wtf is personhood
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asking the real questions
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did i post this to twitter already? anyway here have a meme i made a few months ago i think it's good
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haha it always turns out Kevin Simler has thought through my deep questions like 10 years ago and written clear accessible articles about them
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this is super useful, thanks, and extremely compatible with the take I'm already developing
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some draft paragraphs
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I am going to have to contend with this article because I like it and it's very clear and I have only a vague feeling of disagreement, made slightly sharper by this paragraph where I'm like, hmm, I don't think personhood is so purely "societal"
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a snarky dumb way to put it is that Simler's version of personhood seems "bourgeoisie," like it's all about these universal basic norms of peaceful coexistence: for me personhood seems like too sacred a name for that, if that makes any sense
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i am interested in a less universal analysis yeah. one could speak of differing norms of personhood held by different cultures, societies, friend groups, families, etc. etc. etc. conflicting norms coming from overlapping circles. rich stuff
maybe also that if you emphatically say that someone is a person, I think it doesn't mean that they are extremely polite and conscientiously social contractual; actually if someone is REALLY a person they have be flawed, weird, "personal", there's an intimacy to it
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but I recognize also that Simler is mostly using "person" as an adequate label for a certain idea, so it's not like I'm disagreeing with him, just trying to triangulate how what I'm thinking of is somehow different
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