Abstraction and theories of lei (classification, kinds): A response to Chad Hansen's mereological interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy

My aim in this dissertation is to challenge Chad Hansen's mereological interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy by providing my own interpretation based on theories of lei. Hansen's mereological interpretation is composed of two radical claims: One is to say that since ancient Chinese philosophy is dominated by nominalism, we do not have to introduce any abstract entities in interpreting ancient Chinese philosophy. The other is to say that Chinese nominalism is mereological.;Against Hansen's first claim, I argue that since (1) nominalism does not always go along with the non-committment of abstract entities and (2) ancient Chinese philosophy show the committment to abstract entities despite its nominalistic trend, we need to introduce abstract entities in our interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy. Against Hansen's second claim, I argue that Chinese nominalism is based on theories of lei instead of mereology. Chinese lei-based nominalism is more like traditional forms of Western nominalism in (1) that it is the scheme of individuals/similarities-among-individuals and (2) that it emphasizes the conventional characteristics of determining similarity. Nevertheless, this dissertation prefers the Chinese term "lei" instead of the Western term "similarity" because the former better discloses Chinese contexts without unnecessary Western imposition.;My lei-based interpretation is suggested with regard to three realms. These realms are linguistic features of Classical Chinese, theories of language in ancient China, and philosophical doctrines in ancient China.;A close examination on linguistic features of Classical Chinese (the so-called ideographic characteristics of Chinese characters, absence of grammatical inflection of Chinese characters, and mass-like features of Chinese nouns) shows that these features simply disclose the conventional characteristics of Chinese characters, the pragmatics--priority conception of language, and individual/similarity semantical scheme, not the mereological scheme. In my discussion of theories of language in ancient China, I claim that besides Hansen's four Chinese assumptions about language (the regulative function view of language, the dividing and discriminating function view of language, conventionalism, and nominalism), we also should emphasize the relativity of language, the articulatory nature of language, and the semantic role of lei as typical Chinese assumptions about language. All of these Chinese assumptions show why lei came to play a central role in Chinese theories of language. Lastly, I examine not only Hansen's favorite example which he uses to support his interpretation: Gongsun Long's white horse paradox, but also Mencian theory of human nature and Neo-Mohist theory of disputation, in order to show that lei was a theory of classification extensively discussed among ancient Chinese philosophers.