A Study On The Basis Of The Theoretical System Of Names And Disputation In Mohist Cannon

The elaboration on logical thought in Mohist Cannon was accompanied with persistentpursuit of referential certainty of words. The writer of Mohist Cannon was not limited inthinking about logical rules themselves, but paid much attention to the regulation on alanguage by which logical rules can run safely in the language. In order to satisfy thisrequirement, Mohist Cannon specified a basic theoretical language construction principle: thepredicated-object clarity principle. That principle requires that in a disputation every word’sreference in every sentence must be certain.In the course of linguistic analysis, the predicated-object clarity principle enable us todetect references of words in an expression by the way of disputation, and then to judge thatthe expression is morbid or not. According to that principle, Moist Cannon built a languageanalytic theory which can be used to exclude morbid expressions from nature language. Inaddition, as the basic methodology of the theoretical system construction, thepredicated-object clarity principle requires one who is constructing a theory system mustdefine every word which will be used in the system before his ideas being expressed. Afterthat requirement being satisfied, the theory-builder can complete the other two crucial steps inthe course of theory system construction: composing sentences with those well-defined namesso as to express his ideas，and providing reasons to support his ideas.The predicated-object clarity principle is not only the basis of the theoretical system ofnames and disputation in Moist Cannon, but also has realistic value for logic in modern time.It is useful to build a formulized system for the Moist Cannon’s language analytic theorybased on that principle, because such a formulization system enables us to cope with theproblems caused by morbid expressions such as the liar paradox, etc...