 Some references to the disputers’ interest in “the same and different,” then, may allude to legitimate, if widely misunderstood, inquiries into the foundations of language and knowledge. Gongsun Long’s “uniting the same and different,” on the other hand, probably refers to manipulating standards for distinguishing different kinds in order to produce sophisms. The disputer could cite features of different kinds of things by which they could be treated as the same or features of things of the same kind by which they could be treated as different. (This strategy is suggested by the fifth thesis of Hui Shi, to be discussed below.) Such shifting of criteria for distinguishing sameness from difference is illustrated by many of the disputers’ sophisms. Among other examples, Hui Shi’s “The sky is as low as earth, mountains are level with marshes” deems different things similar; some of the arguments for Gongsun Long’s “A white horse is not a horse” treat things of the same kind—horses and white horses—as different, playing largely on the ambiguity between “same” in the sense of being of the same kind and “same” in the sense of identity. 