@Meaningness I read your piece on specialness (and saw you intend to write an expanded version. Hopefully maybe soon?
) —
Seems important + counter-intuitive :o
Why is it 'specialness is a broken concept' instead of 'everyone is special'?
Can you make your own 'cosmic plan'?
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Replying to @reasonisfun
Hopefully maybe soon, but I haven’t done any work on that page since 2007, so possibly not very soon. (I still care about all the parts of the book and “intend” to finish them, but get <10% time for writing, so most of it may never happen.) However, I can answer questions :)
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
So a meta explanation first, addressing possible confusions… this is not “ordinary language philosophy” so it’s not analyzing how people use the word “special” (although that may be helpful). It’s pointing at a “stance” meaning a complex of thoughts, feelings, and ways of acting
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
The particular stance this “special” wants to point at is something like “chosen by Destiny,” although not always *quite* so grandiose as that phrase.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
However, it’s inherently contrastive. There are those who are special, and those who are ordinary. Everyone cannot be Chosen, because then there’s no choosing going on. As the way the stance works in practice, it seems only a small minority can be special.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
In practice, it seems that the claim “everyone is special” is rarely used sincerely. Typically it is patronizing. It is used by people in the “helping professions” who, in fact, see the people they are “helping” as defective.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
It’s probably often well-intentioned, an attempt to advocate for dignity for the marginalized, but it’s a transparent euphemism that doesn’t fool anyone, so it’s probably counter-productive.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
A related misuse is egalitarian: everyone is special “in their own way”, meaning that there is something unique everyone is best (or exceptionally good) at.
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This is probably factually false, and in any case doesn’t support its intended agenda, because no one cares if you are the best person in the world at sticking grapes up your nose with your tongue.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUN1jLH7dOQ …
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
“Everyone is special” (a “muddled middle” in my jargon) shares with the actual specialness stance a confusion of factual and moral equality. People aren’t factually equal (a concrete and obvious fact). People are morally equal (an abstract, difficult, non-obvious claim).
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun
So then to specialness itself. In virtue of what are you special? When you adopt the stance, usually there is something factual that seems to confirm it.
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