Emergent Expertise?

Abstract

The concept of emergence appears in various places within the literature on expertise and expert practice. Here, I examine some of these applications of emergence in the light of two prominent accounts of emergence from the philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. I evaluate these accounts with respect to several specific contexts in which emergence seems to be an appropriate way of characterizing expertise in groups. While it is sometimes assumed that emergent phenomena are in some way inexplicable, the two accounts of emergence I discuss highlight ways in which the concept of emergence relates to specific styles of explanation.

Keywords:

• emergence
• expertise
• group cognition

Notes

1. Note that the ‘surprising’ nature of the emergent behavior is only meant to underscore the idea that it is distinct from the local behavior of the system’s components, i.e. the idea that there is a difference between the emergent pile-forming system and one where pile-forming behavior is explicitly programmed into each termite. The claim is not that the pile-forming behavior of the collective is unpredictable, at least not in any general sense, since the example described is itself a simulation, and simulation is arguably a method of prediction.

2. It might seem that these are distinct by definition, in that the structural variations relevant to emergence are internal to a systems whereas the circumstantial ones relevant to expertise are external. However, while the first part of this point seems correct, the second part is more difficult to evaluate. Not only does it seem natural to expect experts to continue to perform successfully under various perturbations that are straightforwardly ‘internal’ (on a full or an empty stomach, say) any external variation will presumably have internal consequences as well. After all, experts presumably notice variations in their circumstances (as we all do) and that will involve some kind of internal variation.

3. Actually, the ‘expert’s’ answers were only announced as the correct one in six of eight rounds; in the other two rounds, a randomly chosen answer from the other possibilities was chosen.