You may have heard of "white horse not horse", but do you know what it means?
The view that "white horses are not horses" was put forward by Gongsun Long at the end of the Warring States period.
Gongsun Long was born in the Zhao Kingdom and was a representative of the hundred famous families of the Sons. Famous masters are good at debate, and Gongsun Long is known as the ancestor of sophistry by later generations.
Gongsun Long advocated anti-war and love views in the early days, and persuaded King Huiwen of the Zhao state through debate. He has long been a disciple of the Plain King, and has been highly valued by the Plain King.
However, success is also Xiao He, and defeat is also Xiao He.
Gongsun Long was reused by Pingyuan Jun because he was good at debate, and as a result, he was later overthrown by Zou Yan in a debate with Zou Yan, and since then he has lost the trust of PingYuan Jun.
Gongsun Long is famous for the white horse non-horse theory.
He believes that white refers to color, while horse refers to the shape of a horse. White and horses are two different things.
The color of the white, combined with the shape of the horse, constitutes the white horse. The white horse is a composite concept composed of color and shape.
Therefore, a white horse is not the same as a horse that merely has an appearance.
That is, the white horse is not a horse!
If you still find it difficult to understand, then you can use an example.
For example: 1 + 2 = 3, obviously 2 and 3 are different, 2 is obviously not 3.
Therefore, it is inferred that white + horse = white horse, obviously horses and white horses are also different, so white horses are not horses.
If you don't understand the true meaning of "white horse not horse", you will feel that this view is very absurd.
By analogy, we can draw many similar conclusions.
For example:
Black cats are not cats!
Green leaves are not leaves!
Nice guys are not people!
These assertions, which make people can't help but refute them at first hearing, are indeed contrary to the common sense of experience in our lives.
Han Feizi once ridiculed Gongsun Long's view of "white horse not horse" in his writings.
He said that an eloquent who proposed that "white horses are not horses" was charged a toll on horses when riding a white horse to pass through the checkpoint.
In fact, what Gongsun Long wants to express is that the concept of representing a single attribute is different from the concept of representing a composite attribute.
The concept of compounding, on the other hand, can be split into single attribute concepts.
To this end, Gongsun Long also put forward the argument of "leaving Jianbai".
Gongsun Long believes that white is people's perception of the color of stone, and hardness is people's tactile perception of stone.
White and hard are properties shared by individuals, but they are not unique to individuals.
For example, in addition to stones, swans are white and snow is white.
Stone is hard, but iron is hard, and bone is hard.
Therefore, "firm" and "white" are cognitively separable.
This is called "leaving the white".
In ancient Greece, there were also many debaters similar to Gongsun Long. Their ideas gradually developed into a huge system of logic.
However, in ancient China, the ideas of famous masters such as Gongsun Long were regarded as sophistry, spurned by people, and gradually forgotten.
Because of the irrationality, the concept of white horses and non-horses has always been misunderstood by people for more than 2,000 years and completely denied.
Perhaps, this is the root cause of the decline of famous artists, and it is also the sadness of Chinese philosophy.