 This argument is deductively valid, and it seems highly improbable that the Mohists were not employing something like it in their assertions about the correct methodology for resolving disputes by bian. So, it would be highly misleading to say that the Mohists were simply not doing logic of the kind with which we are familiar today. That they were not formalizing a theory of logical form does not imply that they were not engaged in rigorously defending their views on the basis of principles that involve or presuppose valid deductive reasoning and other basic methods of logic. To be sure, that the Mohists did not articulate this pattern of reason explicitly could support the claim that their use of it was little more than a trivial exercise of our unconscious aptitude for deductive reason, and hence unwarranted as a distinctive feature of their philosophy. Even if this is true, however, its consistency with the text makes it not unlikely that they were on the verge of discovering it, for they did endeavor to provide analyses of linguistic form, which point in the direction of formalization, and with the apparent intention of testing theories about various patterns of inference (see  section 3.4  below).