A History and Philosophy of Expertise
A History and Philosophy of Expertise

Author: Jamie Carlin Watson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-11-18

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1350216496

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In this comprehensive tour of the long history and philosophy of expertise, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Jamie Carlin Watson tackles the question of expertise and why we can be skeptical of what experts say, making a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophical debates on authority, testimony, disagreement and trust. His review sketches out the ancient origins of the concept, discussing its early association with cunning, skill and authority and covering the sort of training that ancient thinkers believed was required for expertise. Watson looks at the evolution of the expert in the middle ages into a type of “genius” or “innate talent” , moving to the role of psychological research in 16th-century Germany, the influence of Darwin, the impact of behaviorism and its interest to computer scientists, and its transformation into the largely cognitive concept psychologists study today.

The Philosophy of Expertise
The Philosophy of Expertise

Author: Evan Selinger

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9780231136440

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From the use of expert testimony in the courtroom to the advice we rely on to solve key economic, political, and social problems, expertise is an essential part of our decision-making process. However, the extent to which experts can be trusted is a subject of persistent and contentious debate. The Philosophy of Expertise is the first collection to explore the fundamental philosophical issues surrounding these authorities and their expert knowledge. Part 1 considers the problems surrounding the issue of trust and deference; part 2 launches a phenomenological clarification of expertise that pinpoints the universal structures embodied in cognition and affect; and part 3 examines the consequences of the social and technical externalization of expertise. Contributors including Edward Said, Alvin Goldman, Peter Singer, Hubert Dreyfus, Julia Annas, Harry Collins, and Don Ihde draw on a number of intellectual approaches to explore the justification of expert authority, the potentially dangerous role of expertise in a liberal democratic society, how laypeople can critique experts, and the social and ideological character of expert advice. The contributors also discuss the reasoning process of judges and juries, the ancient Greek view of moral conduct, and the incorporation of experts into governmental bureaucracy. By honestly tackling the legitimacy and consistency of various positions, this volume sheds much-needed light on the theoretical dimensions of a controversial and pervasive practice. Contributors: Alvin I. Goldman, Don Ihde, Edward Said, Evan Selinger and John Mix, Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, Hélène Mialet, Hubert Dreyfus, John Hardwig, Julia Annas, Paul Feyerabend, Peter Singer, Scott Brewer, Steve Fuller, Steven Turner

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise

Author: Ellen Fridland

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-08-20

Total Pages: 1081

ISBN-13: 1351720422

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Philosophical questions surrounding skill and expertise can be traced back as far as Ancient Greece, China, and India. In the twentieth century, skilled action was an important factor in the work of phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and analytic philosophers including Gilbert Ryle. However, as a subject in its own right it has, until now, remained largely in the background. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind, reflecting the explosion of interest in the topic in recent years. Comprising thirty-nine chapters written by leading international contributors, the Handbook is organized into six clear parts: • Skill in the history of philosophy (East and West) • Skill in epistemology • Skill, intelligence, and agency • Skill in perception, imagination, and emotion • Skill, language, and social cognition • Skill and expertise in normative philosophy. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology, and ethics, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology and cognitive science. It is also relevant to those who are interested in conceptual issues underlying skill and expertise in fields such as sport, the performing arts, and medicine.

Ethics Expertise
Ethics Expertise

Author: Lisa Rasmussen

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-01-17

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1402038208

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Section I examines historical philosophical understandings of expertise in order to situate the current institution of bioethics. Section II focuses on philosophical analyses of the concept of expertise, asking, among other things, how it should be understood, how it can be acquired, and what such expertise warrants. Finally, section III addresses topics in bioethics and how ethics expertise should or should not be brought to bear in these areas, including expertise in the court room, in the hospital room, in the media, and in making policy. 2. A GUIDED HISTORICAL TOUR As Scott LaBarge points out, Plato’s dialogues can be viewed as an extended treatment of the concept of moral expertise, so it is fitting to begin the volume with an examination of “Socrates and Moral Expertise”. Given Socrates’ protestations (the Oracle at Delphi notwithstanding) that he knows nothing, LaBarge observes that it would be interesting to determine both what a Socratic theory of moral expertise might be and whether Socrates qualified as such an expert. Plato’s model of moral expertise is what LaBarge calls “demonstrable expertise”, which is concerned mainly with the ability to attain a goal and to explain how one did it. The problem with this account is that when one tries to solve the various problems in the model – for example, allowing that moral expertise is not an all-or-nothing skill – then one is immediately faced with the “credentials problem”. As LaBarge puts it, “. . .

Rethinking Expertise
Rethinking Expertise

Author: Harry Collins

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0226113620

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What does it mean to be an expert? In Rethinking Expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledge—knowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how laypeople judge between experts, and how credentials are used to evaluate them. Throughout, Collins and Evans ask an important question: how can the public make use of science and technology before there is consensus in the scientific community? This book has wide implications for public policy and for those who seek to understand science and benefit from it. “Starts to lay the groundwork for solving a critical problem—how to restore the force of technical scientific information in public controversies, without importing disguised political agendas.”—Nature “A rich and detailed ‘periodic table’ of expertise . . . full of case studies, anecdotes and intriguing experiments.”—Times Higher Education Supplement (UK)

The Death of Expertise
The Death of Expertise

Author: Tom Nichols

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190469439

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Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

The Crisis of Expertise
The Crisis of Expertise

Author: Gil Eyal

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-10-24

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1509538879

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In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe
Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe

Author: Ursula Klein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0226439704

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It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences’ systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines. Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.

Politics and Expertise
Politics and Expertise

Author: Zeynep Pamuk

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-11-26

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0691219265

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A new model for the relationship between science and democracy that spans policymaking, the funding and conduct of research, and our approach to new technologies Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other. Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies. Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.