A History And Philosophy Of Expertise

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.

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

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.

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. Psychological Knowledge challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns. Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophical approach constitutes an advance. We see that exists a substantial natural amount of philosophical theorising, a body of work that tries to determine the nature and structure of folk psychology. An introduction to the workings of constuctivism, Psychological Knowledge is an insightful introduction to the history of psychology and the recent philosophy of mind.

Volume 10 of the Routledge History of Philosophy presents a historical survey of the central topics in twentieth century Anglo-American philosophy. It chronicles what has been termed the 'linguistic turn' in analytic philosophy and traces the influence the study of language has had on the main problems of philosophy. Each chapter contains an extensive bibliography of the major writings in the field. All the essays present their large and complex topics in a clear and well organised way. At the end, the reader finds a helpful Chronology of the major political, scientific and philosophical events in the Twentieth Century and an extensive Glossary of technical terms.

"Cassirer employs his remarkable gift of lucidity to explain the major ideas and intellectual issues that emerged in the course of nineteenth century scientific and historical thinking. The translators have done an excellent job in reproducing his clarity in English. There is no better place for an intelligent reader to find out, with a minimum of technical language, what was really happening during the great intellectual movement between the age of Newton and our own."-- New York Times. -- Publisher description.

First published in 1997, this volume expands the analytical philosophical tradition in the face of parochial Anglo-American philosophical interests. The essays making up the section on ‘Antiquity’ share one concern: to show that there are largely unrecognised but radical differences between the way in which certain fundamental questions – concerning the nature of number, sense perception, and scepticism – were thought of in antiquity and the way in which they were thought of from the 17th century onwards. Part 2, on early modern thought, explores the theoretical characterisation of the role of experiment in early modern physical theory through Galileo’s embracing of experiments, along with Descartes’ automata and issues in a relatively neglected but especially intractable part of Descartes’ philosophy: how he conceives of what a successful inference consists in and what it is that makes it successful. The final section deals with the philosophical foundations of physical theory, the distinction between the human and the natural sciences, the philosophical-cum-scientific foundations of Marx’s idea of socialism, and Nietzche’s criticisms of the very notion of science, concluding that Nietzsche’s probing questions cannot be dismissed, as he has opened up some genuinely challenging issues which we ignore at our peril.

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, Thing Knowledge demands that we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more.