 In all of this, there is no disagreement with Mohist views. The disagreement arises in the analysis of particulars, which the Mohists felt could substantively determine the outcomes of ethical disputes. Given that convention lies at the bottom of all acts of naming, Xunzi abandons any supposition that semantics (or even reason, narrowly construed in the Mohists’ sense of disputation) can be the ground of ethics. On the other hand, Xunzi’s deference to authority leaves one to wonder what principles of reason an educated elite would use in determining why a given set of conventions in language are more appropriate than others. It can be assumed that their choices would not be completely arbitrary, but that they would be guided by the very faculties of discrimination in perception that the Mohists argued were at the foundations of our common reason. Indeed, much in spite of the admirable clarity with which he articulated his views on the role of language in ethical conduct, Xunzi leaves the reader with an unresolved tension between what he had hoped to accomplish in his own philosophical analyses and the mandates of those higher officials to whose authority he admonishes us to yield (see the entry  Xunzi  for further details).