Language and Logic in Ancient China, Chad Hansen
In the book Language and Logic in Ancient China, Chad Hansen, discussed about the nature of linguistic and how it influenced the traditional Chinese philosophers. I will first briefly describe the content of the book. I will then discuss and analyze the meaning of Hansen’s own theory of interpretation and how language might have affected the Chinese thinkers at that period. Lastly, this paper will conclude with why one might believe his arguments to be unconvincing. However, my view on it differs.
He began the book on “Methodological Reflections,” where older interpretations were mentioned. He criticized other theories of interpretations, particularly the pre-Han philosophers and traditional Western thinkers. Hansen uses the coherent theory methodology of interpretation to justify an interpretive theory and also considers an objection to it. For example he uses the “think like a Chinese” methodology where one hardly finds any deductive arguments in the Chinese texts so the arguments in the text seems unconvincing (Hansen 14). Derk Bodde presented an argument that “Chinese philosophy. Because of this special emphasis upon analogy, is rarely written in the form of logically developed essays, but usually consists of a series of picturesque metaphors, parables, and anecdotes strung together to illustrate certain main ideas (Hansen 15).” This is not entirely true because there are Western philosophers who have used parables or strong imageries in their texts. Hence, the use of analogy is a skill used in philosophical exposition (Hansen 15). In chapter two, “the mass Noun Hypothesis and Abstraction in Chinese Language and Thought,” he presents an alternative theory as to how the Chinese language might have affected the theoretical system of classical philosophers. In chapter three, “Background Theories of Language in Ancient China”, he writes about major Chinese philosophers: Lao-tzu, Confucius, Mo Tzu, and Chuang Tzu. It was based on four assumptions about language: “assumptions about the function of language; assumptions about the way in which language relates to the world; assumptions about the origin and status of language; and miscellaneous contrasts in assumptions about the relation between language and mental or abstract objects (Hansen 57).” The function of language was regulative, meaning words have impact on one’s attitude to act (Hansen 59). The way language relates to the world is “to distinguish or discriminate stuffs in a given way (Hansen 61).” The origin and status of language is conventionalism, which “holds that not only the sounds and symbols are conventional, but so is the associated practice of division (Hansen 62).” Nominalism is the relation between language and abstract objects. There are no relations between Chinese language and abstract objects because “no concept of ‘’real’’ meaning nor of any abstract entity…or sense is employed or hinted at” in historical texts (Hansen 63). In the last two chapters, four and five, he uses his interpretation methodology to analysis the Neo-Moist Canons and the white-horse paradox of Kung-sun Lung.
In his book, Hansen presents two most important claims. The first claim considers abstract entities and how it is absent from the grammatical structure of the Chinese language. Consequently leading to the next claim, nominalism dominates Chinese philosophy. He thinks that Chinese philosophical writings during that period lack the abstraction model that Western philosophy has (Hansen 31). Hence, Chinese philosophy is nominalistic. Traditional Chinese philosophers thought of the world in terms of combined “stuff” instead of individuals and their properties. For instance, the mind in Platonic view is that the mind has “these ‘meanings’ or intelligible abstract objects,” whereas the Chinese view of the mind is dynamical because it contains both “the ability to discriminate and distinguish ‘‘stuffs’’ and is able to guide evaluation and action” (Hansen 31). Hansen wants to reverse the Platonic, non-mereological, presumption in the interpretation of Classical Chinese philosophical writings by appealing to the structure of the language. Chinese ontology is mereological to Hansen, the ‘names’ in language have a one-to-one relation to stuffs (Hansen 31). That is to say, every set of abstract objects “can construct a concrete mereologoical object by regarding all of the members of the set as one discontinuous stuff (Hansen 31).” The logical structure of Chinese nouns can answer why one might have this mass stuff view.
