Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
Arguing from unique experience (e.g. "you don't know what it's like as a woman/hindu/farmer") benefits from it being hard to refute. It's a claim that the view naturally results from circumstance, and the only reason you don't agree is lack of exposure to that circumstance.
7
100
Aella
@Aella_Girl
It's an appeal to the authority of the speaker, implying your mind would be changed by the truth if it were only exposed to it. While this is sometimes true, it's also a dirty trick. A good refutation is "not all woman/Hindu/farmers think that", which shows that your conclusion-
1
38
Aella
@Aella_Girl
doesn't necessarily follow from the circumstance. The response to that, however, is usually narrowing the field of experience ("all farmers who've seen drought, then"), or dismissing from category ("not a real farmer"). But in general, viewing your own perspective on life as
3
26
Aella
@Aella_Girl
inevitable and specially derived from your unique experience can end up trapping you in your current frame, as it removes responsibility from you for believing it and instead feels like some sort of truth eminating from your environment.
1
Retweet
52
Likes
Jeff Ogobe
@JeffOgobe
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Alternatively you could say: “ I can’t argue with your personal experience but I can argue with how you are interpeting it. Because your interpretation involves the experiences of others who you can’t speak for any more than they can speak for you.”