Zhengming
By Liam Kofi Bright and Rose Novick . (Joint work with equal contributions.) Kongzi, on being asked the first thing to do in administering government, gave a surprising answer: Zilu asked, “If the Duke of Wei were to employ you to serve in the government of his state, what would be your first priority?” The Master answered, “It would, of course, be the rectification of names.” (Analects 13.3, tr. Slingerland) Rectifying names (正名 zhengming ), Kongzi says, is the basis of social flourishing. If names are out of order, speech will not match reality, plans will be impossible to put into action, culture will decline, and punishment will be ineffective. The central task of the gentleman, then, is put names in order. As Kongzi puts it, “The gentleman simply guards against arbitrariness in speech” (13.3). We suggest that Carnap (though we expect that similar things could be said for others of the logical empiricists) had an interestingly similar conception of the philosophe...