Talk:White Horse Dialogue

Difficulties in Interpretation

The revision of 4 September 2009 by Bryan12603 should be undone. To ascribe "Platonistic interpretation" to Bodde/Fung's quote is an unsupported value judgment of the quote. As well, his summary comment "contemporary scholars universally reject this interpretation" begs for a proof that such is the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShaziDaoren (talk • contribs) 08:18, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The hell is up with that horse picture?

Why is there a picture of a horse supposedly suffering an identity crisis. What does that even have to do with this article?69.205.95.94 (talk) 08:20, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, for starters, 1) it is a horse with a white hair coat, so it's a fun way to illustrate the article, and what else could be used for an illustration anyhow? (smile) Now technically, it's not a "white horse" -- the animal is actually a fully-silvered out gray, but consensus went against me about inserting the image of a true white horse, because none of them looked sad enough! LOL! And if a white horse is not a horse, then the poor white horse (who isn't even really white) must wonder if he is a horse or not, which, if we anthropomorphize enough and place tongue firmly in cheek, means that he IS having an identity crisis! So, 2) This particular horse looks rather upset about something (Technically it's because he is overflexed in too severe a bit, but I digress...) & so illustrates the angst of the white horse upon contemplating the circumstances under which he may not actually be a horse! Montanabw^(talk) 20:24, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

That illustration made me LMAO, but is hardly encyclopædic. Still, I don’t have the heart to remove it. —Wiki Wikardo 17:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's hardly unencyclopedic either. It's not like encyclopedia authors never insert a sardonic comment or dry expression. Diderot didn't, nor even are dictionaries humor-free zones. (Consider Johnson's definition of 'lexicographer'.) --Gwern (contribs) 17:49 8 June 2010 (GMT)

+1 for LMAO on horse picture, too cruel humor. chughtai (talk) 12:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the picture, but the caption entirely misses the point without being funny, sardonic or even dry. NRGized (talk) 12:59, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Merge

I don't think a merge is appropriate. The White Horse argument is a specific and important logical argument/prose fragment, and it's not at all the same thing as a general article on arguments involving horses, if you see what I mean. --Gwern (contribs) 21:08 5 December 2006 (GMT)

I agree with Gwern. A merge is not appropriate.

This article talks about the deferences between definitions and sets.

The other article talks about an invalid argument involving mathematical induction.

Neither article is a list of paradoxes involving horses. --Kevinkor2 08:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a merge is inappropriate as the two paradoxes have nothing to do with each other other than nominally involving horses. I've removed the merge tag. Rigadoun (talk) 21:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The white horse/gray horse thing

It's been pointed out to me that the horse in the picture with the caption is not what we would today call a white horse; it is actually a gray horse. Gray horses have white hair but appear darker in areas because they have dark underlying skin. I knew this when I first came here, actually, since I first found this article only after reading various pages about horses. And the changes I made to the caption were just intended to make it more humorous. Looking back at the history of the article, it seems that the pics were shuffled around a bit early on before the current one (the depressed-looking horse) was settled on. Reading the text of the article seems to suggest that the sense of white horse intended by the Chinese philosophers was based on color only and would not make the fine white/gray distinction. I still am linking to the white horse article, but to the section where "false" white horses are mentioned. I hope that this is OK with everybody. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 00:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I was the person who swapped out the photo for that of a "real" white horse, but if the photo of the gray reflects consensus, it's not a moral issue, and mea culpa for upsetting the apple cart, so to speak. It's just a real pet peeve of horse people that gray horses are called "white." (Gray horses are born a dark color and their hair coat gradually turns white as they age, but their skin stays dark) The ancient Chinese probably knew the difference between white and gray horses too, (true white being extremely rare, grayed out horses with white hair coats relatively common) but they may not have reflected this in the context of this particular paradox. Or cared. And the use of the photo IS funny! Being that he is a gray horse, he is not a white horse, thus is he a horse because he is not truly white?? Montanabw^(talk) 03:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Sets and properties

It seems that what is being asserted here is that the set of white horses is not equivalent to the set of horses; or equally, the property of Being A White Horse is not the same as the property of Being A Horse. This has nothing to do with whether a white horse is a horse, but rather whether white-horseness is the same as horseness. Am I missing the point here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.7.39 (talk) 08:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Can someone translate this dialog to English, please?

Can anyone make this text understandable, even though the text is already in English, please? I'm not following the conversation at all. What the hell is that other guy talking about? Of course a white horse is a horse. His main argument seems to be that the color white is not a horse, which even though it's quite obvious is such a weird position since it's totally irrelevant for the discussion. And why does the objector start to talk about that "If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses"? How does this help him at all? Why should this be more obvious than the already obvious and very straightforward statement that "a white horse is a horse"? And then the other guy says that a horse extends to a yellow or a black horse. Okay, so you're saying that yellow horses and black horses are horses, but that white horses aren't? And then he continues with saying that a white horse doesn't extend to a yellow or a black horse and uses that as an argument, since a horse does. After that, he continuously seems to mix up the two expressions "horse" and "white horse", and struggles to separate their meanings. Dude! I think you need to study some set theory. Just because a white horse is a horse, it doesn't mean that all horses are white horses! "Horse" is a less specified expression than "white horse", and therefore it can include more things, which "white horse" doesn't have to include, okay? Was that understandable for you? —Kri (talk) 21:39, 18 August 2012 (UTC) , This is explained in the section directly below the translation. Was that understandable for you? --M-O-W (talk) 10:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

It comes across to me as pure sophistry, not a paradox at all. Socrates wrote about a similar piece of sophistry: "this dog is mine this dog is a mother, therefore this dog is my mother". And he disapproved of such sophistry. I wonder how the white horse "paradox" has been regarded by Chinese intellectuals. Maproom (talk)

06:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, lost in translation...Simply put -

Black horse is a horse, white horse is not black, therefore not a horse Perhaps something like that should be added to the interpretation with regards to it's actual meaning as direct transaltion seldom works (subtitles are often changed for local/national expression)

Title

The title of this should really be capitalized. Makes it look much more professional, for an article that can easily be taken as a joke. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.246.112.51 (talk) 14:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Just some funny fact

Some lawyer said Windows XP SP3 is not Windows XP in a lawsuit in china. --125.39.117.43 (talk) 13:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Mistranslated title

In Classical Chinese grammar, an "A非B" construction like "白馬非馬" is a declarative sentence "A white horse is not a horse" and not a conditional sentence "When a white horse is not a horse". Whither when in the current title? This mistake, which began in the 20 June 2005 first version, might derive from the reference

• Thompson, Kirill Ole. 1995. "When a 'White Horse' Is Not a 'Horse'", Philosophy East and West 45.4:481-499.

Shouldn't we move this page to A White Horse is Not a Horse? Keahapana (talk) 00:26, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Agree. Dropping the "when" seems more accurate to the original sense of the paradox. Mateussf (talk) 13:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

If it were a misnomer...

...it would be plainly true – a white ant isn't an ant at all. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 02:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

White Horse Discourse

Hi,

Please be aware that there is an online discussion regarding classical Chinese that may impact this page. I suggest you read the discussion to the end.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/52454-the-duality-code/

W. K. Choy (talk) 11:41, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

No impact whatsoever. Please read Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:41, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

More cleanup needed: citation formatting, language markup

I've normalized to a single citation style per WP:CITEVAR, and fixed a boatload of WP:MOS compliance issues, as well as copyedited this whole article to actually make sense in English. It still needs the following:

• Either use a single "References" section, or split sections for short citations and full bibliographic information below that. Right now, it's trying to do both at once, with redundant full citations in both sections, and this is against WP:CITE.
• Another CITE problem is mixing templated and non-templated citations; absent a very good reason not to, this article should use WP:CS1 citations like about 99% of our articles.
• All the non-English material needs to be marked up with {{lang|zh}} for Chinese characters and or {{lang|zh-Latn}} for transliterations, per MOS:FOREIGN.

I don't have time to do this, and have little actual interest in the article, so someone else please pick up where I left off.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 15 August 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Move to title case White Horse Dialogue per sources linked in this discussion. (non-admin closure) Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:47, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

---

When a white horse is not a horse → White horse is not horse – The original text does not have "when" in it. Names for the article in other languages don't include "when". The current title of the article is not the name of the paradox itself, it is the name of a 1995 paper about the paradox. It's called simply “white horse is not horse” by many sources (e.g. Indraccolo 2017), which is a good translation from the original text. Mateussf (talk) 22:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The proposed title is superior to the present one for the reasons given. However—as may be unsurprising given considerable reason for interest is the particularities of Literary Chinese syntax—I think this may be problematic per the naturalness criterion. I almost think White horse argument or another descriptive title would be preferable—it seems much more likely to be what an English-language readership would be searching for. Not "paradox" though, as there are enough interpretations that reject its characterization as paradoxical. Remsense ‥ 诉 22:53, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject China has been notified of this discussion. Remsense ‥ 诉 23:56, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose removing the indefinite article before the last word. That makes the grammar sound very un-English. In fact, both indefinite articles would be better kept. AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

The issue is that that's actually rather important. In all seriousness, this is actually a POV issue regarding how we're meant to understand Literary Chinese content words that people have taken different sides on regarding this specific poem.`Remsense ‥ 诉 01:38, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

That's nice. "White horse is not horse" is not a sentence of English. It is merely an ungrammatical gibberish sequence of English words. At least Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe" are grammatical. If this article is renamed to an ungrammatical sequence of English words which is not actually particularly meaningful in the English language, and is also not an established and well-known name for the phenomenon, then that will almost certainly be a violation of WP:TITLE. The manufacturers of Pocari Sweat can get away with that, but we as Wikipedia editors can't. AnonMoos (talk) 05:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Right, the title doesn't have to be a sentence of English, as the topic is a Literary Chinese sentence. Like I said above, a phrasal descriptive title is probably better, but a NPOV-violating title is worse than both.

Also—for what it's worth, not actually particularly meaningful in the English language is stretching it considerably: nearly every English speaker can see that phrase and understand the gist. Remsense ‥ 诉 06:07, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Almost every English speaker can understand "Me Tarzan! You Jane!", but that doesn't make them grammatical sentences of English. And Tarzan wasn't trying to convey subtle points of philosophy. There would be a much higher bafflement factor for a person without a specialist background encountering "White horse not horse" for the first time than someone watching a Tarzan movie... AnonMoos (talk) 07:47, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Tarzan wasn't trying to convey subtle points of philosophy, and neither does an article title. We would just like to indicate it without misrepresenting it. according to WP:NC—while again it's not my ideal choice. Remsense ‥ 诉 07:51, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Comment - White Horse is not Horse or "White horse" is not "horse" would be grammatical in English and convey the nature of the paradox, although the form with the quotation marks might not be a valid article title. Tevildo (talk) 11:28, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I think we would generally use italics for WAW, but unfortunately it's slightly too innovative a solution for me to sign off on. Remsense ‥ 诉 11:40, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Have to rewrite this whole thing because my phone is terrible and I hate it.

Oppose proposed title; Support move. I know we have articles titled after phrases and quotations (May you live in interesting times is on my watchlist for some reason), but this one really doesn't lend itself to that, being an ontological argument couched in the ambiguity of another language. I'd support strongliest White House discourse or White horse discourse.

Zhou 2020 (a TWL-accessible source I just added, unused) gives Discourse on the White Horse, but I think all attempts should be made to avoid articles definite and indefinite, as well as nouns that would be expected to distinguish between singular and plural number in idiomatic English. Still, I'd support Discourse on the White Horse or Discourse on the white horse or even Discourse on white horses over either the present title or the proposed rename. Folly Mox (talk) 16:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I would also support White horse discourse. But frankly Folly, I would say I've had enough White House discourse this year! Remsense ‥ 诉 16:29, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

My predictive text would not give that one up! I corrected four of them (nine including the ones in the initial post my browser decided to throw away for no reason) but must have missed the first one after rewriting 🫠 Folly Mox (talk) 22:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Move to White Horse Dialogue. Ths name is attested in scholarly sources ([1] [2] [3]), and this, or the lower-case version (White horse dialogue) would be my suggestion. Tevildo (talk) 17:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I've said most of what I had to say above, but I'd like to point out that the article Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy has as its title the title of an academic paper, as this article apparently currently also does, and that's not absolutely wrong according to Wikipedia practices. It's certainly preferable to an ungrammatical gibberish sequence of words. AnonMoos (talk) 17:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Popping back in to note that Wang and Johnston 2019 translate this topic as On White and Horse (Wang Ping; Johnston, Ian, eds. (2019). The Mingjia & Related Texts: Bilingual Edition. Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. pp. 211, 275. ISBN 9789629967772.).

Note to the closer: please interpret my participation here as support for any title which translates the textual subunit that is this dialogue / discourse (白馬論); weak oppose to any title containing a definite or indefinite article; and full oppose any translation of the text's central thesis and opening phrase 白馬非馬. Folly Mox (talk) 12:02, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quote box in lead

Is {{Quote box}} the best template for this? I don't know that we have to attribute these four words inline (or at all, given the balance of article content).

Pedantically, I also wouldn't translate 非 as simply not, which doesn't convey its verbiness. Were it not for MOS:TONE or whichever uppercase shortcut tells us not to use contractions in mainspace, I'd gloss 非 as isn't. Folly Mox (talk) 10:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

You're totally right—I think MOS:N'T would be a completely irrelevant objection here. Remsense ‥ 论 10:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, as goes the box—I think the template uses WAI-ARIA role="blockquote", which seems semantically apropos enough. If there's an appropriate use for that template in mainspace, it would seem to be here. Remsense ‥ 论 11:16, 23 August 2024 (UTC)