How Chinese language (written syntax) influenced Chinese thought (philosophy) is more naturalistically explored on a Wittgensteinian than a Whorfian paradigm. The mechanism is the theory of language we teach and learn in the process of educating each other about our language and its relation to us and the world. This theory of language feels so deeply intertwined with our language it becomes the starting point for reflection on our cognition (our minds), on ontology, and on both causal and normative guidance. That Chinese philosophy, like it’s Western counterpart, was engaged in this kind of reflection on puzzles posed by its theory of its language was reinforced by the twentieth century rediscovery of the Later Mohist dialectical thought (AKA Chinese “logic”). The Chinese dialectic pitted Confucian historical traditionalism against Mohist pragmatic realism. It presupposed a conception of knowing as realized most fully in knowing-to and knowing-how. The role of language was in collecting, organizing, and transmitting learning through names for parts of reality. The role of the senses was to contribute to our learned ability to distinguish or discriminate between contrasting parts in following the guidance in natural structures of historical possibility (dàos).