 The issues at stake here matter not only for the Mohists. They are among the central questions in classical Chinese philosophy, addressed in different ways by Mohists, Daoists, Confucians, and others. For what scheme of kind distinctions we adopt was seen as determining values, norms of action, and even the organization of society. In the Western tradition, views on similar issues have tended to fall into one of three general categories: realism, conceptualism, or  nominalism.[19]  This taxonomy is unhelpful in understanding classical Chinese thought, however, for the various positions in the Chinese discourse all tend to fall roughly under the label of nominalism, appealing neither to universals nor to concepts to explain the relation between a thing and its kind. The range of Chinese positions can more usefully be plotted along a spectrum from a form of realism to various forms of conventionalism or  relativism,[20]  representing the extent to which they treat distinctions between kinds as fixed and independent of human activity, on the one hand, or as relative to our (potentially plural and variable) attitudes, practices, context, or point of view, on the other. On one end of this spectrum would be monistic realism, the view that kind distinctions are determined by a single, uniquely correct pattern of similarity relations fixed by the world itself, such that exactly one set of kind distinctions are the correct ones. Next might come a weaker form of realism, on which kind distinctions rest on similarity relations fixed by the world, but different speech communities might employ kind names that pick out some or other of these distinctions depending on their interests or customs. Further in the relativist direction would be  Xunzi’s  pragmatic conventionalism, which holds that the similarity relations that underwrite kind distinctions are not inherent in things themselves but are determined by social conventions based on our natural biological disposition to classify certain things similarly, our cultural traditions, political decisions, and practical efficacy in securing socioeconomic order. Still further in the relativist direction would be the positions of the “Discourse on Evening Things Out” and “Autumn Waters” essays in the  Zhuangzi,  both of which hold that, though the schemes of kind distinctions we employ are grounded in similarities between things, these similarities themselves are determined by our perspective, practices, or context. At the extreme relativist end of the spectrum would be the view that kind distinctions are entirely arbitrary, fixed only by the contingent whims of the person doing the classifying. It is unclear whether any early Chinese thinker actually held such a view, though ideas associated with  Hui Shi  and  Gongsun Long  suggest that they might have. 