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A Goddamn Separate Thread on Appeals to Authority
AManFromEarth
Let's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
Let's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
The Appeal to Authority
We all accept this argument to a certain extent, but what is the line between an expert and a logical fallacy?
Can a judge's individual experience and personal status make them better adjudicators of the law than other judges? Will a female judge automatically be a better purveyor of justice regarding women's rights than a male one?
Discuss here and not in the SCOTUS thread.
Argument from authority (Latin: argumentum ab auctoritate), also authoritative argument and appeal to authority, is a common form of argument which leads to a logical fallacy when misused.
In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is a form of argument attempting to establish a statistical syllogism. The appeal to authority relies on an argument of the form:
A is an authority on a particular topic
A says something about that topic
A is probably correct
Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of logical reasoning, and appealing to the position of an authority or authorities to dismiss evidence as, while authorities can be correct in judgments related to their area of expertise more often than laypersons,[citation needed] they can still come to the wrong judgments through error, bias, dishonesty, or falling prey to groupthink. Thus, the appeal to authority is not a generally reliable argument for establishing facts.
We all accept this argument to a certain extent, but what is the line between an expert and a logical fallacy?
Can a judge's individual experience and personal status make them better adjudicators of the law than other judges? Will a female judge automatically be a better purveyor of justice regarding women's rights than a male one?
Discuss here and not in the SCOTUS thread.
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Posts
The sentiment of this quote:
There is a word for the expression "What it's like to be a X". The word is "qualia". That experiential quality of existence. Qualia can be as complex as "the experience of being a woman" or "the taste of a strawberry".
In his paper What is it like to be a bat?, Thomas Nagel addressed the question of subjective experience as well as the problem of reductive materialists attempting to account for subjective qualitative experience.
An example more closely related to the SCOTUS thread would be the qualia of "the pain of a headache". A doctor can study headaches, nervous systems, the chemical composition of the brain, and so come to an understanding of the material conditions necessary for a headache. But all of this knowledge does not afford the doctor knowledge of the quality of a headache, the what-it-is-like to feel a headache.
This creates a problem that is well-summarized on the wikipedia page, so Imma borrow it.
This is when the example of bats is used. Imagine what it is like to be a bat. One can imagine what it would be like to fly, eat bugs, navigate by sonar, but each imagined experience is conditioned by one's own subjective experience. A human can never truly know what it is like to be a bat, because every attempt at imagining starts in the human condition, rather than the bat condition.
If we claim that subjective experience of X affords a special kind of knowledge of X, then, ultimately, it is impossible for anyone to know what-it-is-like to be X unless they have, themselves, been X.
This is the point at which we have to discern the relation between particulars and general categories. Suppose that Sue is a woman. One might be inclined to say that Sue's experiences give her special knowledge of what-it-is-like to be a woman. However, if we take the notion of subjective experience seriously, we have to ask about the relation between
If we are being terribly reductionist, then Sue's experience of being Sue does not tell her anything about what-it-is-like to be woman, because "woman" is a general category, and Sue's experience is particular. The only qualia to which Sue has access is the qualia of being Sue, not the qualia of being woman. This rabbit hole ends with individuals only knowing what it is like to be their self, without any knowledge of general categories.
If we want to say that an individual, Sue, can know what it is like to be "woman", then we have to provide an account of similarity. How is it known that Sue participates in the general category of "woman", and to what degree is Sue able to access knowledge of that general category? The next question, of course, is what separates the categories of "woman" and "man", such that Sue can move from knowledge of her own experience to knowledge of the general experience of woman, but Tom cannot move from knowledge of his own experience to the general experience of woman.
Presumably, we are comfortable saying that Sue and Tom, as humans, cannot know what it is like to be a bat. But how does being a bat differ from being male, female, blonde, tall, short, etc.?
We are very comfortable positing disconnects between general categories. But when we have to explain exactly how being a bat differs from being human differs from being male differs from being female differs from being Caucasian differs from being Black differs from being Irish, everything becomes quite messy.
The usual strategy is to employ the reasoning we saw in the SCOTUS thread. A woman has special knowledge of being a woman that a man can never access, but if a man listens to a woman then he can come close to knowing but never fully bla bla bla.
But none of that accounts for the epistemological questions raised by the introduction of qualia. It is a very hand-wavey attempt to both have and deny quality, to posit special knowledge and discount its being special.
Either
Pick one.
Because y'all were jumping back and forth in the SCOTUS thread without clearly articulating what subjective qualitative aspects of the female experience Scalia cannot access.
Appeals to authority have always been kind of interesting to me in that you almost always have to end-up going there to make a case. Even when you're making an argument supported by, say, a rigorous mathematical model, the mathematical principles underpinning that model still rely on the authoritative voice of the person(s) who discovered them (you could try to get around this by, say, noting that the model's results can be reproduced by anyone - but that simply makes the authority amorphous rather than removing them entirely from the argument).
Well, it's a sentiment that tends to show up when talking about SCOTUS. We need more X on the court to support the interests of X-group.
The sentiment kinda makes sense, but the argument is problematic.
It is pretty unrelated to the desperate struggles of philosopher's to remain relevant as their last refuges develop into actual science.
It's not unrelated when you claim that empathy is based upon knowledge.
Hmm.
Subjective experience is somewhat special, and so a human/man can never know what it is like to be a bat/woman, but can through education and imagination understand enough for many practical purposes.
There's another fallacy I'm fond of pointing out. It's called a false dichotomy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh, are we belittling the academic disciplines of others in here?
I want to get on this. Telling people that what they have devoted their professional lives to working in is irrelevant is super great!
Also, you clearly don't really know what goes on in professional philosophy. I'm not in any danger of losing my job to scientist, because science doesn't actually do everything. There is interesting intellectual work outside of the sciences. But I digress.
In any event, bringing up Nagel was seriously mistaken. That's not the point, and not what is being proposed in the quote that you used J. It's not about the particular experiential quality of some sensory stimulation that is being quibbled over. It's whether someone could understand the trials, tribulations, and difficulties of living in a situation other than their own.
Also, I don't think that there's any question that people can, to some extent. Minimally to enough extent that they can legislate and represent on behalf of those people.
Otherwise, our entire model of government is just fucked. Because at one point I was represented by a Japanese woman, who took over for her Japanese husband. I feel like she represented my concerns and political stances fairly well, despite not knowing exactly what it is like to be me.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
In the SCOTUS thread, folks were throwing around the phrase "special knowledge" accessed by direct experience. That seems to go in the Nagel / qualia direction.
Granted, "knowledge" is not the correct term to use. Women have different concerns than men, not different knowledge. The issue is more about care and empathy than epistemology. Scalia's presumed lack of empathy has nothing to do with his lacking some "special knowledge" of the trials and tribulations of single mothers. He knows, he just doesn't care.
But they said "special knowledge", so Nagel.
This is a true statement. But although it is true, it doesn't sufficiently explain, on its own, why we want people with special knowledge involved.
Also, in this post I'm going to use "special knowledge" to refer to everything resulting from experiencing something: the related knowledge, emotions, mental associations, etc.
Because for the purposes of, for example, judging a case, men do not need that special knowledge of what it is like to be a woman. It is sufficient for them to understand and be aware of the relevant parts of that knowledge.
Consider things like determining what a substantial burden is: for a man, harassment in the workplace might not seem like a big deal, or may not even seem like harassment, but for a woman (who is more likely to have already experienced more of it) it might be a much bigger deal.
One needs to have experienced a lifetime of harassment to fully know what a lifetime of harassment is like.
One does not need to have experienced what a lifetime of harassment is like to know that those who have experienced it can be harmed by things that seem harmless to those who have not.
However, one does need to come to that understanding by way of someone else's experience, meaning they both need to be aware that those experiences exist and listen to those who have had that experience.
So the special knowledge is not what is necessary for practical applications related to it, awareness and understanding are. The special knowledge just makes it more likely that its possessor will have that awareness and understanding.
And the people without special knowledge have repeatedly shown themselves to behave as though they don't have the awareness and understanding that comes with it, and often reject efforts to give them that understanding on the (sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit) grounds that they don't have the special knowledge.
And because we are usually concerned with what is actually probable and not what is logically possible, it makes sense to want people with special knowledge involved.
No
No
No
It's not what Nagel is on about at all. What Chanus is talking about there is having had particular kinds of experiences, not the quality of particular sensory experiences.
Think of it like this, I'm not familiar with the experience of being a black man. I haven't experienced the kind of prejudice that is entailed in being a black man in America.
None of this is fucking qualia. Qualia is the quality of a particular kinds of experience. So I don't know what your experience of the color red is like. You can see how I'm referencing two different kinds of things right?
What Chanus, what people in the SCOTUS thread are talking about is the first kind of experience, not the second kind. Don't be fooled because the same word is being used.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
He's not fooled, he's picking at word-choice because, to _J_, every word means what he says it means and the rest of us are a bunch of uneducated nimrods who couldn't find their way out of a verbal-paper-bag, if you will. Which isn't to say that D&D largely uses words outside of their proper, academic context, just that the forum leans a little more colloquial than academic.
At least, that's how I'd put it. I'll await someone explaining how I've misused every term possible in this post.
Qualia is not limited to sensory experiences. It can also apply to felt emotions, passions, moods, etc. The contents of the collective "experience of being a woman" will be the collection of sensory experience, emotional experience, mood experience, etc. When a woman encounters a particular instance of prejudice, that prejudice will be experienced in terms of the senses, emotions, moods, etc. The "experience of being a woman" is a bundle of particular bits of qualia.
In the thread, the idea, as I understood it, was that Scalia would not have the "special knowledge" that comes from the experience, the what-it-is-like, to be a single mother who loses her contraception coverage. That felt experience would be the combination of
If we look at the "experience of being a woman", every component of that experience will be a particular bit of qualia. If there is a "special knowledge" that only women have, that knowledge would come from a particular bit, or a collection of particular bits, of qualia.
Given all of that, I do not discern a significant difference between
Unless you can tell me what part of the experience of being a woman is not a sensory experience, emotional experience, mood experience, etc. As far as I can tell, it's all just bundles of qualia and the "knowledge" or "mental content" that results from said qualia.
The "special knowledge" is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for having that ability, but it helps.
A woman has "special knowledge" of X, from experiencing X.
Scalia "understands" X, by talking to women who experience X.
What is the difference between the woman's "special knowledge" and Scalia's "understanding"?
If they are identical, then the knowledge is not special.
If they are not identical, then it is not truly understanding.
If Scalia's understanding is a "good enough approximation for practical purposes", then I'm not sure what is so special about the "special knowledge". If it's good enough, then whatever makes the special knowledge special would be practically insignificant, and so diminish its specialness.
Only if you live in a world of absolutely zero variable externalities.
Which try as you might to make it that is simply not the case.
Theoretically, for the purposes of solving a problem, one does not need to experience the problem in order to create a solution. One only needs to understand the problem sufficiently.
However, in the real world, very often people who do not experience a problem do not even know or admit that the problem exists, regardless of what people tell them.
Generally, people who have experienced that problem at least agree that it exists.
Hence why people who have experienced said problem are often preferred.
(In your Scalia example, we have the added issue of Scalia simply not caring. That is a somewhat separate issue (I would personally like to believe that his lack of caring stems from an incomplete understanding) but people who experience problems are also more likely to care about them.)
We could easily establish a scale for "more knowledge of an assumed general category"
which seems to solve the problem nicely
Our given Sue can only know what it is to be Sue, but presuming our Sue identifies as a woman and has experienced life as a woman, she would be closer to the side of "closer to the knowledge of the category experience of being a woman" than someone who has not received knowledge or experiences about that category.
One can move closer to an understanding of what the experience of being a woman is, but it can also be generally assumed given no other outside information beyond "has self-identity as belonging to the category of woman as opposed to man", that an individual will be closer to perfect knowledge of the experience of that category.
To use a non-gendered example, I, as someone who has experience belonging to the category "scientist" have more knowledge of what it feels like to be a "scientist", interpreted through my personal experience as Arch-the-scientist. Someone who has not had the experiences I have had as belonging to the category "scientist", but that isn't to presume they couldn't engage enough information to approximate my experiences and thus come closer to knowledge of the category. But, all else being equal, Arch-the-scientist has more knowledge of the category "scientist" than Quid-the-not-scientist. That isn't to say that Quid could learn what it is like, but without examining his relative knowledge of the category, we can presume (even as interpreted through my reduction of experience to technically only knowledge of Being Arch) that I "know more" about the category.
Just like a chiroptologist could approximate more closely the experience of being a bat than one who has less knowledge of what being a "bat" entails, I have more (but not perfect!) knowledge of what being a "scientist" is than someone like Quid.
To relate this to SCOTUS- one of the key reasons for a more diverse SCOTUS is that it removes the necessity of a particular individual having to work hard to acquire and move closer to perfect knowledge of every category, if we can presume that individuals who fall into those categories have closer-to-perfect than non-category members (and we can presume this). Ideally those with more perfect knowledge can share their experiences and knowledge with those containing "less perfect" knowledge, and move them up the scale.
Thus, being a woman doesn't afford one "special knowledge" of the category "woman", per se, but rather a default level of more knowledge or a better understanding of the category than someone who doesn't hold that default state.
Don't know where I was going with this.
It was basically a long winded way to make fun of @Quid
I want to frame this post by the way
I bit foil that one time. That was totally a science.
But I do think that there is something interesting to talk about with respect to authority (that is, authority of testimony), and expertise.
Now, admitadly, this comes a lot from my own experience. I'm a philosopher, and nearly everyone thinks that they can do my job as well as I can. This has struck me as odd. I've studied, worked, and concentrated. I've devoted a lot of careful hours to going over arguments and refining points. Now, I don't want to make the claim that I am an expert, because I'm not. But there are experts, and I've seen them dismissed as well. People who have spent decades in a field working and thinking. I don't think though that this is limited to simply my field though. I think that this kind of thing is present in a lot of the sciences too, though it presents a bit differently.
There are a lot of people that think that they can talk about evolution. I try to be very careful when I do, because from the little bit that I know, I know that I don't know anything. Biologists spend their entire careers on a tiny part of the grandness of evolution, yet the common layperson feels like because they understand some sort of vague generalities that they are authorized to say things about evolution. It's where you get a lot of the shitty science from these days, people who don't actually know very well what they are talking about because they aren't particularly well educated in that subject. They haven't done studies, tried to publish, spent long hours reading publications or any of that.
I think in general there is a feeling that experts don't actually know that much more than the common man about any particular subject. I took a class in biology, I know enough to say things about evolution! Well, you know enough to be wrong about some things, and kind of right about others.
So what are you saying Loser? No one should ever talk about anything because they aren't experts? That sounds dumb and elitist! You're not better/smarter than me!
No, of course not. Discourse is extremely important, and everyone should engage in as much of it as possible! It's one of the ways we learn, after all. However, what I do think we need to do is change how we think about what we think. Look, I have beliefs that are wrong. I wish I knew which ones were wrong, so I could stop having them but I don't. However, I do try, earnestly try, to go into most discussions with at least a little bit of intellectual humility. I know enough to know at least a little bit about what I know. The word know appears a lot in that sentence, and it might not make sense. I hope though that I've gotten my point across.
What does this have to do with appeals to authority?
Actually a lot I think. I think that most people treat any citation of the testimony of an expert as an appeal to authority. I think that this is for two reasons. One, people don't understand what an appeal to authority really is. It's not putting due weight on the testimony of an authority, it's considering something to be right because an authority said it. We should absolutely take the word of a biologist with thirty years experience over Reverend Fuckwittington who read some stuff about evolution once, right? Two, I think that we are all a little prideful. We like to think that we have considered things well, and that we think carefully about our beliefs. We think that we have good justification, and that our beliefs make sense. Who is an expert to say that we haven't done that? What, we're all irresponsible assholes who don't think things through? No, of course not. We just don't know better. I don't know enough about physics to say too much intelligent about things past basic Newtonian mechanics. Even with the basic Newtonian stuff I am not all that great. I think that we need to start to realize a little bit the limits of our knowledge. It's a rough process, but I think it starts with the way that we speak. Use the word "seems" more. Continuously assert your non expertise. I think that doing this actually helps to change the way that we think.
What do y'all think? Am I totally off my rocker here? Am I just an insecure academic who is a stupid doo doo face?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Its actually been documented and studied.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'll think about it and write something more specific when I get time (and get out from under some other work), but it is something I've talked a bit about with @Feral , and I haven't really solidified how I think about it completely yet.
Collecting that evidence is best left to experts in their fields yes. And as a general shorthand its often better to just take the word of experts just for the sake of efficiency.
But with almost any matter related the common interests of society, you don't need to go to experts for interpretation. We can look at their arguments and follow them as lay people. The same with the law. People get intimidated by legalese but most of it is just basic logic and looking up precedence.
Its when experts say "take our word for it" that it becomes an appeal to authority and invalid. If the authority can reach a conclusion so can we, if not with as much difficulty. Being unwilling to put forth a coherent argument is essentially proof that someone doesn't have one that can stand up to scrutiny
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Those two, together, will make the scale wonky. Here's the scale of knowledge of womanhood, with complete knowledge of womanhood as 'W', at the end:
_________________W
Let's plop Marjorie, a 40 year old female accountant with two kids, onto the scale.
_______M________W
Alright. So, with respect to Marjorie, where do we place
Jane and Anne, being themselves female, have closer-to-perfect knowledge of womanhood than Tom or Edward, by default. But it seems strange to say that a 22 year old female History major has closer-to-perfect knowledge of womanhood than the Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women's Studies, simply as a result of her sex/gender.
My guess is that if we compile their knowledge, the Associate Professor will know more facts about female anatomy.
Do we really want to say that the male Associate Professor Gynecologist knows less about womanhood than the 22 year old female History major, simply because he never personally experienced being a woman?
That is a very odd account of knowledge, and raises many questions regarding how a male Professor could ever teach female students, in a Women's Studies course.
Which is why "Individuals with personal experience of X have greater knowledge of X than individuals who have not personally experienced X." is a really, really shitty rule.
You can say they have more personal investment in the issues, more concern, greater empathy, etc. But to say "greater knowledge" is really problematic.
Edit: If only because, by most accounts, seagulls do not have knowledge, but ornithologists do.
I do think that experts can be wrong, and in fact are wrong.
But to presume that one can engage in a conversation without the kind of training and knowledge that an expert has seems mistaken as well.
I think that people spend a lot of time and energy thinking deeply about the interests of society, and those people who make it the goal of their job to think about those things deserve respect to that. I can come along with my opinion, and try to be informed as I can be, but there's no way that I can know as much. I think this happens a lot with discussions of ethics. I have spent a lot of time studying and reading about ethics. It's not my area of philosophy, and I know a woman who has built an amazing career out of thinking about ethical issues. I could probably just wade into a conversation and start throwing my opinions around, but I can probably guarantee that she's heard the things that I'm going to say before and given enough time could explain to me why I was wrong.
Though perhaps an example, from real life, is warranted.
My dissertation adviser works extensively in logic and philosophy of language. I told him once that I though that it wouldn't be possible for someone to truly picture in their mind a contradiction. You know, like a round square. Which you can't. However, I am very much not the first person to say something like that. My adviser gave me his pat, published, response to such a claim. He's right, you totally can.
I thought I was even fairly well informed. Fuck, I had a degree behind me, but I was just clearly wrong.
To me it seems like people who have no education, who have no training, are in an even worse place. They make arguments not understanding where the discourse is among people who devote their lives to these questions. It seems kind of lame to do that.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Knowledge isn't only propositional, or if it is, your consistently forcing the debate's framing into terms of "special knowledge" has been disingenuous. No one doubts that a justice of any stripe can remark on the plight of others, can recite the statistics and call to mind that others suffer. What is at issue is whether there are experiences that are on the whole had by women and not by men.
What on earth is wrong with you? Nagel's essay hinges on there being an insurmountable difference between the sensory experiences of humans and those of non-human animals--Nagel uses the phrase "a fundamentally alien form of life." There are such slight differences between the perceptual systems of men and women that there is not a significant difference between them. Bats are not humans; women, just like you, are. (Also, for what it's worth, I agree with Loser's complain that you've run together qualia and experience more generally.)
You're using the term "experience" in a problematic, Lockean or Cartesian, way. (Locke was concerned with only the perceiving work of senses; this truncates what it is to be a human organism). Allow me to quote one of my favorite passages, in which the author comments on earlier pragmatists (Dewey and Hegel):
As usual, you've driven me to Brandom and scotch. xoxo
But it would be unjust for God to punish individuals for breaking the moral law if they could not understand the moral law. Therefore, all individuals come pre-loaded with an understanding of the moral law. And so no undergrad *really* needs to take an ethics course.
I am conflicted now.
Because on the one hand...ugh, pragmatists
On the other, that Brandom quote is right on, and hilarious.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Your post really didn't demonstrate this at all, dude
Besides, I made several clarifiers that you ignored
Let's quote it again, and explain what I meant
And specifically,
Note how many times I say "things being equal" and "Default"
Like you said, my two points are (correctly)
This, however, doesn't break the list or invalidate the "rule" I postulated, nor do your examples trying to "break" my scale.
Let's actually place these people on the theoretical scale!
So let M be Marjorie, J be Jane, T be Tom, etc etc (using your descriptors above)
A rough approximation looks like this, then
______J_MT____E__A__W
I've ranked (roughly, and based on a presumption of knowledge due to not being able to ascertain the true knowledge of the category of womanhood these individuals have) where they would stand on a scale of "knowing perfect womanhood" (represented by W).
Of note, if we change E to be a theoretical 69 year old male professor of biology and gender studies (i.e. set his assumed knowledge equal to A), then the scale becomes this
______J_TM______EA__W
Note here in both scales M and A are roughly equal to T and E, but slightly "closer". This is to represent that all other things else being equal (i.e. A and E have the same level of academic knowledge of womanhood) those who belong to a category have slightly more "perfect knowledge" of the category than non-members.
This is a feature, and not a bug, even if it leads to some unfortunate social implications (fake gamer girl accusations come to mind)
Of course, if the category were "knowledge of female anatomy (F)", then the initial scale might be this, instead.
__M____JT_____A__E__F
Here the category is less subjective, and it is theoretically possible that two people would have the same level of knowledge on this scale, without the influence of category inclusivity.
It is important to note that there are always limits to perfect knowledge- we humans may be able to learn every fact about being a bat, but the theoretical superintelligent bat with a degree in chiroptology would still know more about the experience of being a bat than a human with equivalent knowledge of bats. The difference may be minimal and unimportant, ultimately, but that's how it is. There are limits to knowledge, due to not being able to experience everything. Them's the breaks, and those that can experience those things, all else being equal, will have a slight edge towards more perfect knowledge of the experience.
I am simply saying that all experience is reducible to particular, atomistic bits of qualia.
And if there were an aspect of experience that was not reducible to some what-it-is-like to sense or what-it-is-like to emote or what-it-is-like to feel, then I'm pretty sure we could not talk about it.
Bits and components.
Bits and components.
Edit:
In the SCOTUS thread, folks seemed to be portraying the experience of being a woman as akin to Nagel's experience of being a bat. So wholly different and estranged from the experience of being a man that it was impossible for a man to fully understand.
I wasn't saying that women were bats. I was saying that the position maintained in the SCOTUS thread, with respect to female experience, was tantamount to declaring women as epistemologically inaccessible to men as are bats.
You've confused "greater knowledge" and "more perfect"
Perhaps "more complete knowledge" or "more complete understanding of being a member of the category", if you want to make it as unambiguous as possible.
Which it seems I need to do, because else we lean into semantics arguments.
Let me define my phrases, above.
"Greater knowledge" is treated equivalently with the phrase "more perfect" which should be understood as "a more complete understanding of the experience of being a member of a given subjective category"
That is just a lot to type all at once, and I'm not sure it helps
I guess I can agree with that, but it would be a huge burden of proof because there are actually large differences in the life experiences (as separate from base sensory input) between men and women, at least in our glorious U S of A
And to relate to the original thread, I'm fairly certain most of the male supreme court justices have not devoted large amounts of time to obtaining a more perfect level of knowledge of the experience of being a woman.
And they shouldn't have to! That's the whole point of diversity.
Even if I knew everything there was about bat biology, behavior, and culture, I would generally double check my statements with an actual bat before claiming to know what being a bat is like.
If, y'know, this were possible
Comparing academics to the "common man" isn't a terribly high bar to reach, because, frankly, the common man is pretty uninformed about most academic topics. That's not to say that humans are stupid, but just that most humans are ignorant.
Consequently, it doesn't take much for a well-read layperson to transcend the 'common man' in their knowledge of a topic. We see that all the time on this forum.
The biologist with thirty years experience might have spent the last 30 years studying the adaptations of a specific species of plant to herbicide exposure, consequently almost everything he knows about, say, Australopithecus, he read in books. Those books are available to us as well, which means that this hypothetical biologist does not have any special expert knowledge about Australopithecus... and due to his botanical specialization, might not know much more about human evolution than a particularly well-read non-expert.
There is a trivial form of this objection: be sure that the authority you appeal to is a true authority in the subject. Being an expert on epidemiology doesn't make you an expert on HIV (eg, Peter Duesberg) even though both of those are subtopics in biology. Being an expert on radioactive waste disposal doesn't make you an expert on climate change (eg, Ian Clark) even though both of those are earth sciences.
But there's a more considerable problem here, and it's not entirely escapable: we all standard on the shoulders of giants. Our knowledge is based on a web of belief (in the sense of WVO Quine) and much of that belief is book learnin' and hearsay. The primary difference between science and faith is that the former is testable... but let's be honest: we have not, and never will, empirically test all the things that we espouse, and as long as beliefs are compatible with the things we do test, we are unlikely to reject them. I've never personally seen a Galapagos finch, but I have no reason to believe that Galapagos finches are a fiction, and the evolution of Galapagos finches is compatible with the wider breadth of my experience and knowledge. I'd be willing to wager that most biologists - except for a tiny handful who specifically study the Galapagos or ornithology - extract their knowledge of Galapagos finches from the same epistemological source.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
J - female
T - male
M - female
A - female
E - male
J, M, and A participate in category W.
E and T do not participate in category W.
E and T have closer-to-perfect knowledge of W than J and M.
This conflicts with Rule #1.
Edit: Please clarify what I have misunderstood.
I've been arguing following this quote very hard
I think the incredible reductionist approach here is ultimately incorrect and leads to all sorts of problems.
However, I am arguing along these lines because it is easier to construct the arguments if we assume extreme reductionist thinking (i.e. that one can only gain knowledge of the self, and not general categories). That is, I have structured my arguments in the frame of "Sue can only know what it is like to be Sue, and can only approximate knowledge of being a woman", even though I think it is bollocks.