Arguing With Geeks 12

Personal Interpretative Selectivity Syndrome — Where the YNSTRILT Fallacy combines with the IDSISNT Fallacy, the result may be Personal Interpretative Selectivity Syndrome (PISS). Where the inability to perceive significance is equated with an actual absence of significance, and all significance that is perceived is considered a product of authorial intent, the advocate of an interpretation is basically functioning on the conviction that the import of a text on them (their individual reader response) maps directly to the author’s purpose — that their reading is full and correct, and that any contrary readings can only be misreadings. This is invalid, but it can be countered with demonstrative arguments highlighting significances the reader has failed to perceive; where the reader’s perception of the text is revised to incorporate such significances, they must revise their judgement of authorial intent (or abandon one or both fallacies and allow for alternative readings). With Personal Interpretative Selectivity Syndrome however, the established reading (the sense of a text’s import redefined as a sense of its purpose) is applied as a filter defining what is and is not perceived (the sense of a text’s purpose defining the sense of its import). The result is an inability to see anything which might contradict one's own reading.