Continued warmth is read, correctly, as acceptance

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that what a relationship communicates is settled by what it does rather than by what is said inside it. Attending the gatherings, accepting the hospitality, ringing on birthdays and treating the person as a member of the family in good standing are the ways people show that someone remains acceptable to them. A relative who does all of this while privately objecting has, in the register that actually carries meaning, signalled that the conviction is survivable, and proponents hold that the person concerned will read it exactly that way, because that is what the conduct means. The argument presses on the common defence that one objects when the subject comes up. Proponents note that the subject comes up on terms the person holding the view controls, that objection at a family table is socially expensive and therefore rare, and that an objection registered once and followed by unchanged warmth is absorbed as a known quirk of the relative rather than as a cost. On this account the choice is not between confrontation and contact, but between contact that carries no cost and withdrawal that does. Proponents place the obligation where they think it belongs. Someone who holds others in contempt for what they are is asking everyone around them to treat that as a matter of opinion, and a relative who continues as before has granted the request. The position concludes that the tie of family creates no exception here, and that it arguably runs the other way, since the people best placed to impose any cost at all are those whose approval the person actually wants.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree argue that the position reads conduct too simply. Attending a family gathering communicates many things, among them obligations to other relatives who have done nothing wrong, and treating attendance as endorsement would make a person answerable for every view held by everyone in the room. They also doubt the practical claim: withdrawal imposes a cost only where the person values the relationship, and where they do not, it removes the last check on them while costing the relative a great deal. A further reply is that the position demands a sacrifice chiefly from those with the least power in a family, who are rarely placed to make it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics hold that attendance also discharges obligations to other relatives, so conduct does not carry the single meaning the premise assigns it. [Rejecting P2] Repeated objection does register, and people moderate what they say in front of relatives known to challenge them. [Rejecting P3] Treating presence as granting the request would make a person answerable for every view held by everyone in the room. [Rejecting C] Withdrawal imposes a cost only where the relationship is valued, so the remedy fails in exactly the cases the argument is most concerned with.