{"id":6052,"date":"2016-11-10T14:01:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T14:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/11\/10\/women-are-better-at-looking-after-children\/"},"modified":"2016-11-10T14:01:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T14:01:24","slug":"women-are-better-at-looking-after-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/11\/10\/women-are-better-at-looking-after-children\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Women are Better at Looking After Children’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Opponent supplies the above-captioned sentence  for analysis.  He reports that a female family member was widely defriended (unfriended?) on Facebook for agreeing that it is true.  Of course the sentence is true as anyone with common sense and experience of life knows.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is an example of a generic statement or generic generalization.  It obviously does not mean that all<\/em> women are better at looking after children.  The Opponent writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I think the PC brigade would claim that any utterance whatsoever of \u2018women are better at looking after children\u2019 has a separate implicature, i.e. \u2018what is suggested<\/em> in an utterance, even though neither expressed<\/em> nor strictly implied<\/em>.\u2019 Something like \u2018women belong in the home\u2019, i.e. the normative 'women ought<\/em> to be at home looking after the children.'<\/span><\/p>\n

No?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Opponent and I agree that the sentence under analysis is true.  This leaves three questions.  <\/span><\/p>\n

First, does the non-normative sentence conventionally<\/em> imply the normative one?  Is there conventional<\/em> implicature here?  We of course agree that we are not in the presence of logical implication or entailment. <\/span><\/p>\n

Second, is there conversational<\/em> implicature here?<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, is the normative sentence true?<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the first question,I find no conventional implicature.  A conventional implicature is a non-logical implication that is not context-sensitive but depends solely on the conventional meanings of the words in the relevant sentences.  For example, 'Tom is poor but happy' implies that poverty and happiness are not usually found together.  This is not a logical implication; it is a case of conventional implicature.  Same with 'Mary had a baby and got married.'  This is logically consistent with the birth's coming before the marriage and the marriage's coming before the birth.  But it conventionally implies that Mary had a baby and then<\/em> got married. This implicature is not sensitive to context of use but is inscribed in (as a Continental philosopher might say) the language system itself.  <\/span><\/p>\n

What about conversational implicature?  This varies from context of use to context of use.  Consider my kind of conservative, the traditional conservative that rejects both the conservatism of the neo-cons and the white-race-based identity-political conservatism of the Alternative Right.  My brand of conservatism embraces certain classical liberal commitments, including: universal suffrage, the right of women to own property in their own names, and the right of women to pursue careers outside the home.<\/span><\/p>\n

So if conservatives of my type are conversing and one says, 'Women are better at looking after children,' then this does not conversationally imply that women ought to be at home looking after the children.  But among a different type of conservative, an ultra-traditional conservative who holds that woman's place is in the home, then we are in the presence of a conversational implicature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, is it true that women ought to be at home looking after children?  I would say No in keeping with my brand of conservatism, which I warmly recommend as the best type there is, avoiding as it does the extremism of the ultra-traditional throne-and-altar, women-tied-to-the-stove conservatism (men are better cooks in any case), the namby-pamby libertarian-conservative fusionism of the Wall Streer Journal types, and the race-based identity-political extremism of the 'alties' and the neo-reactionaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now if this were part of a journal article, I would not preen like this.  But this ain't no journal article.  This here's a blog post, bashed out quickly.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Blogging's a 'sport' like speed chess.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Your move, Opponent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
<\/a>Barry Goldwater on Conservatism<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Soccer Moms Against Common Core<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Opponent supplies the above-captioned sentence  for analysis.  He reports that a female family member was widely defriended (unfriended?) on Facebook for agreeing that it is true.  Of course the sentence is true as anyone with common sense and experience of life knows. It is an example of a generic statement or generic generalization.  It … Continue reading “‘Women are Better at Looking After Children’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,408,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-language-philosophy-of","category-logica-docens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}