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by nonce42
1330 days ago
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What I find interesting is that this seems to be an obscure philosophical thought experiment, but it's actually highly political and turns up all the time on, say, Twitter. Specifically, how do you compare "factual knowledge" and "lived experience", and which is more important, and who is the "expert" on things. To make this concrete, consider expertise on England. Suppose Prof. Smith has never been to England, but has studied it in detail for decades. And suppose Mr. Chav has grown up in England, but is uneducated and isn't even sure who is the Prime Minister. Who is "allowed" to talk about England? Smith, who knows all the facts, or Chav who lives there and knows what it's like? Can Smith tell Chav that he's wrong about England, or does Chav's lived experience matter? (I'm using England as a less controversial example, but this usually happens in discussions of race or gender.) |
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As a black person, I just find that there's probably something along the lines of the philopsohical idea of "things are what they do," which also means occasionally getting comfy with contradictions and paradoxes.
E.g. concretely, I can (well, must, really) accept the idea of "blackness" being a very flimsy concept from a scientific view but a very strong one from a social/political one.