Abstract
Today, Chinese scholars use the expression “ancient Chinese logic” (中国古代逻辑) when they talk about the thought on logic and language in ancient Chinese philosophy. Therefore, this is an ambiguous concept that has different understandings and definitions. This issue involves not only “ancient Chinese logic” itself but also the studies of modern scholars on it for more than a century. This chapter tries to show the emergence of the problem of “ancient Chinese logic” and the difficulties to define, from the logical aspect, this particular thought on logic and language in Chinese philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
“Pre-Qin philosophers” refers to Chinese thinkers living between the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period (770 BC-221 BC): Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, Mengzi, Xunzi, etc. Chinese philosophy originates with these philosophers and their schools, among which the school of names and the Mohist school focus particularly on paradoxes and language problems.
- 2.
Chinese researchers usually use the expression “formal logic” (形式逻辑) to refer to “classical logic” concluding propositional and first-order logics.
- 3.
Yan Fu (1854–1921) was a Chinese scholar and translator, he introduced Western ideas, including Darwin’s “natural selection,” to China in the late nineteenth century.
- 4.
In fact, as the definition of ancient Chinese logic, the definition of ancient Chinese science is controversial. For example, there is no concept of nature in ancient Chinese culture that refers to the nature as object of scientific research.
- 5.
Liang Qichao (1873–1929) was a Chinese scholar, journalist, philosopher, and reformist, He inspired Chinese scholars with his writings and reform movements.
- 6.
The Mozi is the representative work of the Mohist school written during the Warring States period (475–221 BC). Although most chapters of the Mozi present the philosophic, ethic, and politic ideas of the Mohist school, several chapters deal with logic and language. The chapters in question are Jingshang, Jingxia, Jingshuoshang, Jingshuoxia, Daqu, and Xiaoqu. This part of the Mozi, traditionally known as the Mojing or Mobian, is the most important ancient Chinese text on logic.
- 7.
- 8.
The Zhou dynasty lasted from 1046 until 256 BC.
- 9.
See note 6.
- 10.
To give an example of the effort to present Mojing as a classical logic theory, we can refer to the interpretation of the same proposition and its explanation in [16] p. 270.
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79. [C] Concepts are divided into general concepts (with the largest extension), concepts of class and particular concepts.
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[E] For example, “object” (material) is a general concept with the largest extension, which refers to all existing entities. “Horse” is a concept of class, which refers to all entities that have the property of a horse. “Zang” is a particular concept, which refers to a particular entity. All languages that come out from the mouth must contain concepts. The concept refers to the object as the name follows the person.
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(translated from Chinese by Guo Zhenzhen)
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- 11.
The English version is “‘Minor cause’: having this, it will necessarily exist as such; lacking this, it will not necessarily exist”, but it should be an error; the Chinese text of “like hearing a point” seems to mean more exactly “like a point on the rule.”
- 12.
The expression “tuilei” comes from the canon in Mojing “The difficulty of tuilei is to correctly grasp the size of things” (推类之难, 说在之大小). Chinese logician Liu Fenrong tries, with Seligman and van Benthem, to use the game modeling to represent the practice of the argumentation in Mohists’ disputes for categorization of objects (see [13]). Moreover, several books on tuilei or tuilei logic were published in recent years (see [12, 14, 21]).
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Zhenzhen, G. (2022). What Is “Ancient Chinese Logic” ?. In: Béziau, JY., Desclés, JP., Moktefi, A., Pascu, A.C. (eds) Logic in Question. Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94452-0_1
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