Towards a Balanced Account of Expertise

ABSTRACT

The interdisciplinary debate about the nature of expertise often conflates having expertise with either the individual possession of competences or a certain role ascription. In contrast to this, the paper attempts to demonstrate how different dimensions of expertise ascription are inextricably interwoven. As a result, a balanced account of expertise will be proposed that more accurately determines the closer relationship between the expert’s dispositions, their manifestations and the expert’s function. This finally results in an advanced understanding of expertise that views someone as an expert only if she is undefeatedly disposed to fulfill a contextually salient service function adequately at the moment of assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Social epistemology
• expertise
• dispositions
• ascriptivism
• reductionism
• functional approach

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Michel Croce, Paul Faulkner, Oliver Scholz and Ansgar Seide for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some guiding remarks may be useful here. A word in quotation marks (‘expertise’) designates, as usual, the word as a word. If not otherwise contextually apparent (by phrases like ‘the notion/explication/ascription of expertise’) an italicized and bolded term (expertise) refers to the concept expressed by that word, while regular print (expertise) designates the respective phenomenon. When ‘“expertise”’ is set in capitals and equipped with some index (Expertise_[F,D,M]), this is a reference to a certain approach to expertise, which is introduced in due course, whereas in italics with an initial capital letter (Expertise_[F,D,M]) it refers to a special aspect of the phenomenon of expertise, and in regular print (Expertise_[F,D,M]) it points to a particular sense of using ‘expertise’.

2. Proponents of this skepticism are, for example, Zoltan P. Majdik and William M. Keith (2011a), as well as Oliver R. Scholz (2018).

3. For the sake of clarification, some remarks are helpful here. For one thing, it needs to be mentioned that these dimensions are almost completely different from what Harry M. Collins (2011) has declared to be the three dimensions of expertise. And for another, it is important to stress that ‘dimension’ is only used to reference different aspects of expertise ascription, that is, to the different manners in which ‘expertise’ can be used.

4. If not indicated differently, an indented sentence in quotation marks without further reference is a common usage of ‘expertise’ and thus is no direct quotation.

5. I will understand competences as a special kind of disposition to do (for discussion see Fantl 2017; Löwenstein 2017; 171–6; Vetter 2016). As such, they are subject to both trigger- and manifestation-conditions (cf. Choi and Fara 2018) and can be suitably characterized by trigger-manifestation conditionals. According to Sosa, for instance, the trigger conditions for competences are tryings, while the manifestation conditions pertain to a special kind of modal stability in attaining agential successes (cf. Sosa 2015, 96). Thus, the competence to open jam jars is a disposition which is roughly represented by the following conditional: If she tried to open a jam jar under appropriate circumstances, then she would likely enough (safely) succeed in the right causal way (non-deviantly). When these conditions are fulfilled and the corresponding success eventuates, the success manifests competences and represents an achievement.

6. A case of intervening luck may clarify the point in question: ‘Take an archer’s competent shot that (a) would hit the target absent intervening wind, and (b) does hit the target because, although a first gust diverts it, a second gust puts it back on track. Here the agent’s competence yields the early orientation and speed of the arrow, and this combined orientation and speed, together with the two compensating gusts, results in the bull’s-eye’ (Sosa 2015, 13). Thus, absent intervening wind the resulting success would be competently caused (or manifest competence) and therefore represents an achievement, while in the other case, the success is caused by competence, but manifests luck and so does not represent an achievement (see also Bradford 2015, 64 ff.).

7. Note that I have elsewhere characterized the dispositional-sense of expertise ascription as the competence-sense, or Expertise_C, and the manifestation-sense of expertise ascription as the product-sense, or Expertise_P (cf. Quast 2018, 14 ff.).

8. See, ‘“expertise, n.”’, ‘“expert, n.”’ and ‘“expert, adj.1.”’ in OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 5 June 2017.

9. Mehmet Scholl is a former football player who was formerly employed by ARD, a German public-service broadcaster, to comment on matches of the national football team. Interestingly, former football players are often invited to comment on football matches although their suitability is regularly put into question. To be sure, more often than not former football players are invited to comment based on the assumption of relevant competences like an understanding of strategies, mental attitudes and challenges, abilities in match analysis, insider information and the like. This is not put into question. However, it is important to note that former football players are still often considered football experts, even if their suitability is put into question.

10. Moreover, someone is a subjective expert insofar as she believes herself to have suitable dispositions or sets herself to play the relevant role.

11. These intersubjective manners of expertise ascription are sometimes referred to as the relational manners of usage according to which expertise is what is accepted as expertise in a given society (cf. Collins and Evans 2007, 2). To avoid misunderstanding, this does not coincide with my functional approach to intersubjective expertise (cf. Expertise_F). Rather Expertise_F is just a special interpretation of these relational manners of use.

12. There are a couple of predecessors of similar views: See exemplarily Agnew et al. (1997), Hartelius (2011), Mieg (2001, 2006) and Markus Rhomberg and Nico Stehr (2007), to name just a few.

13. Note that ‘conceptual function’ is a technical term which refers to the function of a phenomenon that is set by falling under the respective concept.

14. This limitation is due to the fact that human agents are by nature not only cognitively and temporally restricted, but also in many other respects like natural abilities, skill acquisition, location, motivation, etc.

15. In this paper (cf. Quast 2018, 17), I have argued that expertise is best understood against the backdrop of restricted sentient beings and their complementary need for cooperation to optimize their available resources. These beings have potentially infinitely many interests and desires, the fulfillment of which is inherently pleasant, and a restricted amount of executable efforts to fulfill these interests, the execution of which is inherently unpleasant. To overcome their individual restrictions, these beings try to improve the proportion between fulfilled interests and executed efforts on the basis of two major strategies: They can either optimize their individual expenditure of effort or they can socially expand their available resources. The former strategy basically consists in executing efforts economically, that is, its execution has to be efficiently directed at the most relevant ends, while the latter strategy socially widens the available resources by asking other agents for support. By attuning both strategies to each other their output can be increased. This is where individual efforts are economically directed at an efficient selection of social support, that is, at identifying competent agents apt for fulfilling our most salient interests.

16. Such a functional understanding of expertise is implicit in several of the characterizations highlighted earlier. However, it could also underlie the expertise ascriptions of those who are ‘asked for advice when important and difficult decisions have to be made’ (Germain and Ruiz 2009, 627, my italics), who are understood as problem-solvers (cf. Germain and Ruiz 2009, 624), or as people who ‘tell you how to fix […] faults and get things working once more’ (Cornford and Athanasou 1995, 10, my italics).

17. Although this paper will be primarily on the interrelation of the expert’s dispositions and function, this does not mean that the dimension of manifestation may be neglected for a proper understanding of expertise. On the contrary, the idea of competent causation provides an important specification of the way in which experts need to fulfill their given function in order to manifest their dispositions. This is why experts are not only thought to be agents who are suitably disposed (cf. Expertise_D) to reliably fulfill their contextual function (Expertise_F), but prove themselves to be experts by manifesting relevant dispositions (cf. Expertise_M). This will become more evident when disclosing the default and query structure of expertise ascriptions in Section ‘The Deontic Dimension of Expertise Ascriptions’.

18. Of course, holding a competence-driven or more functionalist account does not automatically commit to any kind of reduction (cf. note 19).

19. It is worth mentioning that not every claim for the priority of one dimension of expertise ascription already implies the stronger claim of reducibility. So, principally, the claim can be advocated that one dimension is dominant or comes first without considering it to be a proper basis of epistemic reduction. This could be a balanced account of expertise with different emphasis on its constitutive parts. I will come back to such an account in due course (see Section ‘Anti-Reductionism: Towards a Balanced Account of Expertise’).

20. Reductionism_M is left out intentionally because it is evident that the manifestation of dispositions in performative successes is conceptually derivative of the possession of these very dispositions. Therefore, a reductionism_M is highly implausible right from the beginning.

21. The discussion about primary competence refers to technical skills, knowledge or understanding of a contextually relevant subject matter (plumbing, particle physics, epistemology, wine tasting, etc.). Reference to secondary competence, in contrast, is different because it applies to the social exercise of primary competence and thus to performative abilities, mediation competences, communication skills, trust-building abilities, etc. Although not explicitly stated, such a differentiation is indicated within a number of characterizations of expertise. In this vein, it is often claimed that expertise not only requires an extensive fund of (primary) competences, but also ‘a set of skills or methods for apt and successful deployment’ of these competences (Goldman 2001, 92), ‘relevant heuristics and methods for applying’ them (Licon 2012), ‘the ability to engage productively with a subject matter’ (Watson 2018, 48), ‘to employ strategies for acquiring new knowledge about the domain’ (McBain 2007, 127) or ‘to provide inventional capacities for selecting the best possible resolution of a particular problem vis-à-vis particular expectations regarding the resolution of a problem’ (Majdik and Keith 2011b, 371). In other words, being an expert not only presupposes ‘armchair’ competence, but also secondary competence for its application. As will become apparent in due course, the underlying reason for this requirement is that expertise is to be understood as a disposition to serve (see Section ‘Anti-Reductionism: Towards a Balanced Account of Expertise’).

22. See, ‘expert, n.’ in OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 5 June 2017.

23. See David Coady (2012), Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Stuart E. Dreyfus (2005), Sanford C. Goldberg (2009), Goldman (2001), Elizabeth Fricker (2006), Jimmy A. Licon (2012), Michael Luntley (2009), James McBain (2007), Barbara G. Montero (2016), Robin Nunn (2008), George S. Pappas (1994), Oliver R. Scholz (2018), Jean H. M. Wagemans (2011), Jamie C. Watson (2018) and Bruce D. Weinstein (Weinstein 1993).

24. See John R. Anderson (2007), Michelene T. H. Chi (2006), William G. Chase and Herbert A. Simon (1973), K. Anders Ericsson (2008), Paul J. Feltovich, Prietula, and Anders Ericsson (2006), Giyoo Hatano and Kayoko Inagaki (1984), Robert R. Hoffman (1998), Michael I. Posner (1988), Robert J. Sternberg (1998) and many others.

25. See Collins and Evans (2007), Richard W. Herling (2000) and Stephen P. Turner (2001).

26. As John Hardwig (1985, 347 ff.) stressed already, these dispositions need not be understood in individualist terms, but can also be construed along more collectivist lines (cf. Lackey 2014). That is, it is sometimes favorable to allow for expert dispositions that are partly seated in the individual members of a team. But to keep things simple, this complication will be left out of the following.

27. Another two remarks: First, the instrumental function of competence is not necessarily connected with extrinsic utility but just references the bare goal-directedness of competence. Thus, the success of milling around need not take the form of achieving a distinct target, it may just consist in simply milling around well (cf. Vetter 2016, 15). To put it differently, ‘[W]hat I have an ability to do is what my systems were maintained or selected for doing’ (Millikan 2000, 61). Second, the alleged contrast between instrumental and social functions does not imply that both cannot overlap to some extent. For social functions can be instrumental just as instrumental functions can be social. The crucial point, however, is that only a minor subclass of instrumental functions is relevantly social.

28. For different views, see Collins and Evans (2007, 13 ff.) and Arthur L. Caplan (1992), as well as a marginal note found in Goldman (2018).

29. Imagine, for example, being asked to translate a German inscription into French on a memorial in Verdun, France, or to pronounce ‘Zeitgeist’ properly.

30. For further details concerning social contrast and expertise ascription, see Quast (2019, § 4 f.).

31. This incoherent idea is prominently defended and used by Collins and Evans (2007, 15–8).

32. Etymologically, this certainly is the most original semantic contrast (cf. R. Williams 1985, 129). However, for reasons which I cannot explain at length, it is plausible to argue for the more fundamental contrast between expert and client (cf. Quast 2018; Grundmann 2017). Therefore, a group of laypersons should be considered as just one paradigmatic contrast class amongst others (for some alternatives, see Scholz 2018, 30).

33. The underlying idea is that expertise comprises a social service function, whereas competence needs to be understood exclusively along instrumental lines. However, this is not claiming that social contrasts are bluntly irrelevant in cases of competence ascription. Quite the contrary, it is obvious that these contrasts, for instance, are part and parcel of determining what it takes for an agent to perform reliably enough and so to be competent. This will become evident in Section ‘The Functional Dimensions of Expertise and Competence Ascriptions’.

34. In Quast (2019, § 4 f.) this social contrast of expertise ascriptions is explained by means of an indexical functionality in using ‘expertise’.

35. In what follows, a deontic difference is a difference in ought as opposed to an expert’s being suitably disposed.

36. It seems fair to mention that Williams’ actual focus is on epistemic performances, epistemic subjects, and knowledge ascriptions. Nevertheless, he sometimes explicitly extends the scope of his claims to general agency, agential subjects and achievements more broadly construed (cf. M. Williams 2013, 2015).

37. To understand this, just consider that chicken-sexers or similarly competent persons often cannot make the underlying rules of their actions explicit (cf. Stichter 2015, 112).

38. Recall that an expert’s function is understood here as part of its conceptual content (cf. note 13). This is similar to other notions like vegetable peeler, light switch, driveway, screwdriver, soap dish, clothes hanger, bookmark, circus tiger (cf. note 47). Thus, claiming someone to be an expert is already ascribing her a service role and thereby the corresponding obligations.

39. Thus, the disposition to serve (or Expertise_D-F) already incorporates primary and secondary competences as well as a relevantly virtuous character.

40. A plausible defeat can result from one-off violations of pertinent obligations, at least when they are grave enough, or can just as well be based on repeated minor violations. For the former case, think about an expert witness on the stand who refuses to give evidence for her claims. (‘The role of the expert […] finds perhaps its clearest expression in the archetypal figure of the expert witness before a court of law’ [Gelfert 2014, 182]). But this does not change the fact that every defeat of expertise ascriptions allows for some amount of vagueness and is subject to context-sensitivity (cf. Quast 2019, § 6).

41. Note that this is still compatible with the common intuition that a lack of competences is often much more damaging to an expert’s status than a lack of willingness to give an account of one’s performances. This is because a lack of relevant competence is usually harder to eradicate than a lack of corresponding willingness.

42. Notice that the talk about the individuation of expertise, competences or dispositions is straightforward and just means ‘to single these properties out’ (cf. Lowe 2003, 75 f.).

43. Does it require a contrastivist (a simple or a qualifies difference?), an absolutist (a maximalist or a less requiring measure) or even a combined threshold for being an expert? I have tried to answer these questions elsewhere on indexicalist and assessment sensitive grounds (cf. Quast 2019, § 6).

44. Notice that the issue of relativity, which comes down to the problem of setting adequate contrast classes in cases of expertise, is left out intentionally here. The reason that it can be neglected at this point is that competence ascriptions are not constitutively contrastive in a similar kind of way. This is claiming that, in contrast to competence, expertise can get lost due to changes in the salient contrast class, whereas competence is usually widely immune to bare Cambridge changes (cf. Quast 2019).

45. To recall, competences to serve always comprise primary and secondary competences to fulfill contextually appropriate service functions and therefore can be considered as higher order dispositions.

46. But then expertise ascriptions to hermits are not straightforwardly invalid, but somehow pointless nevertheless. Since they are removed from society, their competences do not matter so much if we already know them to be not at a client’s disposal. Even if a hermit is suitably disposed to fulfill the ascribed service function, its fulfillment and thus the manifestation of these dispositions is almost impossible due to her chosen hermitism. This is why expertise ascriptions to hermits are considered to be ultimately pointless.

47. We are already familiar with those hybrid kinds. Their existence is often reflected in our common names for things – for example, vegetable peeler, light switch, driveway, screwdriver, soap dish, clothes hanger, bookmark, circus tiger and so on (cf. Preston 1998, 243). Interestingly, each of these things is characterized by featuring certain dispositions on the one hand which are set to fulfill a descriptive function on the other. In this vein, a circus tiger can perform a series of trained tricks and is set to do so during performances, while a screwdriver has certain dispositions which are expedient for torment, for example, but are conceptually set to loosen and tighten screws.

48. For those who are still uncomfortable with an ascriptive approach to expertise, consider that it could be less demanding than it initially appears. The first and most obvious way to ascribe expertise is by declarative speech acts like the following: ‘From now on, you are our expert for financial concerns of any kind’. But these explicit ascriptions are the exception rather than the rule. Thus, a more implicit way of expertise ascription consists in intending someone to fulfill a service function for someone else. Such an intention can be, second, prior to the respective action or represents, third, an intention in action, to borrow a prominent phrase introduced by John R. Searle (1983, 83–98). In the former vein, you can visit a dentist to let her check your teeth without explicitly calling her an expert on these matters before. But nevertheless, by intentionally going to the check-up and receiving a service, expertise is ascribed more implicitly on the basis of your prior intention. In contrast, an expertise ascription in action is a case also worth considering in which no declarative speech act or prior intention can be identified. Rather, this is thought to be a case where the course of cooperative action itself determines whether expertise is implicitly ascribed or not. But these cases are highly controversial and open to further discussion. Anyway, at this juncture, it shall be sufficient to consider the possibility that expertise does not necessarily presuppose explicit or even declarative ascriptions but can also be considered to have a more implicit basis, whether this is based on prior intentions or on the behavior itself.

49. See note 45.

50. A more encompassing account of expertise is proposed in Quast (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Grant [number 239327984].

Notes on contributors

Christian Quast

Christian Quast is a researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Westphalian Wilhelms-University of Münster, Germany. His principal areas of research include general and social epistemology and the philosophy of action and expertise.