Your Lived Experience Is Not Above Criticism
Though I’m a Democratic Socialist, I can’t get behind everything the Left does, and one of the practices I find particularly disagreeable is the appeal to “lived experience.”
Lived experience consists of “the first-hand accounts and impressions of living as a member of a minority or oppressed group.” While this isn’t itself problematic, it becomes so when people think their experiences are above criticism. Just listen to these fragments from B. Alexandra Painia’s “My Lived Experience Is Not Up For Debate”:
You were not put on this earth to spend most of your time teaching/proving to other people that your experience is valid or real or worth being heard. In these times where Black women are still fighting simply to be remembered and advocated for with the same fierceness that is extended to many other marginalized persons’ struggles, its important to remember your voice matters. Your experience is enough and your feelings are real and if anyone tells you different take a cue from Queen Monae herself…
Painia says this after complaining about “several people who will dismiss your voice and your complaints because you haven’t provided enough proof that what you are saying is real.”
Some people have even argued that demanding evidence is harmful. In her article “Dismissing Lived Experiences: When We Cherry Pick The Truth”, lawyer and women’s rights advocate Paula Ethans writes:
Time and time again we don’t believe people from vulnerable backgrounds. Instead, we rush to demand empirical data to prove the existence of the discrimination (that they have personally faced). This demand of extrinsic evidence belittles marginalized groups who have lived experiences of unease/harassment. This disregarding lived experiences, this demand of “more reliable evidence,” allows bigotry to persist. Declaring that someone’s lived experiences are unreliable is demeaning and serves to maintain the status quo.
But even if declaring someone’s lived experiences as unreliable were demeaning, that wouldn’t explain why we should believe them. Claims about the world -- whether it be about discrimination or harassment -- require evidence. This is an uncontroversial statement, as it is the foundation of all science and philosophy. If you’re posting arguments on this website, then you clearly recognize the necessity of evidence to support a claim.
Yet those who appeal to lived experience completely ignore this well established and almost universally accepted fact. As the philosopher Terri Murray puts it in her article "Anti-Intellectualism and Appeals to 'Lived Experience'":
Instead of appealing to reasons (better ones), they [those who appeal to lived experience] avoid reasoning altogether and instead appeal to what is entirely subjective.
Murray continues:
If you claim to be bored right now, or to have a headache, there isn’t really anything I can do or say to persuade you that you’re wrong. You know your own experiences better than anyone else. Therefore ‘lived experience’ is a sure winner, since the person wielding it is always right. He or she is the authority when it comes to what is completely subjective.
Those who appeal to lived experience give themselves a free pass from the burden of proof, and it is unclear as to why they think they deserve this pass.
With that said, I think there’s ample evidence that marginalized people experience prejudices that I — as a cisgender, heterosexual, white male — don’t. I can also at least entertain the idea that these experiences give them knowledge about these prejudices that I don’t have.
But having knowledge of something doesn’t absolve people from supporting their claims. For example, I’ve never taken a philosophy course. There are no doubt people on this site who are philosophy majors, and some may even hold post-graduate degrees in philosophy. Their knowledge of philosophy clearly outweighs mine. But that does that mean I can’t question the claims they make about philosophy? Does that mean they don’t have to support their claims when I request they do so?
Certainly not. Why should it be any different with marginalized people’s lived experience?
Lived experience consists of “the first-hand accounts and impressions of living as a member of a minority or oppressed group.” While this isn’t itself problematic, it becomes so when people think their experiences are above criticism. Just listen to these fragments from B. Alexandra Painia’s “My Lived Experience Is Not Up For Debate”:
You were not put on this earth to spend most of your time teaching/proving to other people that your experience is valid or real or worth being heard. In these times where Black women are still fighting simply to be remembered and advocated for with the same fierceness that is extended to many other marginalized persons’ struggles, its important to remember your voice matters. Your experience is enough and your feelings are real and if anyone tells you different take a cue from Queen Monae herself…
Painia says this after complaining about “several people who will dismiss your voice and your complaints because you haven’t provided enough proof that what you are saying is real.”
Some people have even argued that demanding evidence is harmful. In her article “Dismissing Lived Experiences: When We Cherry Pick The Truth”, lawyer and women’s rights advocate Paula Ethans writes:
Time and time again we don’t believe people from vulnerable backgrounds. Instead, we rush to demand empirical data to prove the existence of the discrimination (that they have personally faced). This demand of extrinsic evidence belittles marginalized groups who have lived experiences of unease/harassment. This disregarding lived experiences, this demand of “more reliable evidence,” allows bigotry to persist. Declaring that someone’s lived experiences are unreliable is demeaning and serves to maintain the status quo.
But even if declaring someone’s lived experiences as unreliable were demeaning, that wouldn’t explain why we should believe them. Claims about the world -- whether it be about discrimination or harassment -- require evidence. This is an uncontroversial statement, as it is the foundation of all science and philosophy. If you’re posting arguments on this website, then you clearly recognize the necessity of evidence to support a claim.
Yet those who appeal to lived experience completely ignore this well established and almost universally accepted fact. As the philosopher Terri Murray puts it in her article "Anti-Intellectualism and Appeals to 'Lived Experience'":
Instead of appealing to reasons (better ones), they [those who appeal to lived experience] avoid reasoning altogether and instead appeal to what is entirely subjective.
Murray continues:
If you claim to be bored right now, or to have a headache, there isn’t really anything I can do or say to persuade you that you’re wrong. You know your own experiences better than anyone else. Therefore ‘lived experience’ is a sure winner, since the person wielding it is always right. He or she is the authority when it comes to what is completely subjective.
Those who appeal to lived experience give themselves a free pass from the burden of proof, and it is unclear as to why they think they deserve this pass.
With that said, I think there’s ample evidence that marginalized people experience prejudices that I — as a cisgender, heterosexual, white male — don’t. I can also at least entertain the idea that these experiences give them knowledge about these prejudices that I don’t have.
But having knowledge of something doesn’t absolve people from supporting their claims. For example, I’ve never taken a philosophy course. There are no doubt people on this site who are philosophy majors, and some may even hold post-graduate degrees in philosophy. Their knowledge of philosophy clearly outweighs mine. But that does that mean I can’t question the claims they make about philosophy? Does that mean they don’t have to support their claims when I request they do so?
Certainly not. Why should it be any different with marginalized people’s lived experience?
Comments (48)
The real problem with this way of thinking is that regardless of how generously we should accept the validity of lived experience, the idea forces us to work backwards. You have a bad experience, that's been granted, now what's the cause? They start playing guessing games because there's really no way for us to proceed. The left assumes the cause is systemic or societal and start prescribing solutions. There's a level of courtesy and generosity in giving people the benefit of the doubt but the left uses this generosity to levy heavy criticism towards groups, systems and the like which isn't really appropriate. They use the moral aspect of compassion and concern to protect their criticism which really hasn't been formulated using a credible method to begin with.
In this way various world views can be formed into larger groups and the prevalence of associated world views, with also various people in those groups trying to find more empirical evidence, and even trying to generate such evidence with their own research.
Without this system of gathering strong groups, but more reliant on weaker structured groupings, you might get individuals falling back on 'life experience', and trying to defend that simple mechanism as enough to promote better world views.....this is kind of lazy advocacy.....sure your personal experience might be very important, important to you, but you should use that to reach out and form groups with a higher capacity to develop a better world view......you can't always provide empirical evidence for specific things, but if you are part of a general group with wide ranges in knowledge, and mental skills, there will be more opportunity to connect models of how the world work, with empirical evidence..
Someone might have had an experience where they witnessed what they thought was a ghost.....as an anecdote there really isn't much empirical evidence that they can provide to convince people that what they saw was actually a ghost, and even then what a ghost actually is isn't very clearly defined....but if this person reaches out into society to try to find other people who have maybe had a similar experience or are at least interested in the subject, then the whole philosophy and world view about such things as ghosts can become more developed, with possible connections to research, scientific and other, to connect the individuals experience with a more widespread experience of life.
As an example someone could insist that they are on fire and feel their skin melting away in excruciating agony. Whether we believed them or not the issue is that they feel this pain and it is simply a question of investigating why it is they feel this pain and what there is that can realistically be done about it (if anything).
Regardless some people are just going to be more sensitive to negativity than others under certain conditions and especially if under some degree of stress (be it due to general health or more psychological feelings of isolation or general confusion).
I think that in this sense “What I feel is real” is true in that they feel the pain. What is most certainly up for debate is the reason for feeling this pain.
If we think about how we treat children we can quickly see how much we err in this department as no one person reacts in the same manner under the same situations due to multiplicity of factors. We generally try to teach children to be strong in the face fo adversity, yet to also ask for help, to trust people, and to deal with situations themselves when things go pear-shaped. The problem being we sometimes make bad judgements and innocent people suffer. This is unfortunate yet inevitable if we’re to establish ourselves in the world as semi-independent persons of value - this freedom brings with it a necesssry price of “being wrong” and “suffering” for being wrong, even when we don’t don’t where the line between “right” and “wrong” is and when the bloody thing moves about so much relative to both ourselves and others around us.
All in all it comes down to a matter of taking repsonsibility of what you can control and what you cannot control. An individual can change the world, it’s just generally much easier to change your perspective first and understand others before insisting that your perspective matters more than anyone else’s (which is a trap we all fall into from time to time without even realising it - the difficulty is being willing to face your mistakes head on rather than dimissing them as you would some strangers obscure and seemingly confused opinion).
In a court of law, first hand accounts are evidence. Now I doubt that many would say that such evidence is proof, because folks can lie or be mistaken. But the complaint is precisely that the evidence is dismissed without evidence to the contrary, and the evidence of testimony is discounted on one side and counted on the other.
Quoting czahar
You conflate the role of complainant and judiciary. Folks provide their testimony, and you refuse to consider their evidence until the case has been proved. Thus their case is always dismissed and never heard.
True, but I'm not a fan of it being sufficient evidence to convict anyone of anything, even in conjunction with other testimony.
Oh, absolutely. I would never suggest that we simply dismiss someone's lived experience outright. I'm just saying that it's not above criticism. That it can and -- under certain circumstances, should -- be questioned.
Also, keep in mind that when I made the OP, I was referring to non-legal settings, even though I quoted a lawyer in one part. Legal evidence cannot always be analogized to non-legal evidence because courts of law have different rules for what constitutes evidence. For instance, successfully appealing to precedent would be a sufficient way to win a case in a common law court, but wouldn't be sufficient outside of a legal setting.
I'd like to see some evidence of this; I'm not going to convict you on your confession alone.
And provide evidence of this too.
Good to know. Now how do we change legal conventions?
It depends on the information that person is reporting. If someone simply reports on their inner experiences -- e.g., their thoughts and feelings -- it would be odd to question it. For example, if my friend, Bill, said he was hungry and I responded with, "Support or retract that statement," that would be an odd and, at least in most people's view, inappropriate statement. Although, in certain circumstances, it would be appropriate to question people's inner experiences -- e.g., when a kid says he's sick on a school day and you have the feeling he's just trying to skip school.
Statements that go beyond inner experiences -- e.g., statements about discrimination a person has faced or abuse they have received -- do need to be questioned, though. Don't get me wrong, these should not be dismissed outright, but they do need more evidence, especially considering there is overwhelming evidence in psychology that people's memories aren't always accurate.
Well, only if/because you might do something to someone else in response. That's questioning an accusation that could land someone in prison, because it could land someone in prison.
Okay. How about an analogy. If I told you that a relative of yours robbed me last night, would you question my claim? If yes, then you can accept that lived experiences can and, at least under certain circumstances, should be questioned.
Quoting czahar
This is the claim I am questioning; and it does not support your claim, that you might make another claim that I might question.
So, you're saying that by continuing to question the lived experiences of marginalized people, I'm perpetuating the low status of their testimony and thereby confirming their claims about their testimony having a low status?
Yes, they are. If by "evidence," you mean "support for a claim" then analogies are certainly evidence. They're frequently used in inductive reasoning.
Absolutely. Questioning the lived experience of marginalized groups doesn't perpetuate a low status; it gives them the status that all beings should be under. People's memories of an experience can be wrong. There is overwhelming evidence in the psychological literature to support that claim. People's memories of experiences therefore don't deserve to be treated as if they are above criticism.
Some may clap back that we are more trusting towards privileged people's reports of their experiences than we are towards marginalized people's. This may be true, but if it is, the answer is not to put marginalized people's testimony on a status above belief; it's to not be so trusting of privileged people's.
Which is what I am doing, and you are not. You could have provided examples of questionable whites and males, but you did not. And that is is evidence that is not a matter of opinion but can be checked by anyone who cares to took at your op. Evidence that contradicts your claims of fair-mindedness. And you might want to claim now that it is just an accident, but as I said already, history informs us that it is no accident at all but an ongoing rhetoric that sustains privilege and status.
I am doing what you claim is the right thing and questioning your claims in the light of the evidence, and finding them unsupported, and indeed contradicted by the evidence. It's not like there's a great shortage of white men full of shit to question.
As "lived experience" was defined in the OP as "the first-hand accounts and impressions of living as a member of a minority or oppressed group" there was good reason why I didn't mention white people. That's not my definition either. Take that up with the author of Geek Feminism.
Furthermore, as I did elaborate that this standard of evidence should be applied to privileged people, that is evidence that I believe it to be true. If not mentioning X is evidence that I don't believe X (as you seem to claim the previous post), then mentioning X is evidence that I do. I mentioned that I believe privileged people should be held to the same standards of evidence as marginalized people; therefore, by the logic you seem to convey, I believe it.
Quoting unenlightened
Which is exactly what you should do, as my claims are not above evidence.
Quoting unenlightened
How? I have addressed your questions when asked to do so. When asked to provide evidence that people's lived experiences can and should be questioned, I gave you an analogy to illustrate why. You said "analogies weren't evidence" and I explained why they were. You dropped it there.
It seems like you're the one who's not supporting your claims.
Quoting unenlightened
Agreed. But I'd wager there's also no shortage of people fighting these white men who are equally "full of shit."
Yeah, I'm not in the business of convincing you, so I'm happy to leave everything here, and let the jury of readers reach their own judgement. ' The defence rests.'
I think this sums it up beautifully, Judoka. While it may be appropriate to believe people's lived experiences when they're making claims about, say, their inner experiences (their thoughts and feelings), such a benefit is inappropriate when those lived experiences are used to make claims about others. When accusing others or society of racism, sexism, etc., demanding more evidence than lived experiences is entirely appropriate.
The first thing we've agreed on this entire argument!
Yes. This and your original post on this thread are exactly right. It's amazing to me that you are the only one who understands how it works. You pointed out the biggest fallacy of the other posts and of racial discussions in general, one that's hard to counter - Why did the original poster and the followers pick the statements of the most vulnerable people to criticize. It is a sign of their, of society's, lack of social and psychological awareness and moral courage.
Self-serving whining by the privileged against the whining of the vulnerable would be funny if it weren't so destructive. I appreciate your responses.
As I said in my response to @unenlightened's posts, and as he said, this whole discussion is wonderful, compelling evidence for exactly what the so called social justice warriors, whom you deride, are saying. Calling it ironic is inadequate. It's stomach-churning. And stating you are a Social Democrat as some sort of credential is smarmy. Thanks for the opportunity to use that word.
Haha! That’s funny. :up:
OP clearly framed the context of how the left prioritises the lived experience of particular groups as a political agenda, he explained his interest in this problem as a problem with the left and not just generally. If there was another political group who were talking about the "white" experience and using it in arguments that OP felt empirical facts should be relevant, he might've been making a thread about that instead. Both you and @unenlightened have presented this red herring which has absolutely nothing to do with the OP.
Your whole post is absolutely ridiculous, such self-righteous drivel. Do you think you and unenlightened, by insinuating OP is a racist and challenging him on that posited racism have shown moral courage? News flash, racism is not fashionable, what OP is saying is the harder thing to say because people like you judge him unreasonably.
I honestly don't know why OP is being so reasonable to unenlightened after the show he's put on here. OP tried to bring up examples that have nothing to do with race, unenlightened practically made OP plead to him that he's not a racist and there's absolutely no justification for it. He clearly framed that he was criticising the aspect of the left that did it, there was no reason to bring up an example of it outside of what the left was saying. I wouldn't have had the patience to even continue replying.
I'd just like to point out that the phrase "lived experience" is redundant at best. What other kind of experience would there be? Unlived? Undead? Livingdead?
If the entire post is built on an unstable foundation, which it is, it is completely appropriate to point that out. The fact that @czahar, his cohort, and much of the rest of society fail to see the corruptness of the framing of the question says much of what needs to be said about race.
Quoting Judaka
I intentionally did not use the word "racist" or "racism," and I wouldn't. I didn't even think it. Your arguments are self-serving and fundamentally false. The fact that they are wide-spread damages our society and makes it hard to treat all people fairly. All I did was to point that out in a blunt but reasonably civil manner.
Quoting Judaka
I just checked. @unenlightened never used the words "race," "racist," or "racism" in his posts. There were about 15 uses of those words up to this point in the thread, and all but one were by you and me.
There you go again questioning lived experience with facts. And there they go again complaining about it. :grimace:
[quote= His Bobness]… In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.[/quote]
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
I don't think you know what "smarmy", "fallacy", or "deride" even mean. Picking "statements of the most vulnerable people to criticize" is not fallacious. A fallacy is a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. Appealing to ridicule, circular reasoning, and ad hominem attacks are examples of fallacies. Your example isn't. Saying that picking the statements of vulnerable people is not only fallacious, but "the biggest fallacy" (not even sure what it means for a fallacy to "the biggest"), makes about as much sense as saying the sound of toast is not only orange, but the most orange.
Furthermore, your entire post contributes nothing to this debate. It's really nothing more than the equivalent of hitting the Like button on Facebook (for unenlightened), and blowing raspberries at me.
Thanks unenlightened. I was siding with the OP, but I had missed this point (funny, that seems to happen when I don't read the articles attached to the OP :grimace: ).
Do you think groups like these (and individuals from these groups) would benefit from a little understanding of marketing and psychology? If Alexandra Painia had titled the essay, "My experience is as valid as yours" wouldn't the reception have been different? Similarly if "Black Lives Matters" was changed to "Black Lives Matter Too" it would answer the number 1 objection (in-valid, but an objection none the less) while adding weight to their point that they are treated as "less than"?
As a white guy, I have no business telling those who do not experience America the same way I do, how to solve their problems. But as an annoying person on a philosophy site, solving problems is what I do (hehe, poor attempts anyway).
I don't think it's a good point, though, because posing evidence to the contrary is not necessary to dismiss evidence. For example, if someone claims that aliens exist and her evidence for this claim is "My dad told me so, and he's a dentist," I don't need evidence to the contrary to dismiss it. It's clearly just an appeal to authority.
From the web
First two seem right on. "Deride" may be stronger than I should have used.
Quoting czahar
I called it a fallacy in its normal English language usage. I didn't call it a logical fallacy, which is a term with a specific meaning in philosophy. The word as I used it expresses exactly what I meant to say.
Quoting czahar
I was agreeing with Unenlightened and I backed up my agreement with arguments. Just as your supporters on this thread have with you. That's the way it works and how it's supposed to work.
As for "blowing raspberries," they were well deserved.
If that's what you did, it makes even less sense. Picking "statements of the most vulnerable people to criticize" is not an idea. It's an action.
Quoting T Clark
Really? Please show me how the following are arguments:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
Put both of these quotes in standard form -- i.e., premise 1, premise 2, premise N, conclusion -- and we'll test the soundness of these "arguments."
Premises:
Conclusions
The issue is not that lived experience is beyond criticism, but that it must not be simply dismissed out of hand.
That doesn't look valid at all. It's just a bunch of random atomic statements linked together that do nothing to force the truth of the conclusion.
Let's use O for your first premise, W for your second, F for your third, and C for your conclusion. If that's the case, your argument is essentially:
O
W
F
C
That's argument is clearly invalid. I can show you using a truth table if you don't believe me. Then again, I will concede I'm not exactly a whizz with formal logic, so I may have made a mistake.
Quoting Banno
Thank you, Banno. I will have to look that case up. I agree that lived experience shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, but I disagree with your claim that "the issue is not that lived experience is beyond criticism." Based on the quotes I pasted from articles in my OP, it's pretty clear that at least some people think it is.
Are you "...looking for ways to dismantle their argument so you can remain chilling and cooling on the comfy couch of your privilege"?
You and I are not the audience for the Visibility Project item you link. It's for the invisible. It's a call for them to stand forth, and a reminder for us to listen.
Quoting czahar
Shrug. You missed the point.
It looks to me like you want your experience to be valued above the experience of "others".
I experience it - that's truth.
You experience it - that's evidence
They experience it - that's irrelevant.
His post is a criticism of a political movement, how in your mind is that an unstable foundation? My interpretation is that you're far more of a racially motivated person than OP, he doesn't appear to put a lot of stock into race and prefers for people to deal with the facts, I support this. Also, I said that unenlightened insinuated he is a racist, not that he directly called him one. He's willfully misrepresented OP's argument in many ways, you think it's wonderful, I don't, not going to bother having an argument about it.
While it was necessary to confront your nonsense, I don't want to get into a debate with either of you so that's my role in this over.
I didn't say anything about race until you brought it up. Also, Unenlightened didn't say anything about racism either implicitly or explicitly. This is something your are reading into it. Imagining. That says more about you than it does us. I think Unenlightened described Czahar's argument fairly.
Quoting Judaka
You have supported your position poorly, as has Czahar. Calling what I have said "nonsense" doesn't change that.
Sure, the "vulnerable people" and the "privileged" people have nothing to do with ethnicity. To say this while supporting someone who absolutely was bringing up race is no excuse, how poor of me to jump to conclusions.
I can't speak for Unenlightened, but as for me, I specifically wrote what I wrote the way I wrote it to keep it from being only about race. You are the one who has mischaracterized what we said. You are the one who made it about race.
Oh yeah? So what is OP guilty of? Who are the vulnerable people and who are the privileged people?
Quoting T Clark
Thanks
(Note: address me as “Your Lowness”.)