Quite apart from not getting on our high horses with our diagnoses, etc., you know perfectly well that the position you dismiss here, that social scientific knowledge essentially, or requires, empathy that is best or on some views only attainable by first-hand inside experience, and therefore that such experience is, if anything is, a "foundation" for social scientific research is well within the scope of several standard views about social scientific methodology, from the extremes of the Wittgensteinians like Geertz and Winch to more moderate perspectives like Dray and Collingwood in theory of history to Weber in sociology, with his claim that Verstehen, empathetic understanding, is no less essential to social knowledge than causal knowledge.
So this is not a view to high hat, and in the context of discussion over political tactics, which is the present context, you might start bye acknowledging that and suggesting that there might be some questions about it rather than coming off as a condescending Expert.
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Brian Charles Dauth wrote:
>
> >>This argument is precisely analogous to the claim
> that a medical
> >
> > doctor could not understand the etiology of a
> disease unless the
> > doctor personally experienced the disease.
> >
> > Not at all. If you are not a gay man who has been
> threatened with
> > violence then you cannot know what it feels like.
> You can know
> > that such incidents occur, but you cannot know how
> it feels.
>
> I think we're talking past each other. Your point
> is valid; if I do not
> belong to an oppressed group, I can't really know
> how that feels.
> However, it is not necessary to personally know how
> the oppression feels
> to thoroughly analyze it as a social relation and
> develop strategies for
> overcoming it. I still think this is analogous to a
> medical doctor
> studying the etiology of diseases and working on a
> cure. Just as it's
> irrelevant whether or not the doctor personally
> suffers from the disease
> she's attempting to cure, it's irrelevant whether or
> not a social
> theorist/activist personally experiences some form
> of oppression she's
> attempting to undermine.
>
> >> This assumption that a person cannot "know"
> something unless
> >
> > they personally experience it is one of the most
> pernicious
> > misconceptions about knowledge that I come across
> as a college
> > prof.
> >
> > You can have a some knowledge of it, but
> experience for me is also
> > a good a path to knowledge and offers information
> unavailable from
> > books and classrooms.
>
> I know this notion of the validity of "immediate
> experience" is popular
> in our society, but it's a dangerous and misleading
> strategy for
> developing knowledge. Example: slaves in the
> antebellum South. We have
> clear historical evidence that some slaves accepted
> their position and
> did not consider slavery immoral. Based on these
> people's "personal
> experience", slavery was not a problem. Similarly,
> I occasionally have
> African American students who claim that they have
> never been victims of
> prejudice or discrimination. Regardless of what
> they personally believe
> and experience, they are in fact systematically
> discriminated against in
> our society. The popular notion that personal
> experience "is a good
> path to knowledge" in fact blocks these students
> from carefully and
> rigorously analyzing the relevant sociological
> evidence.
>
> So this puts you on the horns of a dilemma, as I see
> it:
>
> 1. You can say these people's knowledge of their
> life experience is
> valid, in which case they are not oppressed,
> regardless of the objective
> data;
>
> or
>
> 2. You can say these people are deluded or
> mistaken, in which case
> personal experience is not a reliable basis for
> knowledge about oppression.
>
> Note that I do not claim that personal experience of
> oppression is
> trivial or unimportant; it is extremely important to
> the person affected
> by it. However, personal experience of oppression
> cannot be a logically
> coherent foundation for social research, analysis
> and action.
>
> Miles
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting