On "Personal Experience"

[one...two...tree 2,762]

This is about argument strategies.

While appeals to "personal experience" are legitimate in order to test claims and in order to provide some kind of support for claims, by itself it is a flimsy and potentially lazy strategy.

The problem is that many of us overestimate ourselves, our observations, and our critical capacities. The two keys here are: a) we do not make "personal observations" in controlled and reproducible environments; and b] memory is utterly fallible. Personal biases, fatigue, our fears and hopes, and our cultural background all affect our perceptions and our memories of those perceptions.

Christians have personal experiences of God and angels. Sports fans observe referees making calls favoring the opposing team. Control groups often "experience" the effects of the drugs even when they are receiving a placebo. Are we seriously to take these people at their word, when they say, "Based on my observations, Pepsi is better than Coke."? In many such cases as these, it's called "pseudo-science."

We have inherited a society, and a world, that tries to abide by the distinction between what we want to be the case and what really is the case. We can see this in sports: while we might not want our team to be called for fouls, if the ref says it, then it is so (for the most part). However, in our ordinary life outside of institutionalized sports, it is up to us collectively to monitor and measure our own perceptions and the perceptions of others in accord with this distinction.

http://nedricology.blogspot.com/2006/12/on...experience.html

[Heracles 417]

The problem is that many of us overestimate ourselves, our observations, and our critical capacities. The two keys here are: a) we do not make "personal observations" in controlled and reproducible environments; and b] memory is utterly fallible. Personal biases, fatigue, our fears and hopes, and our cultural background all affect our perceptions and our memories of those perceptions.

This guy needs to win captain obvious of the year award..

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The problem is that many of us overestimate ourselves, our observations, and our critical capacities. The two keys here are: a) we do not make "personal observations" in controlled and reproducible environments; and b] memory is utterly fallible. Personal biases, fatigue, our fears and hopes, and our cultural background all affect our perceptions and our memories of those perceptions.

This guy needs to win captain obvious of the year award..

Then how can someone like you put so much faith in your personal perception of human behavior as being spot on? Do you ever doubt that perhaps your perceptions aren't accurate?

[KimandRuss 0]

I always question my own perceptions and do keep that in mind when i'm opening my mouth to state an opinion.

When it's someone else's opinion I tend to absorb it with the knowlege that it could very well be wrong. I always go back on what my dad used to say "believe only half of what people tell you"... and then what my mother said... "that includes him (my father)"

btw..when it comes to the Patriots... the ref's are ALWAYS wrong!

[Y's_habibitk 2]

All I have is my experience.

[SnowyTater 0]

Oh god STOP it sounds like my bachelor's essay!

Make it go away make it go away.

I'm actually kind of pretty intelligent and know how to 'talk good' and argue the hell out of something and in the structured debatey Aristotelian or whatever other style-ey thingies ways.

But frankly when I'm here it's usually because I'm glazed over from exerting brain cells in other areas of my life. And then the whole 'personal responsibility to be accurate and true and considerate' goes mostly out the window. It's much more fun if everyone nags each other to death anyway, I don't wanna watch my every word.

All we are saaaaaaaaaaayinnnnng is give peaaaace a chaaaaaaaaance.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The problem is that many of us overestimate ourselves, our observations, and our critical capacities. The two keys here are: a) we do not make "personal observations" in controlled and reproducible environments; and b] memory is utterly fallible. Personal biases, fatigue, our fears and hopes, and our cultural background all affect our perceptions and our memories of those perceptions.

This guy needs to win captain obvious of the year award..

Then how can someone like you put so much faith in your personal perception of human behavior as being spot on? Do you ever doubt that perhaps your perceptions aren't accurate?