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Special Pleading

Special pleading is applying a rule to one person, thing or process, but not applying it to another.

Special pleading is basic to our thinking and occurs universally!

For example, the rich woman tells her badly paid employees that money brings unhappiness and they are better off without it. She steps into her big car and drives back to her mansion after spending a lot of money in the shops, just because she felt like it.

Clearly, she is using one rule for herself and another for her employees.

This is special pleading.

Here is another example:

Jo sees a friend but the friend ignores Jo. Jo says that the friend must be upset with him. Jo must have done something to upset the friend.

We can ask Jo to tell the story from the point of view of Jo not speaking to his friend. That is:

Jo's friend sees Jo, but Jo ignores the friend.

We ask Jo to give us some possible reasons whey he has ignored his friend. In the first case, Jo is convinced that the friend has fallen out with him, but when Jo assumes another role in the story, he realizes there are many reasons why the friend might have ignored him.

If we see another fall over, we thinkthey are clumsy. If we fall over, we say we slipped. If another gets angry we say they are nasty. If we get angry we say we were provoked.

Handling Special Pleading

By taking the role of other people in a scene, we very often notice that we feel differently about the scene., One reason is that we use special pleading when we experience the scene from our own perspective.