When a White Horse is Not a Horse
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The paradox entitled When A White Horse is Not a Horse, also known as the White Horse Dialogue (Traditional Chinese characters: 白馬論 Pinyin: bái mǎ lùn), is a philosophical dialogue which forms part of the Gongsun Longzi written by logician Gongsun Long in the 3rd century BC.
The dialogue, held between two fictional debaters, attempts to answer the question: Can it be that a white horse is not a horse? (Bái mǎ fēi mǎ). It plays on the semantics between the objects themselves and the ideas they represent, concluding that "A white horse is not a horse" (白馬非馬).
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[edit] Interpretation
The argument has been interpreted by A. C. Graham, as playing upon the dual semantic meanings of informal language, in particular the dual interpretations of 'is', being either:
- "Is a member of the class entitled (x)"
- "Is identical to concept (x)"
Thus a white horse is not a horse, because the concept of a white horse is not the same as the concept of a horse.
[edit] Difficulties in translation
This short dialogue is difficult to translate as the construction used in Classical Chinese - "A 非 B 也" is ambiguous and can be translated either as "A is not a member of the class B" or as "A is not identical to B".
Worse, the opening is ambiguous; it begins "Can it be that a white horse is not a horse?". This leaves it unclear whether the dialogue is attempting to prove that a white horse is not a horse or whether it is instead questioning if such a statement is possible.
[edit] References
- Norden, B. On The White Horse
