What is “Lived Experience”?

The implications of a Philosophical Term for Identity Politics

Abstract: Do marginalized communities have a “lived experience” that is uniquely accessible to them? Is this kind of experience superior to the evidence which provides the foundation for scientific knowledge? Some people think that taking lived experience seriously is rejecting all science and reason, and thus overthrowing objectivity and enthroning subjectivity. In fact, the empiricist view of experience as a foundation for objectivity has serious problems, which have been widely acknowledged by both Continental and Analytic philosophers since the very early twentieth century. Writers as diverse as Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, William James, John Dewey, Thomas Kuhn and WVO Quine have proposed similar solutions to these problems, which recognized that lived experience is more epistemically fundamental than the sense data posited by classical Empiricism. Acknowledging this makes us more inclusive of marginalized communities, and is also the most accurate view of how knowledge works.

According to the philosophical position known as Empiricism, experience is supposedly the foundation for all scientific knowledge, and science is considered to be superior to myth and religion because it rests on this foundation. All other statements of scientific fact derive their authority from their connection to experience. As science becomes more abstract and unified, the connection becomes harder to trace. We can’t see gravity the way we can see…