Chinese Logic Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The present article provides an introduction to classical Chinese logic, a term which refers to ancient discourses that were developed before the arrival of significant external influences and which flourished in China until the first... more

The present article provides an introduction to classical Chinese logic, a term which refers to ancient discourses that were developed before the arrival of significant external influences and which flourished in China until the first unification of China, during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC). Taking as its premise that logic implies both universal and culturally conditioned elements, the author describes the historical background of Chinese logic, the main schools of Chinese logical thought, the current state of research in this area and the crucial concepts and methods applied in classical Chinese logic. The close link between Chinese logic and the Chinese language is also stressed.

All articles are double blind peer-reviewed.

A presente obra vai oferecer a você, leitor e leitora, um panorama crítico do estado da arte atual do debate acadêmico filosófico de matriz chinesa, seja pelos seus próprios termos ou em perspectiva comparada. Esse é o primeiro volume dos... more

A presente obra vai oferecer a você, leitor e leitora, um panorama crítico
do estado da arte atual do debate acadêmico filosófico de matriz chinesa, seja pelos seus próprios termos ou em perspectiva comparada. Esse é o primeiro volume dos Textos Selecionados de Filosofia Chinesa da Série Investigações Filosóficas, com tradução de vários verbetes especializados em filosofia chinesa publicados originalmente em inglês na The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Esses verbetes foram traduzidos por toda uma equipe brasileira de pesquisadores(as) especialistas em tradições asiáticas e em filosofia acadêmica

This is the preface and brief introduction to a special issue of the journal "Studies in Logic" on the topic of History of Logic in China (逻辑学研究 , 编辑部邮箱 2011年 03期), which resulted from a workshop at the Institute for Asian Studies at... more

This article addresses some basic methodological problems in the field of transcultural post-comparative studies of ancient logic by comparing the famous flying arrow paradox of Hui Shi (370-c. 310 BCE) with an apparently similar paradox... more

This article addresses some basic methodological problems in the field of transcultural post-comparative studies of ancient logic by comparing the famous flying arrow paradox of Hui Shi (370-c. 310 BCE) with an apparently similar paradox attributed to Zeno of Elea (495-430 BCE). The article proceeds from a general introduction to the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, to an illumination of Hui Shi's specific contributions to the field, and finally to a preliminary explanation that emerges from a contrastive analysis of Zeno's and Hui Shi's respective views on the problem of motion and stasis as manifested in their corresponding paradoxes. The contrastive analysis, based on an exposition of some basic problems in the field of transcultural methodology and a description of the so-called sublation method, points to the importance of considering different paradigms and frames of reference in identifying differences between apparently similar theses.

Although very interesting from the point of view of a historian of Chinese logic, theory of naming, but also of Chinese legalism, the Yinwenzi corpus is one of the most neglected texts of ancient China, being overshadowed by other works... more

Although very interesting from the point of view of a historian of Chinese logic, theory of naming, but also of Chinese legalism, the Yinwenzi corpus is one of the most neglected texts of ancient China, being overshadowed by other works of similar content, such as the Gongsunlongzi, and unlike for example the Gongsun longzi, it has never really been a subject of a serious textological debate. Chinese editors tend to repeat the old proven matra of a book being "basically genuine" irrespective of some "later emendations" and "faithfully reflecting pre-imperial Chinese thought". However, whatever the history of the text actually was, when read carefully, its wording quickly arouses suspicion of a late origin (at least of the received version). I decided to test the intuitive feeling of the "non-classicity" of the language against the corpora available in Thesaurus Linguae Sericae and Chinese Text Project, manually selecting all candidates for a proof of linguistic affinity to texts of a securely post-classical origin, and thereafer searching the databases and interpreting the results with the help of secondary literature on medieval Chinese. The conclusion was obvious: much of the "suspicious" linguistic material points to post-classical, and very often very late periods. Whether this is due to a "forgery" or just to rewriting of the text in a new fashion, or to any other reason, remains an open question.

This article aims at providing a general overview of the development of interpretational discourse on Gongsun Longzi (公孫龍子) as a text in Chinese logic in the timeframe between the May Fourth events in 1919 and the outbreak of the... more

This article aims at providing a general overview of the development of interpretational discourse on Gongsun Longzi (公孫龍子) as a text in Chinese logic in the timeframe between the May Fourth events in 1919 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. In my attempt to highlight the main interpretational approaches to the text and philosophy of Gongsun Long (公孫龍, 320 BC-250 BC) I will, on one hand, focus on the question whether or how the Western philosophies and notions of logic, such as for instance that of pragmatism, analytic philosophy and dialectical materialism, influenced the above-mentioned interpretations. On the other hand, aside from its contextual evolution I will also try to cast some new light on the main milestones of its textual re-emergence and development in the early Republican period.

This is a final, author's draft; citations should reference the journal version. In this article I argue against Chad Hansen’s version of the “White Horse Dialogue” (Baimalun) of Gongsun Longzi as intelligible through writings of the... more

This is a final, author's draft; citations should reference the journal version. In this article I argue against Chad Hansen’s version of the “White Horse Dialogue” (Baimalun) of Gongsun Longzi as intelligible through writings of the later Moists. Hansen regards the Baimalun as an attempt to demonstrate how the compound baima, “white horse,” is correctly analyzed in one of the Moist ways of analyzing compound term semantics but not the other. I present an alternative reading in which the Baimalun arguments point out, via reductio, the failure of either Moist analysis; in particular they point out how neither analysis accounts for ordinary, acceptable inferences like “There is a white horse; therefore there is a horse.” At issue for Gongsun Longzi is a fundamental problem with atomic terms: none of them seems capable of referring to a particular, “stand-alone” individual.

Zhang Dongsun, who is certainly one of the most important Chinese epistemologists of the early modern period, developed his own system of thought based on the so-called pan-structural epistemology. According to this theory, the... more

Zhang Dongsun, who is certainly one of the most important Chinese epistemologists of the early modern period, developed his own system of thought
based on the so-called pan-structural epistemology. According to this theory,
the external cause of our perception is not a substance, but the structural
order of the external world. In his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
(1919), Bertrand Russell had proposed a similar idea.
This chapter is based on a comparative analysis of these two structural epistemological models, and aims to determine the specific and unique features
of Zhang’s theory, focusing on the elements derived from traditional Chinese
thinking. In order to achieve this goal, the chapter aims primarily to highlight
the crucial differences between the two systems. As we will see, Zhang, unlike Russell, has rejected any form of substance. He also considered the dualistic theories of idealism and materialism to be completely wrong. For while
Zhang’s theory contains elements of both approaches, his system as a whole
cannot be identified with either of them.

This article addresses some basic methodological problems in the field of transcultural post-comparative studies of ancient logic by comparing the famous flying arrow paradox of Hui Shi (370–c. 310 BCE) with an apparently similar paradox... more

This article addresses some basic methodological problems in the field of transcultural post-comparative studies of ancient logic by comparing the famous flying arrow paradox of Hui Shi (370–c. 310 BCE) with an apparently similar paradox attributed to Zeno of Elea (495–430 BCE). The article proceeds from a general introduction to the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, to an illumination of Hui Shi’s specific contributions to the field, and finally to a preliminary explanation that emerges from a contrastive analysis of Zeno’s and Hui Shi’s respective views on the problem of motion and stasis as manifested in their corresponding paradoxes. The contrastive analysis, based on an exposition of some basic problems in the field of transcultural methodology and a description of the so-called sublation method, points to the importance of considering different paradigms and frames of reference in identifying differences between apparently similar theses.

This paper examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse... more

This paper examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse argument) is valid but the other (the two-horse argument) is not. To explain this difference, the paper uses English plural constructions to formulate the arguments. Then it shows that the one-horse argument is valid because it is an instance of the plural cousin of a standard form of valid categorical syllogisms (Plural Barbara), and argues that the two-horse argument involves equivocal uses of a key predicate (the Chinese counterpart of ‘have four feet’) that has the distributive/non-distributive ambiguity. In doing so, the paper discusses linguistic differences between Chinese and English and explains why the logic of plural constructions is applicable to Chinese arguments that involve no plural constructions.

In an ancient Chinese treatise, the White Horse Dialogue, Gongsun Long seems to defend a paradoxical thesis: the white horses are not horses. This paper presents an interpretation of the dialogue that shows cogent logic lies under the... more

In an ancient Chinese treatise, the White Horse Dialogue, Gongsun Long seems to defend a paradoxical thesis: the white horses are not horses. This paper presents an interpretation of the dialogue that shows cogent logic lies under the apparent sophistries in the dialogue. On this interpretation, the individualist interpretation, his main thesis in the dialogue is a true thesis concerning individual horses: (a) the horses (or all the horses taken together), and (b) the white horses (or all the white horses taken together). The thesis holds that the horses are not the same things as the horses. To support this interpretation, the paper discusses features of Chinese and argues that the Chinese sentence Gongsun Long uses to state his thesis (Bai ma fei ma) has a potential ambiguity: it can mean either that the white horses are horses (the usual, indefinite reading) or that the white horses are the horses (the plural definite reading). The paper discusses features of Chinese to show that the plural definite reading, which Gongsun Long is taken to assume, is a potential reading of the sentence, and argues that the dialogue has good arguments for the thesis that the sentence states on this reading.

This article examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse... more

This article examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse argument) is valid but the other (the two-horse argument) is not. To explain this difference, the article uses English plural constructions to formulate the arguments. Then it shows that the one-horse argument is valid because it has a valid argument form, the plural cousin of a standard form of valid categorical syllogisms (Plural Barbara), and argues that the two-horse argument involves equivocal uses of a key predicate (the Chinese counterpart of ‘have four feet’) that has the distributive/nondistributive ambiguity. In doing so, the article discusses linguistic differences between Chinese and English and explains why the logic of plural constructions is applicable to Chinese arguments that involve no plural constructions.

“Logic” derives from the Greek λόγος, meaning word, speech or discourse. Its translation into Chinese is 逻辑, which is merely phonetic. “Philosophy” derives from the Greek φιλοσοφια, meaning a love of wisdom. Its translation into Chinese... more

“Logic” derives from the Greek λόγος, meaning word, speech or discourse. Its translation into Chinese is 逻辑, which is merely phonetic. “Philosophy” derives from the Greek φιλοσοφια, meaning a love of wisdom. Its translation into Chinese is 哲学(zhixue) “the study of wisdom”, which strikes an odd note due to the Confucian sublimation of wisdom to more important virtues such as 仁 (ren) “humanity”. These Greek words have played a defining role in Western intellectual history, so much so that it would be difficult to imagine the result of somehow subtracting them to see what remains. By contrast, attempts to find logic and philosophy in Chinese tradition meet with only partial success...