 One important difference from earlier Mohism is that the later texts seem to abandon the idea of grounding ethics or social norms in  “Heaven’s intention”  (tiān zhì 天志), or at least they say nothing about it. This move would might seem to push Mohist ethics toward a form of pragmatic consequentialism: the proper standards for shì/fēi distinctions would be whatever tends to promote human welfare. Extending this idea to language and epistemology, we might expect the Mohists to adopt some form of pragmatism or conventionalism, on which similarity distinctions between things are determined at least partly by human interests, practices, or conventions, presumably as they interact with human-independent features of the world. (One might argue that the earlier Mohists already held such a position concerning shì/fēi distinctions other than the fundamental ethical shì/fēi identified by Heaven’s intentions.) Yet, as Hansen suggests (1992, 242–243), in a few passages, their position seems to lean toward a brand of realism, here understood as the view that the world in itself, independently of human activity, fixes the similarities by which things are divided into kinds. It is unclear just how strong these realist tendencies are, however. The texts may be compatible with a view that allows some latitude in the kind distinctions we recognize, provided they rest on at least some objective basis for distinguishing similarities and differences. 