[lit-ideas] Re: Expectant Father (Was: Tautology)
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 19:36:41 EDT
Many years ago when I was teaching pre-school, there was a young co-worker
who was very heavy around the middle. It kept getting worse. She was
unmarried. She kept telling us she thought she had a thyroid problem and kept
going
to the Dr's to figure out what was wrong. One day she didn't show up to
work and the owner told me she had called to say she had had a baby and didn't
even know she was pregnant. She said, believably, that it was quite a shock.
You had to know her to believe her. I have never ever ever been able to
understand that one. But it's an honest to God true story.
Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Expectant Father
(Was: Tautology) Date: 9/22/04 12:00:25 PM Central Daylight Time From:
_Jlsperanza@xxxxxxxx (mailto:Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
In a message dated 9/22/2004 12:42:06 PM Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
McEvoy would also say that since some women (sadly) give birth not even
knowing what is happening until it is all over there is also a
counter-example to the "expectant mother", unless we engage again in similar
"irresponsible analyticism" ie. stipulating such a person is somehow not a
mother for the purposes of the expression "expectant mother".
Here's an expression for discussion as analytic/tautologous - "Popper was
bored by most analytic philosophy as trivial and question-begging because of
the kinds of reason given here by way of reply to JLS".
----
Well, thank you.
I now see what P. Stone thought when he thought that 'expectant mother' was
a tautology.
Apparently, 'expecting [sic, null set]' is "slang" for "... is pregnant".
Since a father can not be pregnant, I can't see how McEvoy goes on to
justify the expression "expectant _father_". Surely synthetic a posteriori,
and a
posteriori false.
Now, as applied to 'mother', the idea is:
"Alice is expecting" iff "Alice is pregnant".
The path from "... is expecting" to " ... is an expectant mother" is
syntactic.
If we are broad-minded enough to apply 'expectant' for a _past_ adverbial
("She _was_ an expectant mother"), then, via the principle:
Once an expectant mother,
always an expectant mother
-- then, _indeed_, 'expectant mother' _is_ tautologous (and indeed
redundant); for, surely, every mother has (to be, at some time) 'pregnant'
and that's
what the 'expecting' idiom merely means.
Cheers,
JL
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