Hmm, a bit like Zen koans. The general reaction to Huizi and other members of the School of Names at the time was that they were just a bunch of annoying hair-splitters (rather like most people's reaction to analytical philosophers like Russell and Moore). But I suppose they could have been deliberately pushing at the boundaries of language to encourage people to transcend them, which is what some schols of Zen seem to be doing.
As for my own view on the "white horse" question, I'm really not sure. Common sense and semantics both tell me that categories have members, and that some categories are subordinates of others, so of course a member of WHITE HORSE is automatically a memebr of HORSE. On the other hand, cognitive science tells me that WHITE HORSE is not necessarily the intersection of the set of hirses and the set of white things (in this case it happens to be, but think of "small galaxy").
I have less of a problem with the "orphan colt" example, since there is a sense in which an orphan really never has had a mother. Huizi here seems to be reminding us that the idea of a universe consisting of permanent objects to which we give names is a fallacy - a bit like Heracleitus' thing about not being able to jump into the same river twice, perhaps.
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malionette
Re: Stupid thing made me cut my post in two!
Date: 2001-06-25 01:08 am (UTC)As for my own view on the "white horse" question, I'm really not sure. Common sense and semantics both tell me that categories have members, and that some categories are subordinates of others, so of course a member of WHITE HORSE is automatically a memebr of HORSE. On the other hand, cognitive science tells me that WHITE HORSE is not necessarily the intersection of the set of hirses and the set of white things (in this case it happens to be, but think of "small galaxy").
I have less of a problem with the "orphan colt" example, since there is a sense in which an orphan really never has had a mother. Huizi here seems to be reminding us that the idea of a universe consisting of permanent objects to which we give names is a fallacy - a bit like Heracleitus' thing about not being able to jump into the same river twice, perhaps.