The classic Sorites or ‘heap argument’ seeks to show that even 10000 grains do not make a heap on the ground that a three grains do not and b the addition of one grain could never be enough to turn a nonheap into a heap however often a further grain is added no precise boundary between nonheap and heap is ever found Applications of this argument form were widespread in the Hellenistic age and the Stoic logician Chrysippus wrote many books trying to solve it Diodorus is a likely source or inspiration for this Hellenistic preoccupation see previous paragraph The Sorites is a particularly lethal weapon when used in the field of semantics threatening to erase the boundaries on which rigid definitions depend It may be relevant then that Diodorus is reported to have propounded a semantic theory of his own Aulus Gellius Attic nights 11121–3 cf 1 above the story of his renaming his slave reported by Ammonius On Aristotle’s De interpretatione 3817–20 This was based on the ‘conventionalist’ thesis expressed by the character Hermogenes in Plato’s Cratylus according to whom nothing but convention—whether national local or simply private—determines the meaning of a word and any convenient string of sounds can in principle be used to convey any meaning Diodorus’s inference from this was that the sole determinant of any word’s meaning is the intention of the utterer on any given occasion on which it is used He went on to infer that there are no actual ambiguities given the assumption that a word is on each occasion uttered with one specific meaning in mind a word has only one meaning at any time One may wonder whether this semantic theory which reduced meaning to utterer’s meaning was designed to remedy the kind of damage that the Sorites threatened If meanings are determined purely by the utterer’s intention on each occasion a radical reconsideration of definitional theory seems in any event to be called for And it may be that counting the grains becomes simply irrelevant to the determination of what constitutes a heap Diodorus was also closely associated with the ‘Veiled’ paradox Diogenes Laertius 2111 Lucian Sale of lives 22–3 you know who your father is you don’t know who the veiled man over there is but that veiled man is your father so you both do and do not know who your father is We might conjecture Diodorus’ own solution to have been once again a semantic one At each of its occurrences ‘know’ has in the respondent’s mind a distinct meaning appropriate to the case acquaintance recognition and hence no contradiction is involved