This article examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse argument) is valid but the other (the two-horse argument) is not. To explain this difference, the article uses English plural constructions to formulate the arguments. Then it shows that the one-horse argument is valid because it has a valid argument form, the plural cousin of a standard form of valid categorical syllogisms (Plural Barbara), and argues that the two-horse argument involves equivocal uses of a key predicate (the Chinese counterpart of ‘have four feet’) that has the distributive/nondistributive ambiguity. In doing so, the article discusses linguistic differences between Chinese and English and explains why the logic of plural constructions is applicable to Chinese arguments that involve no plural constructions.

In order to introduce Mozi's thought, almost every contemporary textbook on Chinese philosophy refers to his ten novel theses or dogmas, which have been preserved as the titles of the Core chapters (8–37): to elevate the worthy, to conform upward, to care for all, to condemn military aggression, to moderate expenses as well as burials, to acknowledge the will of Heaven and the percipient ghosts, and to condemn music as well as fatalism. Through a close reading of the Mozi and other early sources written by or attributed to masters, this paper argues, first, that these ten core ideas may not have been promoted by the earliest spokesmen of Mohism but gradually emerged while various layers of the book Mozi were written, and, second, that these ten ideas were not consistently attributed to early Mohism by Zhou and Han masters: their association of Mo with these specific mottos is limited and inconsistent. A focus on the most well-known motto – “care for all” – shows that there was no awareness of its belonging exclusively to one thinker or school. The difference between the earliest and the contemporary characterizations of Mozi sheds new light not only on early Mohism, but also on our preconceptions when reading early sources.