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!

[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.