A Study Of Name Problem In Plato's Cratylus

In Plato dialogue Cratylus, he mentioned two theories on the subject of naming,namly Cratylus' s naturalism and Hermogenes' s conventionism, which are entirely different ideas on naming proposed based on thoughts of their predecessors. The first part of this paper summarized the main idea of these two perspectives. Though they are greatly different, they share a common view that both of their names are appropriate.The second part analyzed the content of these two theories. On its own terms, in comprehensive consideration of both ideas, naming focuses on the correctness of name.To ensure the correctness, it is important to figure out the relationship between name and the object, which includes the nature of name and how well does the name giver know about the object. Name functions as a tool to guide our cognition. People know things through their names including the relationship between names and the knowledge about these things. Though both opinions are demonstrated, Socrates does not clarify his viewpoint in this dialogue. Thus content analysis on his argument was carried out in this part to pave the way for further development of this paper.In the last part, as extensions to this dialogue, several issues are further discussed which include Plato's view on naming through the analysis of this dialogue, the purpose of plenty of discussion on etymology and Plato's writing goal of this dialogue. these are aimed at make preparations for the the development of plato's idea.