false beliefs for those who think that there are. And this sounds if anything more like a vindication of the Measure Doctrine than a refutation of it. The refutation would, in fact, be no refutation at all.
A solution to this problem is, I think, provided by the words ‘for Protagoras’, which I have italicized in the above quotation. The manuscripts are here divided between a vocative, ‘O Protagoras’, and a dative, ‘for Protagoras’, and contrary to all the modern editionsI have opted for the latter, which I take to indicate that everything that followswill be answering the question what is the case for Protagoras himself. (That iswhy the concluding question takescare to establish that Protagoreans must themselves concede that many people believe there to be false beliefs.)
On thisreading, all of steps(1)–(4) are relativized to Protagoras—they tell uswhat isthe case in his world.
In using this latter expression (borrowed from Myles Burnyeat), I do not pretend to reduce the relativizing locution
‘for X’ to a more basic concept, ‘in X'sworld’. I am simply assuming the equation of someone's world with the entire set of truths to which that person does or could assent. Since Protagorean relativism's privacy thesis (pp. 40–2 above) excludes the sharing of any truth between two or more individuals, it follows that no two individuals occupy the same world, thusunderstood. Each person'struthsare therefore contextualized exclusively in that person'sown world.
Thinking of it thisway will help elucidate the point I shall proceed to develop next.
A cardinal aspect of the Measure Doctrine is one which I shall call the ‘single-relativization assumption’. According to the Measure Doctrine, every truth is relativized to some judging subject, whether an individual or a group. But no truth is, or could be, hierarchically relativized to two or more subjects. That is, there are no truths of the form ‘For X, such and such is the case for Y’. The qualifier ‘for X’ means ‘in X'sworld’, and although Y may have a place in X's world, Y's world does not. The single-relativization assumption is never stated, but it seems to be unfailingly observed, and once we appreciate that to relativize a truth is to locate it in somebody's world it should be clear why double relativization would simply make no sense.86 Y'sworld being private to Y entails
86 Thisway of putting the point owesa good deal to Burnyeat (1976b ). Cf. Denyer (1991: 90–4) for a similar interpretation, and also the comparable insight of McCabe (2000) that Protagoras' relativism is ‘flat’, in not allowing one to have beliefsabout one'sown beliefs.
its being altogether outside X's experience, and therefore not a subject of truth for X.
Since, then, the above-quoted argument isworking out what isthe case in Protagoras' world, there isno scope for the defensive move that I sketched a little earlier. Step (1) establishes that in Protagoras' world there are many who believe there to be false beliefs.87 Step (2) establishes that in Protagoras' world, if it is, as established, a world where everybody is right, there are false beliefs: not that in Protagoras' world there are false beliefs in other people's worlds, because the single-relativization assumption would render any such idea senseless. The same applies to (3): if Protagoras had not after all insisted, or in the light of the foregoing objection had retracted his insistence, that everybody is right, exactly the same conclusion would have followed: in his world there would be false beliefs. In short, even in Protagoras' own world there are false beliefs, in direct contradiction of his own Measure Doctrine.
It hasbeen important to give thisshort first sub-argument its due, because, as I have already noted, it is announced as setting the pattern for the second, and much more widely discussed, self-refutation argument, which now follows at 170e7–171c7. Asa preliminary to that second argument (170d4–e6), Socratesclarifiesthat, according to the Measure Doctrine, if you believe something but thousands disagree with you about it, that thing is true for you, false for the thousands. Thisnow leadshim into the argument itself (170e7–171c7). Note from my italicsin the first sentence how it opensin a fashion vitally parallel to the first argument:
SOCRATES. What isthe case for Protagoras himself? Isn't it necessary that, if [A] not even he believed that man is the measure, and the many didn't either (as indeed they don't), this ‘truth’ that he wrote about isso for nobody. If, on the other hand, [B] he himself did believe it, but the masses don't agree, you know that first [i] to the extent that those who don't think so exceed those who do, to that same extent it isn't so more than it is so.
THEODORUS. That's necessary, given that it will be so and not so according to a count of individual beliefs.
SOCRATES. Second [ii] comes the most subtle point. On the one hand, [ii.1] Protagoras agrees, regarding his own view, that the view of those who
87 Thisisnot a double relativization. It would become one only if ‘Many people believe that …’ (1) were converted into ‘For many people it isthe case that …’, and it isno accident that Socratesdoesnot attempt that move.
believe the opposite, i.e. who think he is wrong, is true, since he agrees that everybody believes things that are so.
THEODORUS. Absolutely correct.
SOCRATES. Then he would agree that hisown view isfalse, if he agreesthat the view of those who think he iswrong istrue?
THEODORUS. He must.
SOCRATES. On the other hand, [ii.2] the othersdo not agree that they are wrong?
THEODORUS. No.
SOCRATES. And, on the basis of what he has written, he for his part agrees that this belief istrue.
THEODORUS. Apparently.
SOCRATES. So [ii.3] it will be disputed by everybody, starting with Protagoras. Or rather, it will be endorsed by Protagoras on every occasion on which he agrees with the person who is speaking against him that the beliefs of that person are true at that time.88And Protagoras himself will agree that neither a dog nor just any human being is a measure about anything he hasn't learnt. Isn't that so?
THEODORUS. It is .
SOCRATES. [C] In that case, since it will be disputed by everybody, the ‘truth’ of Protagorascould not be true for anybody—neither for someone else nor for Protagoras himself.
To (Bii)—proclaimed by Socratesthe ‘most subtle’ argument—the traditional objection runsalong the same linesasI sketched in connection with the first argument: from the fact that most people disagree with Protagoras, it should not follow that he iswrong, but just that he iswrong for those who think him wrong. The reply to that objection should, correspondingly, follow the same lines as I proposed when defending the first argument; and the opening words, ‘What is the case for Protagoras himself?’, matching asthey do the opening of the first argument, strongly encourage that expectation. It is in Protagoras' own world that he must admit his critics to be right.
A difficulty, which hasobscured thisstrategy, isthat the relativization of the argument to Protagoras—itslocalization within hisown world—having been announced at the outset, does not in fact then begin immediately. The first step (A) isasit were a
88 I am unconvinced by the syntax of the text as traditionally punctuated (see e.g. OCT), despite the attempt to explain it in Campbell (1861, ad loc.). To obtain the above construal, I delete the comma after δοξάζειν in 171b12, and insert a full stop after the next word, τότε, in c1. For τότε similarly postponed to the end of its clause, cf. 199b9.
parenthetical beginning, which will be put to work only at the end of the argument (C), when we have left Protagoras' world behind: if (aswill eventually be established) no one at all thinksthat Protagorasisright, he isright for nobody—that is, in no world whatsoever. It is only with (B) that, as announced, we enter Protagoras' world. For (Bi),
‘…to the extent that those who don't think so exceed those who do, to that same extent it isn't so more than it is so’, confirms that we are now inside Protagoras' world. If we were not, the final wordsshould have been expected to be ‘it isn't so for more people than those for whom it is so’. It isbecause we are now inside Protagoras' world, that, given also the single-relativization assumption, the comparative conclusion must limit itself to telling us how the Measure Doctrine faresin Protagoras' own world, and not in anyone else's.
The same appliesto the whole of (Bii). When Protagorasisforced to agree that hisopponents' view iscorrect, the reason why this is not qualified as ‘correct for them’ isthat hisresponsesare establishing what istrue in hisown world.
It is only with (C) that we at last move out of Protagoras' world and generalize across worlds, thus picking up the point left hanging in (A): the Measure Doctrine has now been shown not to be true in anybody's world. This is the final refutation, and Socrateshasno need to attempt the further inference from ‘not true in anybody'sworld’ to ‘absolutely not true’. If the Measure Doctrine locates truth in individual worlds, but has to concede that it is itself false in every conceivable one of those worlds, that is already a complete self-refutation.
Finally, we may ask why, in accordance with my global interpretation of the Theaetetus, the strategies which we have seen used against Protagoras should be presented as a Socratic legacy. They arguably fall, in one way or another, under item 6 in the ten principlesof midwifery listed on pp. 33–4 above: Socrates' expertise in refutation. To get clearer about this, a useful guide is Socrates' critique in the Euthydemus of the closely related puzzle, also associated with the name of Protagoras(286c2–3), that it is impossible to speak falsely. We will see in part II of the Theaetetus that Socrates' legacy, without a metaphysical backing, is by itself not quite sufficient to give a positive account of how falsity can in fact occur (pp. 133–4 below). But already in the highly Socratic Euthydemus
he offers negative objections to the denial of falsity which are strongly mimicked in the Theaetetus' criticisms of Protagoras.89
One of Socrates' questions to Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who propound the falsity paradox, is how, if no one is ever wrong either in speech or in thought, these two sophists can present themselves as experts who have something to teach (287a1–b1)—a clear forerunner to the main point developed in the Theaetetus' first critique of Protagoras(pp. 54–6 above). And the same passage contains almost equally clear antecedents of the self-refutation argument deployed in the second critique of Protagoras. At 287e4–288a1 we find Socrates subjecting the thesis which denies falsity to a dilemma strongly reminiscent of the first movement (170c2–8) of the Theaetetus' self-refutation argument. ‘Do you say that I was wrong, or not? For if I was not wrong not even you will refute me, for all your wisdom… But if I was wrong, what you are saying is still incorrect, when you claim that it is impossible to be wrong.’90 These links to the Euthydemus should be enough to confirm that the refutation of broad Protagoreanism in the Theaetetus ismeant to be read asdisplaying to usan authentic Socratic legacy. Generically, thislegacy isto be located in the skill of exposing intrinsic incoherence—or, in the idiom of the midwife model, in the skill of testing which pregnanciesare authentic and viable and which not. More specifically, it manifests itself in one of Socrates' characteristic devices for exposing the incoherence of sophistic positions.