OT: Chinese Philosophy (Was: Re: USAGE: Count and mass nouns)

> It is actually not so difficult for the most part, being very like simple
> English (or baby-talk, for that matter).  One of the oldest discoveries
> of Chinese analytic philosophy is usually expressed in English as
> "A white horse is not a horse".  This sounds paradoxical, or simply
> stupid, because it has been badly translated into a count-noun language.
> What it really means is "The mass called 'White-Horse' is not the same
> as the mass called 'Horse'".  But in a language where these two thoughts
> are normally conflated as "White horse not horse", disentangling them
> counts as an important philosophical advance.
I'm lost. Is there a separate word for "white-horse" from "horse", or is it
a "horse" with a "white" adjective?

Or is this just the idea that two objects are not both the same object?

...yeah. Can you explain this further, please?

-Keith

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