History of Philosophy: India, Africana, China HPC 30. Horse of a Different Color: the Mohists on Language and Knowledge
May 18, 2025
A dive into Mohist approaches to language, naming, and knowledge. Short, cryptic canons and disputation tactics get explained. The White Horse Not Horse puzzle is explored and two readings of ‘not’ are compared. Practical knowing as capacity and pattern recognition is emphasized. The tie between shared meanings and social order is highlighted.
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Mohists Treated Standards Like Early Science
- The Mohists pursued reproducible standards and methods to produce reliable social and practical outcomes.
- Their later dialectics (Mo-Bien) present terse canons and explanations aimed at making naming and measurement systematic for public use.
Mo-Bien Is Terse And Hard To Reconstruct
- The Mo-Bien chapters combine short canon statements with brief explanations but leave many claims cryptic and in need of reconstruction.
- Scholars like Chris Frazier warn interpretation is testing because material is terse, corrupt, and scattered.
White Horse Not Horse Demonstration
- Gongsun Long's famous paradox White Horse Not Horse illustrates linguistic vs. concrete readings of 'not'.
- He shows 'white horse' differs from 'horse' because requests for a white horse accept only white horses, unlike a general request for a horse.