The Poverty of "Lived Experiences"
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/10/po...d-experiences/
I. Karamozov (04 October 2020)
Political dissidents who get into arguments with Woke Folk over the exact nature of “systems of oppression” will inevitably find themselves confronted by rhetoric of a sort that often catches them off guard. This rhetoric is, by design, meant to paint political dissidents as myopic stooges who are unwilling to “listen to the Lived Experiences of marginalized people,” thus making them unwittingly complicit in systems of oppression. In this essay, we will explore the concept of “Lived Experiences” (capitalized and scare-quoted) as understood by Woke Folk, and why this conceptualization is fundamentally deficient. Political dissidents would be well advised to consider the arguments of this essay with care, as “Lived Experiences” are foundational to Woke Ideology; indeed, dismantling Woke notions of “Lived Experiences” may be the single most effective means of preserving the integrity of liberal democratic institutions from Woke encroachment. Consequently, a firm understanding of the topic and of how to address it when engaging with Woke ideology will be the focus of this essay.
Before we can address what the concept of “Lived Experiences” entails, however, we must address its function. As was mentioned in
an earlier essay, the empirical claims that are made by Woke Folk seldom survive evidential and analytical scrutiny. This is a problem for ideas in a culture which values such things as evidence and reasoned argument (as opposed to arguments from authority and moral blackmail.) Evidence and reasoned argument are the currency with which ideas earn their right to be taken seriously in liberal democracies. The tenets of Woke ideology, which are in frequent conflict with both, must therefore somehow be made adaptable to an environment which is hostile to dogmatic proclamations of unsubstantiated certainty, and the concept of “Lived Experiences” is the mechanism intended to achieve this.
The context in which Woke Folk are likely to appeal to the “Lived Experiences” of certain demographics is in the generation of knowledge claims. Indeed, intersectionality, which is the dominant paradigm under which Woke Folk are influenced, is practically founded upon the notion of “Lived Experiences.”
At first glance, it might appear that the term “Lived Experiences” is merely a somewhat belabored way of referring to events that one has personally experienced: i.e, while I was walking down the street, someone bumped into my shoulder without stopping to apologize. Under this innocent conception of the term, “Lived Experiences” are synonymous with “events,” “experiences,” and “occurrences.” A “Lived Experience,” under this view, is merely a report of what happened.
This is not what Woke Folk are talking about when they refer to “Lived Experiences.”
A “Lived Experience” is an event that has been
interpreted by Woke Folk as manifesting oppression: i.e, while I was walking down the street, someone bumped into my shoulder without stopping to apologize
because they were racist. This is the difference between an experience and a “Lived Experience;” the former is an empirical claim that relays an event that is independently verifiable and is thus subject to scrutiny under public reason. The latter is a
phenomenological claim which colors an event with
intentionality, or its “aboutness relation;” and crucially, that relation is
not subject to independent scrutiny. The empiricist reports on an event that occurred at some point in time and space; the phenomenologist relays the
meaning of that event
as interpreted by the phenomenologist.
[...]
Matters which are of interest to those who analyze the truth of empirical claims have unambiguously right and wrong answers, and matters which are of interest to those who evaluate textual interpretations have no such answers. It is a category error to attempt to apply the equations of force and motion to the question of how to properly interpret the ending of
Anna Karenina, and it is similarly erroneous to attempt to apply to the tools of literary criticism to the question of how much rocket fuel needs to be loaded onto a spaceship. It is this category error that is central to the problems of Woke Folks’ understanding of “Lived Experiences” (as well as much of the contents of social science research which rely on interpretive methodology- a discussion for another time.)
[...]
The situation becomes much murkier when the system under consideration is not described by such theories- systems like those regarded by Woke Folk as being institutionally oppressive. In such instances, there do not as yet appear to be any comprehensive theories with predictive and explanatory power that can arbitrate between competing models of society, and in many ways, this is a central problem to the social sciences more generally (again, forthcoming essay on the topic.) Thus the social theorist who wishes to evaluate the workings of such systems must employ theories which, in their character, much more closely resemble the analytic frameworks employed by the textual critic than those employed by the engineer; consequently, the problem of the unavailability of unambiguously true judgements carries over.
The “Lived Experiences” meme is an attempt to bypass this problem by casting knowledge in terms of a pluralistic epistemology. Epistemology is that field of philosophy which is concerned with the nature of knowledge, and might be best understood in terms of its relation to the egocentric problem. The egocentric problem, simply stated, is that knowledge contingent upon our senses is subject to possible error and manipulation, which renders absolute certainty as to the state of the world a potential impossibility. The history of epistemology, from Plato’s allegory of the cave in Book VII of
The Republic to Kant’s transcendental idealism in
The Critique of Pure Reason, is a history of the tension between the egocentric problem and the practical demands of living in a world where one’s beliefs have consequences. We simply cannot, as a practical matter, treat our perceptions of the world as inconsequential simply because we lack certainty of their verisimilitude. Epistemology, from a cynical perspective, might be regarded as the application of philosophical tricks, from Descartes’
Cogito to Kant’s
synthetic a priori, to give an account of our perceptions of the world and why they matter. It’s the field of philosophy in which we acknowledge that despite our lack of direct access to a world beyond our senses, we still need to find a way to explain how it is we can come to know anything, as well as what it even means to “know.”
It is this latter question of what it means to “know” something that represents the point of greatest philosophical divergence between Woke Folk and political dissidents, as the former hold to radically subjectivist accounts of knowledge whilst the latter insist upon at least some measure of objectivity. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the epistemic chasm that separates Woke Folk from political dissidents; indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that if this epistemic dispute were to be resolved immediately, the Culture War would end tomorrow.
The problem is that Woke Folk are radically skeptical of objectivity; they do not believe that it is possible to acquire knowledge of the world in a manner that stands independently of particular social values. A detailed exposition of how their epistemology is derived lies beyond the scope of this article, as does a comprehensive critique of it; for the present purposes, it is sufficient to note that Woke Folk believe in a plurality of “knowledges” that are dependent upon membership in particular demographics, and that “objectivity” is just the name given by straight white males to their own particular type of “knowledge.”
Woke Folk assert that the balance of power in society between straight white males and everybody else has imposed a culture that values evidence and reasoned argument over the more “authentic” ways of knowing that are particular to other demographics, including storytelling, mythologies, and traditional forms of “knowledge.” The philosophical lines of thought that inform these conclusions are, for our present purposes, immaterial; what matters here is the
function served by this move. By pivoting from standards of discourse that are universally and independently accountable to our senses and reason, to standards of discourse in which the conclusions that are rendered are not open to challenge or confrontation from the outside, Woke Folk aim to introduce ideas that are effectively immune from criticism. Under a paradigm that values reason and evidence, an interlocutor is welcomed to challenge ideas in a fashion that allows anyone from any walk of life to evaluate concepts. But under a paradigm in which “Lived Experiences,” which are the subjective interpretations of events from one’s demographically-dependent base of “knowledge,” are held as immutable and not open to discussion or debate, all interlocutors are obligated to listen and believe.
Whether Woke Folk realize it or not, the call to “listen to the ‘Lived Experiences’ of the marginalized” is an attempt to subvert the standards of evidence and reasoned argument for the purpose of sneaking in claims that aren’t meant to be challenged. The reason for this should be fairly clear to those who are familiar with the few arguments of Woke Folk that are actually touchable by evidence and argumentation: under even minimal scrutiny, most of the beliefs offered by Woke Folk, from Implicit Association Tests’ supposed ability to demonstrate the subconscious mechanisms by which structural racism is promulgated, to the allegation that the gender earnings gap is a consequence of institutional sexism, quickly fall apart. Recognizing this, it became necessary for Woke Folk to artificially inflate their repertoire of arguments and evidence with a form of “evidence” that is immune to scrutiny; thus were born “Lived Experiences.”
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Originally Posted by Occam's Banana
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