Developmental aspects of expertise: Rationality and generalization

Abstract

Successful attempts to explain expertise in human beings, or to capture its properties in expert systems, will have to contend with issues of rationality and generalization. Rationality and generalization pose enough difficulties on a purely synchronic basis. But an account of expertise must be diachronic—it must account for the development of rationality and generalization, even in those who are already experts. We describe the obstacles in the path of standard approaches to rationality and generalization, and present an alternative, interactivist treatment of rationality and its development (space forbids us to do likewise for generalization). In the interactivist account, rationality cannot be defined in general as adherence to the rules of a system of formal logic; we propose instead that rationality be understood in terms of the development of negative knowledge—knowing what kinds of errors to avoid. We examine the development of negative knowledge using examples from the history of science, and consider the consequences of an orientation towards negative knowledge for classroom instruction as well as the development of expert systems.