Abstract
This paper offers a sizeable menu of approaches to what it means to be an expert. Is it a matter of reputation within a community, or a matter of what one knows independently of reputation? An initial proposal characterizes expertise in dispositional terms—an ability to help other people (especially laypersons) get answers to difficult questions or execute difficult tasks. What cognitive states, however, ground these abilities? Do the grounds consist in “veritistic” (truth-linked) states or in terms of evidence or justifiedness? To what extent is expertise a matter of superior knowledge or other factors? Some authors seek to debunk the notion of expertise entirely. The present approach resists this stance, but doesn’t dispute the variability and fluidness of the concept. Even more challenging is the problem of how laypersons can determine who is the superior expert, especially when experts disagree.
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Notes
As an anonymous referee for this paper points out, expertise alone does not guarantee the ability to teach others. The latter is, arguably, a separate skill. Nonetheless, granted that two separate types of skill are required for the teaching, it is the difficulty of executing the difficult or rare task itself that standardly earns one the label of “expert”.
An improvement on this formula would include a proviso that the propositional contents in each comparison class be comparatively important for understanding the domain in question. Although importance is indeed important, there is no easy way I know of to spell it out, so I won’t explore it in any detail here. Thanks to Christian Quast, however, for a reminder of the importance of importance.
Admittedly, counting of the number of beliefs a person has is a problematic matter. But we can’t solve all problems here. In many cases, it is perfectly clear that X has more true beliefs about a certain matter than Y, even if the precise number of such beliefs is problemtic. On a separate topic, perhaps it should not be required of the leading-edge astronomer that she has fewer false beliefs about the newly-found planet than her colleagues. After all, the colleagues who remain totally ignorant of the planet’s existence may have zero false beliefs about it. We might still want to consider her an expert about the planet. Surely having only one false belief about it (rather than none) shouldn’t disqualify her from being an expert. (Perhaps experts should only be required to have a comparatively high ratio of true to false beliefs to qualify as experts.).
Thanks to Holly M. Smith for championing this approach (in conversation).
For further discussion in depth, see Seidel (2014).
Cf. Goldman (1979), in which a similar rationale is offered for endorsing a vague analysis of justifiedness.
“Debunking” may not be the most appropriate term to characterize the critical stances discussed in this section. But it should serve well enough for present purposes.
This paragraph follows the exegesis of Stephen Turner (2001).
One might object to this example because what is better or worse outerwear is partly a matter of taste rather than fact, and therefore not a matter on which expertise can be assessed. If this is correct, the reader might prefer to substitute a different example entirely, or interpret the present example so that only objective facts about the two stores’ products are under discussion (e.g., the warmth they provide, their durability, and their comparative prices).
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Goldman, A.I. Expertise. Topoi 37, 3–10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9410-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9410-3