 Likewise, logic, construed as the study of inference, may have to be conceived differently from traditional Western accounts, given early Chinese philosophers’ rather unique approach to reasoning about language as a normative guide to ethical judgment and action (for example, as based on the doctrine of the ordering of names). It is not at all clear that early Chinese philosophers had a conception of logic that involved the typical notions of truth, validity, entailment, consistency, and so forth. Normally, an inference is conceived as a rule-bound transition of some kind from one sentence-like structure—a proposition, statement, or sentence—to another, and is considered valid if it preserves truth. However, there is some dispute about whether early Chinese philosophers were preoccupied with truth as a semantic concept, and even whether they considered sentences to be units of linguistic significance. On the other hand, contemporary developments of logic have opened up new vistas in the study of ancient ideas. Our primary concern in logic need not be the preservation of truth, and different conceptions have been developed in which various conditions of satisfiability are employed, with “validity” appropriately redefined. Caveats such as these admonish us to be open to alternative accounts of logic when interpreting the views of early Chinese philosophers, and to exercise caution when representing these views in contemporary nomenclature.