According to a speaker in a famous historical dialogue, “A white horse is not a horse.” In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Lisa Indraccolo (Tallinn University) to unpack one of the most intriguing discourses in early Chinese philosophy—the White Horse Dialogue from the Gongsun Longzi. Together, we explore what this paradoxical statement reveals about language, logic, and categorization in early China, from the connection between words and reality to the ways that set theory, semantics, and metaphysics might be used to help us understand this fascinating text.

Lisa Indraccolo’s professional website.

Key passages

     Section 1: Opening Exchange – Shape vs. Color

Objector (曰): 「白馬非馬可乎。」
Persuader 曰: 「可。」
O曰: 「何哉。」
P曰: 「馬者所以命形也。白者所以命色也。命色者非命形也故曰白馬非馬。」

Objector (O): “To say that ‘white horse is not horse,’ is that admissible?”
Persuader (P): “It is admissible.”
O: “How is that possible?”
P: “‘Horse’ is what denotes shape, ‘white’ is what denotes color. What denotes color is not (the same as) what denotes shape. Therefore I say that ‘white horse’ is not ‘horse.’”

(Gongsun Longzi, “White Horse Dialogue” 《公孫龍子•白馬論 》,  lines 1-4; Lisa Indraccolo’s translation)

    Section 2: Generic Horse vs. White Horse

P曰: 「求馬黃黑馬皆可致。求白馬黃黑馬不可致。… 可與不可其相非明。故黃黑馬一也而可以應有馬，而不可以應有白馬。是白馬之非馬審矣。」

P: “If you were looking for a horse, both a “brown” [huang 黃, “dun”] horse or a black horse could be offered to you. If you were looking for a white horse, a brown horse or a black horse could not be offered to you. … It is clear that admissible and inadmissible mutually exclude each other. Therefore, a brown horse and a black horse are the same insofar as they can both correspond to there being a horse, but they cannot correspond to there being a white horse. Indeed it is true that ‘white horse’ is not (the same as) ‘horse.’”

(Gongsun Longzi, “White Horse Dialogue” 《公孫龍子•白馬論 》, line 6; slightly modified from Lisa Indraccolo’s translation)

     Section 3: The “Colorless Horse” Challenge

O曰: 「以馬之有色為非馬。天下非有無色之馬也。天下無馬可乎。」
P曰: 「馬固有色故有白馬。… 白馬者馬與白也。馬與白非馬也。故曰白馬非馬也。」

O: “You consider a horse of a certain color not a horse, but there are no colorless horses in the world. Are there no horses in the world then?”
P: “Horses necessarily have a color, that is why you have white horses. If only colorless horses were horses and that was all, how could you pick out a white one? And therefore a white one is not ‘horse’: ‘white horse’ is constituted by ‘horse’ and ‘white’ combined. ‘Horse’ and ‘white’ combined are not (the same as) ‘horse.’ Therefore, I say that ‘white horse’ is not ‘horse.’”

(Gongsun Longzi, “White Horse Dialogue” 《公孫龍子•白馬論 》, lines 7-8; Lisa Indraccolo’s translation)

     Section 4: The Reductio Ad Absurdum

P曰: 「以有白馬為有馬。謂有白馬為有黃馬可乎。」

O曰: 「未可。」

P曰: 「以有馬為異有黃馬是異黃馬於馬也。異黃馬於馬是以黃馬為非馬。以黃馬為非馬而以白馬為有馬。[……] 此天下之悖言亂辭也。」

P: “If we consider that having a white horse is having a horse, is it admissible to say that having a white horse is having a brown horse?

O: “It is not admissible.”

P: “To distinguish having a horse from having a brown horse is to distinguish a brown horse from horse. To distinguish ‘brown horse’ from ‘horse’ means to consider a brown horse not a horse. To consider a brown horse not a horse and yet to consider a white horse a horse […] these are the most contradictory and incoherent words in the world!”

(Gongsun Longzi, “White Horse Dialogue” 《公孫龍子•白馬論 》, lines 10-12; slightly modified from Lisa Indraccolo’s translation)

Sources and phrases mentioned

• Lisa Indraccolo, “The ‘White Horse Is Not Horse’ Debate” (in Philosophy Compass)
• Lisa Indraccolo, “Of Stones and Horses: Reading the Gōngsūn Lóngži in Terms of Concrete Universals” (in Philosophy East & West)
• Lisa Indraccolo, “Inner and Outer Worlds – On the Nature of Things, Matter, and the Mind in the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ” (open access)
• The Gongsun Longzi  公孫龍子 (historical text establishing seemingly paradoxical views about terms and concepts, traditionally attributed to Gongsun Long 公孫龍 [c. 325-250 BCE])
• Baimalun 白馬論 (“White Horse Dialogue,” “White Horse Discourse”)
• The Zhuangzi 莊子 (the Chuang Tzu, Daoist text that sometimes makes fun of discourses like the White Horse Dialogue)
• Peter Adamson (co-host of History of Philosophy in China, host of History of Philosophy without Any Gaps)
• Karyn Lai (co-host of History of Philosophy in China)
• The American Philosophical Association (APA, a professional organization for philosophers in North America)
• Mingjia 名家 (the “School of Names,” the “Sophists”)
• fei 非 (a term of negation, which can be used in at least two different ways – “isn’t identical to” and “isn’t a type/subset of”)
• identity claim (e.g., “Dutch people are people from the Netherlands”)
• subset claim (e.g., “Dutch people are people”)
• Venn diagram
• the mass-noun hypothesis (Chad Hansen’s hypothesis regarding part-whole relations in Chinese texts)
• Chinese measure words
• “chomping at the bit” (an English idiom)
• A.C. Graham (an interpreter of the White Horse Dialogue briefly mentioned by Lisa)
• articles (definite and indefinite, like “the” and “a”)
• Yiu-ming FUNG, “A Logical Perspective on ‘Discourse on White Horse’”
• Mohist Canons (a text that appear to be tracking similar conceptual and linguistic issues as the White Horse Dialogue, and uses the idea of “categories” [lei 類] to explain basic moves in semantics)
• reductio ad absurdum (a type or style of argument)
• zhengming 正名 (“rectifying names,” “rectifying titles”)
• Xunzi 荀子 (3rd century BCE, a Confucian philosopher who complains about the School of Names thinkers)
• universals
  • abstract universals
  • concrete universals
• Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (Fung Yu-lan, a philosopher who proposes that this dialogue presupposes the existence of abstract universals)
• “Hegelese” (an informal, playful term for the distinctive language of G.W.F. Hegel, 1770-1831)