Expertise and Rationality :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Expertise and RationalityABSTRACT I explore the fellowship between expertness and rationality. I showtime pass water explicit the philosophically dominant view on this connection, i.e., the expert-consultation view. This view captures the earlier axiomatic idea that a rational way of proceeding on a matter of immenseness when one lacks knowledge is to consult experts. Next, I enumerate the difficulties which beset this view, locating them to roundwhat extent in the present-day(prenominal) philosophical literature on expertise and rationality. I then provide that different lessons should be drawn for rationality from the event of expertise. One is that some empirical and phenomenological studies of the nature of expertise can be fruit skilfuly use by analogy to theories of the rational agent. Chicken-sexers exist. It is a fact that there ar experts in this and many other domains. It is also a fact that some philosophers, often epistemologists, take the fact of expertise to be bound up somehow or other with rationality. The tired articulation of this connection is that a rational way of proceeding on a matter of importance when one lacks knowledge is to consult experts. But does this view capture the full significance of the fact of expertise for rationality? In this paper I will argue that the fact of expertise has import beyond the standard view for the analysis of rationality. I will proceed by first considering in more detail the standard view, and then jump saturnine from that discussion to draw a different lesson for our understanding of rationality from the fact of expertise.It would seem that the connection between expertise and rationality is so obvious as to be mundane when one lacks expertise on a given matter of importance, and there atomic number 18 people who have that expertise and who can be consulted without undue cost, then (ceteris paribus) one should consult much(prenominal) people. This prescription links expertise and rationa lity by means of expert-consultation. When our cars are kaputt, when our tooth aches, when the souffl collapses, when our French falls short, and when our business lacks efficiency we consult the appropriate experts in order to believe and behave in ways that are sufficiently non-arbitrary so as to count as rational. Expert consultation is indeed a resource for rationality we have the remarkable cognitive force to let the outcome of expert consultation affect what we believe. (1)The preceding split up captures in a simplified way the powerful idea that the connection between expertise and rationality is that of expert consultation.