Abstract

Is expertise in applied ethics compatible with individual autonomy and democratic self‐governance? This depends on whether a ‘tracking condition’ is satisfied for expert claims about issues in applied ethics. This condition requires that, when expert deliberations are properly conducted they ‘track’ the courses of reasoning that the experts’ clients would themselves have undertaken if they had (perhaps subject to certain conditions) considered the matters for themselves. Pluralism of the kind thematised by Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire suggests that the tracking condition typically will not be satisfied and, hence, that whatever experts are praticising in applied ethics they are doing it contrary to democratic principles of autonomy and self‐government. The implications of this result are sketched and some standard objections briefly considered.