Being, difference, and falsehood › Why images create a problem about being

The visitor distinguishes likeness-making from the production of misleading appearances. In his artistic example, a likeness preserves the proportions of its original. A large work can instead alter proportions to produce the desired appearance from a spectator's particular viewpoint. The distinction concerns fidelity to the thing represented and the effect on the observer (Sophist 235d–236c).

A map provides a contemporary analogy. A map can simplify a city while preserving the relationships it promises to show. Another diagram might place two locations deceptively close together to influence a buyer. Both are representations, and neither is the city itself. We still need a further account of which features the representation preserves and which judgments it encourages. An image's being different from its original does not automatically make it deceptive.

The metaphysical difficulty arises when the visitor asks what an image is. An image exists, but it is not the original it represents. If every use of "is not" invokes absolute nonexistence, even describing an image becomes troublesome. It seems both to be, as an image, and not to be, as the original. Treating these claims as contradictory would prevent us from stating an ordinary distinction (Sophist 239d–240c).

The visitor invokes Parmenides' prohibition against pursuing what is not. At this stage, the prohibition threatens the account of false opinion as well: how can someone think or say what is not? The discussion exposes further trouble in speaking about absolute non-being. Describing it as one thing, or several things, already appears to give it number and some character (Sophist 237a–239c).

We should keep the attribution within its limits. Plato's visitor is developing and testing an Eleatic difficulty in a dramatic argument. That does not license putting a modern theory of fictional names into the historical Parmenides' mouth. Nor does the Sophist settle every question about sentences concerning nonexistent objects. Its eventual example of falsehood deliberately concerns an available subject: Theaetetus himself.

At 241d the visitor asks not to be regarded as committing parricide when he tests the argument of his intellectual father, Parmenides. The proposed challenge is qualified: what is not must in some respect be, and what is must in some respect not be. The qualification points toward different respects of predication. It does not announce that contradictions are now acceptable. The dialogue's complete text lets us follow the difficulty into its proposed resolution.