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Confuzius started the fight against the sophists back then. After his death other sophists like Kung-sun Lung came and stated things like:

"The shadow of a flying bird doesn't move."

Ok, this sounds like Zenon's flying arrow argument so can follow that. Further he says that:

"A white horse isn't a horse."

Ok I found this one here, but what does:

"A brown horse and a dark ox are three together."

mean? An orginal reference or a standalone deduction of these hair-splitting logics would be nice...

Joseph Weissman
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draks ...
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    Contextual information is useful. Do you have any context for the horse & ox question? that is a link to the dialogue where it is found, or a larger extract. – Mozibur Ullah Jan 02 '14 at 01:25
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    Further information, including whether Kung-sun Lung was fond of opium, would be useful. – Michael Jan 02 '14 at 05:39
  • It seems possible together is overloaded here a bit semantically, meaning also 'together with the relation between the two'; the fact that the two elements are *together* together (i.e., individuals *plus* the set they form). --This is my suspicion, anyway, that the translation gap makes this a bit complex. – Joseph Weissman Jan 03 '14 at 00:20

2 Answers2

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Since you said a standalone deduction is fine, I'll offer what I think might work having extrapolated the sort of reasoning used in the second one.

The way "a brown horse and a dark ox" might be "three together" is this:

  1. A brown horse;
  2. A dark ox;
  3. A brown horse and a dark ox.

That is, each animal is itself one object, and then the two of them together is a distinct third object. This seems in tune with how "a white horse isn't a horse."

The sentence itself plays out like so: A brown horse (1) and a dark ox (2) are three together [brown horse + dark ox] (3).

Of course, as I said this is only my own interpretation and I have no references save for the similarity this reasoning bears to that used for your second example.

commando
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  • Probably the right answer, yes. Sophists go home. – Natxo Jan 03 '14 at 09:09
  • Nice use [power sets](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Set_Theory/Sets#Power_sets). I wonder, why he didn't come up with some [set theoretic paradoxon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_set_theory)... – draks ... Jan 07 '14 at 09:06
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I take "a brown horse and a dark ox are three" in an ontological sense. If you have a brown horse and a dark ox you have three things:

  • Dark; hence light. Without light there would be no need for a word for dark.

  • A horse; hence Animals; hence living things;

  • The color brown; hence colors; hence a conscious observer who can see light and give names to particular frequencies like brown.

If you grant me a brown horse and a dark ox you grant me three of the most important things in the universe: Electromagnetic radiation; life; and consciousness.

user4894
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