Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (5):25-35 (2019)
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Abstract |
Christian Quast has recently embarked on the project of systematizing the debate about the notion of expertise, an extremely fascinating and important issue addressed by scholars of many disciplines yet still in need of an interdisciplinary take. He sheds light on a number of relevant features of this notion and defends what he calls a “balanced” account of expertise, namely one that defines this concept in light of an expert’s dispositions, manifestations of their dispositions, and social role or function. In this critical reply, I offer some considerations that put pressure on Quast’s balanced account and hopefully help anyone interested in this debate take a step forward toward explaining what it takes for one to be an expert. The reply is structured as follows. First, I argue that his allegedly balanced view is liable to a potentially compromising tension between its function component and the ingredients of objective expertise (§1). Then, I show that Quast’s threefold characterization of an objective expert is too strong, as it imposes conditions that several individuals whom we would consider experts are unable to fulfill (§2). Finally, I provide reasons in favor of endorsing an objective account of expertise in light of some specific features of our society and show how this account can take into due consideration the different services experts ordinarily perform (§3).
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Keywords | expertise social epistemology functionalism epistemic authority Christian Quast epistemic virtues post-truth |
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References found in this work BETA
Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data.Michael P. Lynch - 2016 - New York, NY, USA: WW Norton.
What to Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues.David Coady - 2012 - Wiley-Blackwell.
Towards a Balanced Account of Expertise.Christian Quast - 2018 - Social Epistemology 32 (6):397-418.
Citations of this work BETA
Balancing the Normativity of Expertise.Markus Seidel - 2019 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (7):34-40.
Objective Expertise and Functionalist Constraints: A Comment on Croce.Christian Quast - 2019 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (8):15-28.
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2019-05-16
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132 ( #88,411 of 2,505,137 )
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11 ( #68,456 of 2,505,137 )
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