White horses and orphan colts

[robinturner]

On the recent discussion of radial categories (see replies to Oops, I did it again), what do the linguists/philosophers out there make of these statements attributed to Huizi (a leading member of the "School of Names"):

"A white horse is not a horse."
"An orphan colt has never had a mother."

Correction (28/6/01)

Oops, that wasn't Huizi, it was Gong-sun Long (the other main person in that particular school). Huizi (also known as Hui Shi) was the guy who said things like "The heavens are as low as the earth; mountains are on the same level as marshes."

Comments

Re: Stupid thing made me cut my post in two!

[kristian.livejournal.com]

What do -you- think?

I still have this nagging feeling that there is something profound behind the examples. It still seems that fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with Huizi demanding entry to the town on his white horse. Even if it defies common sense - but since when has that been a bad way to enter enlightenment?

Re: Stupid thing made me cut my post in two!

[solri.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Stupid thing made me cut my post in two!

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

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.

Yes. Or he could be reminding us of the many different definitions/conceptions of "mother." We had this hammered into our poor little brains in the aforementioned Cognitive Science 101. Radial categories. If "mother" means something like, for example, "nurturer," then an orphan very well might have never had a mother.

Re: Stupid thing made me cut my post in two!

[kristian.livejournal.com]

Hmm, a bit like Zen koans

I used that exact phrase just a day ago in a philosophy exam. In an attempt to explain while nihilism is not a self-refuting philosophy (the whole "There are no truths" is a truth itself).Anyway.

Zen Koans are exactly what I thought of when I first considered the white horse/orphan colt phrases. They make perfect sense when I switch to my Taoist mode of thinking.

I don't know if they need to be "subordinate" catergories, just multifaceted.