 But there may be another, deeper explanation as well. The Mohists seem never to have moved fully beyond the one-name-one-thing view. The idea that each unit of language should denote some discrete kind (lèi 類), or part of reality, lingers in their treatment of the robbers example. Their study of name compounding showed that the extension of most phrases is not determined merely by summing the extensions of their component words. Unlike the case of ‘oxen-and-horses’, ‘white horse’ does not denote the sum of all white things and all horses. The semantics of phrases or “expressions” (cí 辭) requires a separate explanation of its own, beyond our explanation of the semantics of names (míng 名). Yet the robbers example shows the Mohists treating phrases the same way they handle names, attempting to pin down a one-to-one referential relation between ‘killing robbers’ or ‘caring about handsome men’ and distinct kinds of shí 實 (stuff, situations). They still seem to assume that the key to distinguishing kinds correctly and reliably lies in specifying the discrete kind of shí denoted by each expression. Specifying one-to-one reference relations in this way, so as to eliminate uncertainty or ambiguity in distinguishing the things denoted by each name, is precisely what texts such as the  Analects,  Xunzi, and The Annals of Lü Buwei call “rectifying names” (zhèng míng 正名). So, as Hansen observes (1992, 251), in the “Lesser Selection” the Mohists are in effect aiming to rectify phrases, instead of only names. They stipulate, for instance, that ‘killing people’ be used to refer only to a certain kind of shí (stuff, event, situation), distinct from that denoted by ‘killing robbers’. The simple one-name-one-thing view has no room for referential ambiguity or for terms of different scope, some of whose extensions fall within others. It holds that the extensions of different phrases must be distinct—as, on a commonsense interpretation, those of ‘killing robbers’ and ‘killing people’ are not—or confusion and error will result. But this view has counterintuitive consequences, and there are more compelling alternatives, as we have seen. To more fully exploit the resources provided by their approach to semantics, the Mohists needed to break with the one-name-one-thing model more decisively. 