  Given these assumptions, it seems impossible to talk about not-being coherently (on the puzzles about not-being, cf. Owen 1971, 241–44).  The first puzzle (Sophist 237b–e) shows that we cannot meaningfully use the phrase “what-is-not,” because the phrase attempts and fails to pick out nothing. The second puzzle (Sophist 238a–c) shows that we cannot say anything meaningful about what-is-not (i.e., about nothing), because in using the words “what-is-not” we treat the referent as one thing (by using the singular). The third puzzle (Sophist 238d–239c) shows that we contradict ourselves even trying to state the puzzles. If not-being is the opposite of being (i.e., nothing), and if there is a one-to-one correspondence between a name and a thing, then Parmenides was right: we cannot coherently think or talk about not-being. The Stranger still finds these puzzles persuasive at the end of the dialogue, because he says: “If a statement is of nothing, it would not be a statement at all, for we have shown that a statement that is a statement (logos) of nothing cannot be a statement” (Sophist 263c). In a final pair of puzzles (Sophist 239c–240c; 240c–241b), the Stranger shows that Parmenides also provides the sophist a means to escape his pursuers (Sophist 241a–c). The sophist does not say what-is-not after all, because his images, while not the originals, are something—images like the originals—and not nothing. The speakers later recognize that they made a mistake in assuming that not-being is the opposite of being (Sophist 257b, 258e), but at this stage negation confounds them.