Amazon Online Reader : Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage p. 82 The sexual double standard was so completely accepted by Romans that the educator Quintilian used the notion of a sexual single standard as the perfect illustration of an illogical proposition: "If a relationship between a mistress and a male slave is disgraceful, then one between it master and a female slave is disgraceful." This statement sounds reasonable to contemporary ears, along the line of what's sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. But to Quintilian the parallel was ridiculous, and he had no doubt his audience would agree.

This is a great example of how powerful conceptual frames can be in forming the workings of even seemingly fairly straightforward logic. This is a perfectly acceptable syllogism only if we accept that men and women belong in the same category. It would have been interesting to question Quintilian on this subject but he probably would have said yes in general only not in this particular case. The frame in question determines the selection of appropriate categories and their blending.

Perhaps most important, however, is the possibility (illustrated by this example) that all (or at least most) paradoxes of social cognition are matter of frame conflict rather than limits or transgression or enlightened rationality.