 The fourth area of novelty in the ethics of the Dialectics concerns an aspect of practical reasoning that the Mohists call “weighing” (quán  權).[7]  “Weighing” typically involves judging which of several alternative ends or courses of action is of greater benefit and lesser harm, and thus should determine how we act. The discussion of “weighing” is a response to two sorts of issues. One is how to handle conflicts between competing ends or values. The other is how to choose the best means of dealing with situations in which no course of action open to us is prima facie beneficial or right. Early Mohist texts contain no discussion of how benefit is to be aggregated or maximized—how the different elements of benefit are to be weighed against each other and combined so as to best promote the benefit of all. The later Mohist discussion of weighing can be seen as addressing this issue on the basis of the principle of favoring the greater part of a whole and thus choosing the greater of two benefits or the lesser of two harms.