White Horse Dialogue
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Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy is philosophy written in the Chinese tradition of thought. The majority of traditional Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and...
. Gongsun Long wrote this circa 300 BCE dialectic analysis of the question Can it be that a white horse is not a horse?.
The original text
The White Horse Dialogue (Baima Lun) constitutes chapter 2 of the eponymous Gongsun Longzi "Master Gongsun Long", who was a leader in the "School of Names" (aka "Logicians" or "Dialecticians") in the Hundred Schools of ThoughtHundred Schools of Thought
The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools that flourished from 770 to 221 BC during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period , an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China...
. Most of Gongsun's writings have been lost and the received Gongsun Longzi text only contains 6 of the supposedly 14 original chapters. Parts of the text are dislocated and some commentators and translators rearrange them for clarity. The dialogue is between two unnamed speakers.
Can it be that a white horse is not a horse?
Advocate: It can.
Objector: How?
Advocate: "Horse" is that by means of which one names the shape. "White" is that by means of which one names the color. What names the color is not what names the shape. Hence, I say that a white horse is not a horse.
Objector: If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses. If one cannot say that there are no horses, doesn't that mean that there are horses? For there to be white horses is for there to be horses. How could it be that the white ones are not horses?
Advocate: If one wants a horse, that extends to a yellow or black horse. But if one wants a white horse, that does not extend to a yellow or black horse. Suppose that a white horse were a horse. Then what one wants [in the two cases] would be the same. If what one wants were the same, then a white [horse] would not differ from a horse. If what one wants does not differ, then how is it that a yellow or black horse is sometimes acceptable and sometimes unacceptable? It is clear that acceptable and unacceptable are mutually contrary. Hence, yellow and black horses are the same [in that, if there are yellow or black horses], one can respond that there are horses, but one cannot respond that there are white horses. Thus, it is evident that a white horse is not a horse.
This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether "white" and "horse" can be separated from "white horse".
Other Gongsun longzi chapters discuss Baima-related concepts of jian 堅 "hard; hardness" and bai 白 "white; whiteness", ming 名 "name; term" and shi 實 "solid; true, actual; fact, reality", and abstract zhi 指 "finger; pointing; designation; universal
Universal (metaphysics)
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of...
" like "whiteness" and concrete wu 物 "thing; object; particular
Particular
In philosophy, particulars are concrete entities existing in space and time as opposed to abstractions. There are, however, theories of abstract particulars or tropes. For example, Socrates is a particular...
" like a "white horse".
Difficulties of interpretation
The syntax, semantics, and logic of the White Horse Dialogue are ambiguous in the Classical ChineseClassical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
original and thorny in English translation.
Chinese Baima fei ma 白馬非馬 syntactically hinges upon the negative
Negation (rhetoric)
In rhetoric, where the role of the interpreter is taken into consideration as a non-negligible factor, negation bears a much wider range of functions and meanings than it does in logic, where the interpretation of signs for negation is constrained by axioms to a few standard options, typically just...
fei 非 "not, is not; no, negative; oppose; wrong". The Classical construction "A fei B" "A非B" can ambiguously mean either "A is not a member of the class B" or "A is not identical to B". Interpreting this equivocation
Equivocation
Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal logical fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense...
fallacy, A.C. Graham says this "white horse" vs. "horse" paradox plays upon the ambiguity of whether "is" means:
- "Is a member of the classClass (philosophy)Philosophers sometimes distinguish classes from types and kinds. We can talk about the class of human beings, just as we can talk about the type , human being, or humanity...
(x)" - "Is identical to (x)"
Another example involves the widely-known "Happiness of Fish" dialogue in Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name,...
(17, tr. Watson 1968:188-9) contrasts both meanings. Huizi says "You're not a fish [子非魚] — how do you know what fish enjoy?" and Zhuangzi replies "You're not I [子非我], so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"
Beyond the inherent semantic ambiguities of Baima fei ma, the first line obscurely asks ke hu 可乎 "Can it be that …?". This dialogue could be an attempted proof that a white horse is not a horse, or a question if such a statement is possible, or both. Van Norden suggests "that the issue is not whether it is always true that 'a white horse is not a horse,' but whether it is possible for it to be true."
Derk Bodde
Derk Bodde
Derk Bodde was a prominent 20th century American Sinologist and historian of China. He authored pioneering work in the history of the Chinese legal system....
, in his 1952 translation of Feng Youlan
Feng Youlan
Feng Youlan or Fung Yu-Lan was a Chinese philosopher who was important for reintroducing the study of Chinese philosophy.-Early life, education, & career:...
's History of Chinese Philosophy, followed Fung's Platonistic interpretation of the paradox:
Strictly speaking, names or terms are divided into those that are abstract and those that are concrete. The abstract term denotes the universal, the concrete term the particular. The particular is the denotation, and the universal the connotation, of the term. In western inflected languages there is no difficulty in distinguishing between the particular ('white' or 'horse') and the abstract ('whiteness' or 'horseness'). In Chinese, however, owing to the fact that the written characters are ideographic and pictorial and lack all inflection, there is no possible way, as far as the form of individual words is concerned, of distinguishing between abstract and concrete terms. Thus in Chinese the word designating a particular horse and that designating the universal, 'horseness,' are written and pronounced in the same way. Similarly with other terms, so that such words as 'horse' and 'white', being used to designate both the concrete particular and the abstract universal, thus hold two values.
Despite these interpretative difficulties with the White Horse Dialogue, many philosophers and sinologists have analyzed it. For instance, see Hansen; Graham; Thompson; Harbsmeier; and Van Norden.
Interpretive context
In the pre-Qin period, general philosophical discussions can be parsed in two categories, e.g.,- the ethical-political meaning of the "white horse"; and
- linguistic-logical understanding of "white" and "horse."
In the Chinese philosophical tradition, the Baima Luns significance is evident from how many Chinese classic texts
Chinese classic texts
Chinese classic texts, or Chinese canonical texts, today often refer to the pre-Qin Chinese texts, especially the Neo-Confucian titles of Four Books and Five Classics , a selection of short books and chapters from the voluminous collection called the Thirteen Classics. All of these pre-Qin texts...
directly or indirectly discuss it. The Liezi
Liezi
The Liezi is a Daoist text attributed to Lie Yukou, a circa 5th century BCE Hundred Schools of Thought philosopher, but Chinese and Western scholars believe it was compiled around the 4th century CE.-Textual history:...
, which lists and criticizes the paradoxes of Gongsun Long as "perversions of reason and sense", explains "'A white horse is not a horse', because the name diverges from the shape."
Two Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name,...
chapters (17 and 33) mock Gongsun Long, and another (2) combines his zhi 指 "attribute" and ma 馬 "horse" notions in the same context.
To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a nonattribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse, Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse.
The Mengzi (6A) uses bai 白 "white" to mean both "white-haired; old (person)" and "white-colored (horse)".
Mencius said, 'There is no difference between our pronouncing a white horse to be white and our pronouncing a white man to be white. But is there no difference between the regard with which we acknowledge the age of an old horse and that with which we acknowledge the age of an old man? And what is it which is called righteousness? The fact of a man's being old? Or the fact of our giving honour to his age?'
Other early "A white horse is not a horse" references are found in the Hanfeizi (32), Mozi
Mozi
Mozi |Lat.]] as Micius, ca. 470 BC – ca. 391 BC), original name Mo Di , was a Chinese philosopher during the Hundred Schools of Thought period . Born in Tengzhou, Shandong Province, China, he founded the school of Mohism, and argued strongly against Confucianism and Daoism...
(11B), and Zhanguoce (4).
The influence of politics and Western logic introduced discernable interpretive biases in the mid-20th century. In the Western philosophical tradition, whether "a white horse is not a horse" entails diverse philosophical concepts including Platonic idealism
Platonic idealism
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas,Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction...
, Substance theory
Substance theory
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
, logical intension
Intension
In linguistics, logic, philosophy, and other fields, an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase or other symbol. In the case of a word, it is often implied by the word's definition...
or comprehension
Comprehension (logic)
In logic, the comprehension of an object is the totality of intensions, that is, attributes, characters, marks, properties, or qualities, that the object possesses, or else the totality of intensions that are pertinent to the context of a given discussion...
versus extension
Extension (semantics)
In any of several studies that treat the use of signs - for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, and semiotics - the extension of a concept, idea, or sign consists of the things to which it applies, in contrast with its comprehension or intension, which consists very roughly of...
or denotation
Denotation
This word has distinct meanings in other fields: see denotation . For the opposite of Denotation see Connotation.*In logic, linguistics and semiotics, the denotation of a word or phrase is a part of its meaning; however, the part referred to varies by context:** In grammar and literary theory, the...
, and the Primary/secondary quality distinction
Primary/secondary quality distinction
The primary/secondary quality distinction is a conceptual distinction in epistemology and metaphysics, concerning the nature of reality. It is most explicitly articulated by John Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding, but earlier thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes made similar...
in epistemology.
George Pólya
George Pólya
George Pólya was a Hungarian mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis and probability theory...
's falsidical "All horses are the same color" paradox sounds similar but is different from the ancient White Horse Dialogue.
Contemporary efforts to mitigate post-Qin biases are reflected in newer studies of pre-Qin discourse.
External links
- Chinese Text Project: 白馬論 ("The White Horse Dialogue")