Thought aspires to objectivity and universality, but it must struggle against the brute onesidedness of experience. We are so impressed by our particular experiences that argument against them will usually prove unavailing. Our experiences form us and deform us.
I once knew a white woman who disliked blacks. I inquired why. She explained that she had grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of blacks, and that the black kids routinely harrassed her and her friends on their way to school. My arguments in mitigation of her generalized prejudice were of course unavailing in the teeth of her experiences.
Just as you can't argue against a man's sensibility, you can't argue against his exeriences. He knows what he's seen, what he's felt, what he's suffered. Argumentative abstraction is just so much gossamer by comparison.
This is a general rule admitting of exceptions. The vividness of the experiences is no match for the faint murmurings of sweet reason. We are formed by our experiences but also deformed by them.
We are made of crooked timber, and the warping of experience adds the final rude touch.