Maybe “authority” is the wrong word. What I mean is that the opponent making this claim is dismissing my stance as wrong, because of my supposed less experience. It means that they believe that truth follows from collecting anecdotes. They ascertain that because they have more anecdotes, they are correct, and I am incorrect. For not being rational, we can’t trust their standard of truth to dismiss my position as wrong, since their whole methodology is hopelessly flawed.
For not being rational, we can’t trust their standard of truth to dismiss my position as wrong, since their whole methodology is hopelessly flawed.
Your core claim seems to be that you should dismiss statements (as opposed to arguments) by “irrational” people. This is a more general idea, basically unrelated to amount of their personal experience or other features of typical conversations which you discuss in your comment.
If someone’s argument, and therefore position, is irrational, how can we trust them to give honest and accurate criticism of other arguments?
At which point you are completely forsaking your original argument (rightfully or wrongly, which is a separate concern), which is the idea of my critical comment above. It’s unclear what you are arguing about, if your conclusion is equivalent to a much simpler premise that you have to assume independently of the argument. This sounds like rationalization (again, no matter whether the conclusion-advice-heuristic is correct or not).
I take “life experience” to mean a haphazard collection of anecdotes.
Claims from haphazardly collected anecdotes do not constitute legitimate evidence, though I concede those claims do often have positive correlations with true facts.
As such, relying on “life experience” is not rational. The point about condescension is tangential. The whole rhetorical technique is frustrating, because there is no way to move on from it. If “life experience” were legitimate evidence for the claim, the argument would not be able to continue until I have gained more “life experience,” and who decides how much would be sufficient? Would it be until I come around? Once we throw the standard of evidence out, we’re outside the bounds of rational discourse.
I take “life experience” to mean a haphazard collection of anecdotes.
I don’t think that’s something that most people who think “life experience” is valuable would agree to.
Claims from haphazardly collected anecdotes do not constitute legitimate evidence, though I concede those claims do often have positive correlations with true facts.
It might be profitable for you to revise your criteria for what constitutes legitimate evidence. Throwing away information that has a positive correlation with the thing you’re wondering about seems a bit hasty.
I am calling attention to reverting to “life experience” as recourse in an argument. If someone strays to that, it’s clear that we’re no longer considering evidence for whatever the argument is about. Referring back to “life experience” is far too nebulous to take as any evidence anything.
As for what constitutes legitimate evidence, even if anecdotes can correlate, anecdotes are not evidence!
Maybe “authority” is the wrong word. What I mean is that the opponent making this claim is dismissing my stance as wrong, because of my supposed less experience. It means that they believe that truth follows from collecting anecdotes. They ascertain that because they have more anecdotes, they are correct, and I am incorrect. For not being rational, we can’t trust their standard of truth to dismiss my position as wrong, since their whole methodology is hopelessly flawed.
Your core claim seems to be that you should dismiss statements (as opposed to arguments) by “irrational” people. This is a more general idea, basically unrelated to amount of their personal experience or other features of typical conversations which you discuss in your comment.
If someone’s argument, and therefore position, is irrational, how can we trust them to give honest and accurate criticism of other arguments?
At which point you are completely forsaking your original argument (rightfully or wrongly, which is a separate concern), which is the idea of my critical comment above. It’s unclear what you are arguing about, if your conclusion is equivalent to a much simpler premise that you have to assume independently of the argument. This sounds like rationalization (again, no matter whether the conclusion-advice-heuristic is correct or not).
OK, let me break it down.
I take “life experience” to mean a haphazard collection of anecdotes.
Claims from haphazardly collected anecdotes do not constitute legitimate evidence, though I concede those claims do often have positive correlations with true facts.
As such, relying on “life experience” is not rational. The point about condescension is tangential. The whole rhetorical technique is frustrating, because there is no way to move on from it. If “life experience” were legitimate evidence for the claim, the argument would not be able to continue until I have gained more “life experience,” and who decides how much would be sufficient? Would it be until I come around? Once we throw the standard of evidence out, we’re outside the bounds of rational discourse.
I don’t think that’s something that most people who think “life experience” is valuable would agree to.
It might be profitable for you to revise your criteria for what constitutes legitimate evidence. Throwing away information that has a positive correlation with the thing you’re wondering about seems a bit hasty.
I am calling attention to reverting to “life experience” as recourse in an argument. If someone strays to that, it’s clear that we’re no longer considering evidence for whatever the argument is about. Referring back to “life experience” is far too nebulous to take as any evidence anything.
As for what constitutes legitimate evidence, even if anecdotes can correlate, anecdotes are not evidence!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results
Anecdotes are rational evidence, but not scientific evidence.
For a debate involving complex religious, scientific, or political arguments, this won’t suffice.
Let’s say I’m debating someone on whether or not poltergeists exist.