 With this, the Mohist art of disputation concentrates on pairs of complementary names (e.g., “ox” and “non-ox”) to determine which is admissibly applied to an object. Together, the two names in each pair partition all that exists into two mutually exclusive categories. Any given object is in one or the other category of each pair, but not both. Accordingly, the names of each pair cannot both “fit” the object, nor can it be the case that neither fits. It is in these terms that the Mohists recognized what we would identify as the principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle. Their primary interest is with naming and reference, and only consequentially are they drawn into reflections on meaning. In an act of reference, one’s utterance of “This is an ox” might be explained as the expression of a proposition in a speech act with assertoric force. But this explanation depends on a general theory about the relation between reference and meaning, something the Mohists did not explicitly investigate. Their increasing interest in how names combine into meaningful wholes may have put them on the verge of developing such a theory, but their focus remained mostly at the level of particular acts of naming and uses of words. This makes it an open question whether or to what extent the logical principles underwriting their specific views on reference, and their general theory of language, are adequately characterized in Aristotelian terms or in some other way.