opinion, and appearance. He describes thought as an unspoken dialogue of the soul with itself, and connects opinion with an affirmation or denial reached in thinking. Their relationship to discourse makes room for falsity in them too (Sophist 263e–264b). These are philosophical accounts within the dialogue; the passage does not offer an experimental theory of cognition.

The possibility of falsehood also permits the inquiry into the sophist to resume. The closing divisions distinguish imitation based on knowledge from imitation based on opinion, and naive confidence from the dissembling of someone who suspects his ignorance. The final route identifies the sophist with an opinion-based, dissembling verbal imitation that produces contradictions in private questioning (Sophist 264c–268d). It is more specific than a definition of anyone who ever says something false.