subjective experience can be valid - I saw a dragon!

[synRose]

I commonly hear people say that if an experience is anecdotal or subjective, it is not as reliable as empirical evidence. I have always been turned off by the dismissive nature of that statement.

I saw a real life dragon flying by my window. It had a long tail of which it flew into in a sit-up sort of way. It's wings were skin, without feathers, with holes in them that made it look tattered. It must have been 2-3 feet long, bigger than all the birds I see.

I have told people about my dragon sighting and all I ever get is "You were hallucinating" or "you are crazy" or "it was a bird". It was no friggen bird- it was a dragon. If I was an artist I would draw what it looked like but my crayon version of this thing is a sad representation.

What does drive me crazy is the fact that because I was the only one who saw it, the experience is considered false automatically. Why can't my honest word be good enough? If it really did happen, and I really did see it, and I really am telling the truth about it, why does that fall short?

[Brad Reddekopp]

Without very good testable supporting evidence for what you surely must admit is an extraordinary claim, there is no good reason to believe that you actually did see a dragon flying by your window. In the absence of such evidence, the most excruciatingly open-minded skeptic will simply withhold judgement on the matter. The rest of us, given how unlikely is the story, will decide that you are most probably mistaken or that you are making up a story.

"Why?", you ask. Nothing in our experience tells us that flying dragons have ever existed with humans (some dinosaurs might qualify, but they disappeared long before our species came along). On the other hand, we have plenty of experience with humans making up stories and it is well known that humans very often make mistakes in interpreting or processing the information they gather through their senses. (Scientific methods of investigation are designed specifically to compensate for such human frailties.)

So, it is reasonable to conclude that it is most probably true that you did not see a dragon flying by your window. Your subjective experience might be valid for you but rationally skeptical individuals are not likely to accept it as evidence that the event actually took place as described. If I saw something like that myself, I'd be more inclined to think that I'd hallucinated than that there actually was a dragon.

However, if someone were to actually produce said dragon, then one would have to reconsider.

[Hierophant]

It's a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. By definition, I can't examine it. So why do you think I should take it as evidence of anything?

Your personal experience applies to you, not to me. You can't force me to accept it any more than I can force you to accept my own experiences or view of the world.

[Nietzsche]

It's considered false automatically because dragons aren't real.

If you said you saw some kind of freak crossbred dog-bird-thing, you'd get more takers.