Give a strange attention, who is this?
Gong Sunzilong was a famous sophist in the pre-Qin period. At that time, a hundred schools of thought contended and called them "sophists." When Sima Tan and Sima Qian arrived, they were endowed with the genre division of the Han Dynasty, so these people became "celebrities" that we have been using in later generations. Since the late Qing Dynasty, western logic was introduced to China, and everyone thought they were logicians. It can be seen that the prestigious school itself is the view of the Han people. Before the Qin Dynasty, only two schools of thought, Confucianism and Mohism, stood out, while others were schools of thought, such as Laozi, Zhuangzi and Guan Zi. Some of these people often have their own "post-learning".
Dirty white horse. Is this a white horse?
Hui Shi, another representative before Gong Zilong, often argued with Zhuangzi. In terms of age, Hui Shi is older than Zhuangzi, and Zhuangzi is older than Gongsun Zilong. Among them, Hui Shi didn't know Gong Zilong-because Hui Shi was older. In his later years, Zhuangzi knew something about the theory of Gongsun Zilong, so he criticized some classic propositions of Gongsun Zilong in the Theory of All Things. Today, let's talk about an important topic that Sun Zilong became famous when he was young-"White horse is not a horse".
Hui Shi and Zhuangzi, look at the rags.
From the point of view that Zhuangzi actually knew Sun, the debates at that time were probably as extensive as those of Mencius, and many people knew the contents of these debates. The Hakka in the book Gongsun is not just a fictional character, as some monographs say, because it is impossible for a young Gongsun to invent an earth-shattering debate and attract the attention of predecessors, because in the pre-Qin period, he mainly relied on dialogue, instead of spreading his thoughts through letters and the Internet, as we modern people do. At that time, you were going to write books, not bamboo. Therefore, this guest is probably older than Sun, and he was a famous figure at that time.
Like a rolling pin
Mawangtui Silk Book
Limited by the space here, we will not enter the original text, but simply talk about why Gong Sunzilong said that "a white horse is not a horse". A white horse is not a horse, which is what we modern people call "a white horse is not a horse". Don't underestimate these four words, and don't underestimate the problem of "translation" in modern Chinese. As far as the former is concerned, "a white horse is not a horse" involves a logical reasoning problem that cannot be solved in ancient times, while as far as the latter is concerned, it involves a linguistic dispute-whether there is a copula "yes" in pre-Qin. If there is no copula "yes" in pre-Qin, then "no" cannot be translated into "no" in modern Chinese, but if there is a copula in pre-Qin, linguists, mainly Mr. Wang Li, will face the crisis of overthrowing their theoretical assumptions. Because these problems are very complicated, let's leave them alone for the time being, and then let's see what Gongsun Zilong said.
Gongsun said that "a white horse is not a horse" for at least two reasons: first, as far as "name" (name) is concerned, a horse is famous, but white has no name? Obviously impossible, so the naming principle of names should be "shape+color", not only the shape should be famous, but also the color should have a name; Second, if the white horse is a horse and Huang Ma is a horse, why is the conclusion that "the white horse is Huang Ma" inconsistent with common sense and logic?
Confused horse
The first reason is that it has its own historical background, because before Gongsun Zilong, "name" was usually associated with "shape". Now the Confucian bamboo slips unearthed in Guodian bamboo slips should be the earliest characters, that is, named after shape, which is also an important principle in our ancient famous studies. The problem with it is that it is very large in extension. For example, a horse can include a white horse \ Huang Ma \ a dark horse \ a red horse, etc. But it can't explain the connotation of things, such as white in a white horse and black in a dark horse. Therefore, to be precise, Gong Zilong is not a pure sophist, but can be treated as a logician. At least he did find the shortcomings in the logical debate at that time.
But the problem with Gong Zilong is that he gave up naming this kind of stallion directly because the connotation of horse is not as rich as that of white horse, which is obviously not desirable. This is the first difficult problem that can't be solved in the period of Gongsun Zilong, that is, the relationship between connotation and extension. The extension of a horse is bigger than that of a white horse, and the connotation of a white horse is richer than that of a horse. Sun saw the latter point, but ignored the former point, which was also the contradiction between him and other schools at that time. The reason why Gongsun Zilong is more likely to make people feel sophistry is that people who admit that the connotation of horses is relatively large may not object to the fact that the connotation of horses is not as rich as that of white horses. But Sun Longzi took one view against another-this is illogical in itself. Of course, the key to the relationship between connotation and extension lies in the second reason.
From the second point of view, it is obvious that the guest and the host, Gong Sunlongzi, are also confused about what went wrong with this inference, so in the end, the guest can only keep silent. The silence of Hakkas contributed to the fame of Gongsun Zilong, and his theory of referring to things, general change and hard white theory had a great influence on the ideological trend of name debate at that time.
Why is a white horse a horse and Huang Ma a horse? Why can't you conclude that White Horse is Huang Ma? For example, if A is B and B is C, it can be inferred that A equals C .. The reason is simple, because the two inferences are different. In the reasoning that a white horse is a horse, it means membership, while in the reasoning that A is B, it means equivalence. As you can see, the previous reasoning does not lead to the conclusion that the white horse is Huang Ma-this shows that Gong Zilong made a wrong inference. Hakka people can't solve this mystery, and neither can Gongsun Zilong, but the former insists that the white horse is a horse by virtue of the extension relationship-only this inference can't be solved, while the latter denies that the white horse is a horse by virtue of the absurdity of this reasoning. It is not difficult to find that the "horse" as a predicate in Gong Sunzilong's inference is not GAI.