  There are other interpretations that are similar to the one defended by Meinwald and Peterson. Miller (1986), for example, argues that a discerning reader who is able to look beneath the surface of the text is in a position to recognize that Parmenides’ criticisms are effective only on the wrong-headed supposition that forms are fundamentally similar to the sensible, material things that partake of them. The point of the dialogue, on this view, is to help the discerning reader see the forms for what they really are, transcendent beings that should be accessed by reason rather than with the help of categories drawn from sense experience. One of the problems with such an interpretation is a problem that is common to esoteric readings in general: once one has left the surface of the text, there are no interpretive constraints on what one might find beneath the surface. Virtually any interpretation will turn out to be justified by the text. Another problem with this approach is that it pays insufficient attention to the logical interconnections among individual criticisms of the theory of forms, and between the criticisms as a whole and the Deductions.