Chicken-sexers exist. It is a fact that there are experts in this and
many other domains. It is also a fact that some philosophers, often epistemologists, take
the fact of expertise to be bound up somehow or other with rationality. The standard
articulation of this connection is that a rational way of proceeding on a matter of
importance when one lacks knowledge is to consult experts. But does this view capture the
full significance of the fact of expertise for rationality? In this paper I will argue
that the fact of expertise has import beyond the standard view for the analysis of
rationality. I will proceed by first considering in more detail the standard view, and
then jump off from that discussion to draw a different lesson for our understanding of
rationality from the fact of expertise.
It would seem that the connection between expertise and rationality is
so obvious as to be mundane: when one lacks expertise on a given matter of importance, and
there are people who have that expertise and who can be consulted without undue cost, then
(ceteris paribus) one should consult such people. This prescription links expertise
and rationality by means of expert-consultation. When our cars are kaputt, when our
tooth aches, when the soufflé collapses, when our French falls short, and when our
business lacks efficiency we consult the appropriate experts in order to believe and
behave in ways that are sufficiently non-arbitrary so as to count as rational. Expert
consultation is thus a resource for rationality: we have the remarkable cognitive ability
to let the outcome of expert consultation affect what we believe. (1)
The preceding paragraph captures in a simplified way the powerful idea
that the connection between expertise and rationality is that of expert consultation. The
idea is so persuasive that it is often assumed without reflection to be the first and last
word on the matter of expertise and rationality. The obviousness of the idea is such that
many a philosopher has never even considered what other connections there might be between
expertise and rationality, and thus talk of expertise has been unwittingly been
reduced to talk of expert consultation. Yet there are difficulties with this expert
consultation idea, and there are other lessons that can be learned about rationality from
the fact of expertise. Some such lessons will begin to emerge in the course of my
discussion of some objections to the expert consultation idea.
Objections to Expert Consultation
A. To begin with an extreme objection, the idea that expert
consultation plays a role in rationality might meet with skepticism or even derision at
its mere mention. History is replete with deleterious propositions and proclamations
grounded in "appeals to authority". And many a student has walked away from a
logic course with the belief that any appeal to authority is an informal fallacy. Yet it
is nevertheless the case that the seeking out of expertise is often part of a rational
process (see Coleman 1995 for discussion of the stronger claim that there is no
fallacy in arguing from authority).
It is somewhat misleading of certain logic texts to give the name
"appeal to authority" to a certain informal fallacy (e.g., Hurley, 1991, p.
126). Not all appeals to authority are fallacious, despite what some undergraduates end up
believing. It is perfectly legitimate, after all, for one learning to play Schumann's Träumerei
to listen to a recording of Horowitz playing it. The label 'appeal to authority' should
rather be reserved for a general pattern of inference which is sometimes used legitimately
and sometimes used illegitimately. (2) When the correct kind
of content is inserted into that pattern we might call that a case of expert consultation;
when bad content is inserted we have the fallacy of argumentum ad vericundiam (see
MacKenzie, 1988, pp. 57-8 for a comparison of Irving Copi and John Locke on the use of
this term).
As for the history objection, one response is to note that some (e.g.,
John Locke in the First Treatise) have endeavored to abolish certain abused appeals
to authority (often in order to allow for legitimate appeals to authority), another is to
admit that even experts are fallible, and a third is to note that history is also replete
with many sane propositions and proclamations grounded in appeals to authority.
B. A second objection to the consulting experts idea might be called
"the wild implausibility objection". This objection holds that it would be
wildly implausible to require of rational beliefs that they be actually tested
against expert opinions, for many of our ordinary beliefs seem rational enough even though
we do not consult experts. (3) We do, after all, manage
rationally to arrange birthday parties at Sea World and change our plans upon seeing pests
at the shopping mall. It is perhaps even admirable the way most of us manage to complete
the dreary tasks of everyday life, given that each day we must sort through the changing
circumstances to see what bits of information suggest an alteration. It seems that many of
us are experts in many things — consider the difficulties Socrates would have in
navigating through a modern shopping "maul". The point is that it seems
ridiculous to consult experts when we ourselves are expert enough in an enormous number of
everyday tasks. The point can be made more starkly by considering how we would design a
being to do these tasks (see Pollock, 1989). What we would want is a being who does not
need to consult others to function rationally; if the being is unable to achieve expertise
in these matters, then we would not only be bad engineers, but also the creators of a
pest.
The wild implausibility objection might tempt one into rephrasing the
expert consultation requirement into the subjunctive mood. Instead of saying that
rationality requires that beliefs be actually checked against expert opinions, one
could say that such rational beliefs are those that would stand up to expert
consultation. A problem with this rephrasing-suggestion is that it is not true to human
fallibility. Too often we are surprised to find that what we thought would stand up to
expert consultation does not.
Another and better way to meet the wild implausibility objection is
simply to deny that expert consultation is a necessary condition for all cases of
rationality. This suggestion waters down the expert consultation idea, but not completely.
Expert consultation is one resource for being rational. As for the matter of
everyday competent cognition, I will below talk of expert-imitation and suggest
that this ability is one that can serve as a rational resource.
C. Another sticking point with the expert consultation idea is that
in-itself it leaves mysterious the special normative status of the expert. When the
layperson consults an expert the layperson assumes the epistemic authority of expertise,
but what is it about the expert such that the expert's beliefs carry a special epistemic
status? The answer, not surprisingly, would seem to involve training, experience,
inculcating epistemic virtues, and refining perception, and I will quickly review one
epistemological discussion of these matters. But what is perhaps most significant in this
review is to note that accounting for the epistemic authority of the expert does not seem
to entail that the expert be in possession of rules that the layperson doesn't have.
George Pappas, in his 'Experts', asks '...what is it that experts do or
fail to do in their acquisition of new knowledge in their subject matters?' (Forthcoming,
p. 1). Pappas examines the concept of expert as found in both ordinary usage and
psychological literature. One kind of expert that Pappas identifies is the
strategy-expert:
...[a strategy expert is] one who has certain strategies
for acquiring new knowledge in a given subject, strategies which are different than those
used by the novice and which procure speedy results (p. 5), e.g., a physicist solving a
problem.
Pappas focuses on strategy-experts because he finds their abilities and
achievements most intriguing, and also because empirical evidence about such experts
suggests that '...we need to make room in our epistemological position for some
immediately justified items' (p. 16). Pappas suggests:
Perhaps as a novice the strategy-expert went through a sequence
of steps, a prescribed bit of learned reasoning that led to early knowledge acquisition in
the subject area. But now, as an expert, that set of routines is no longer relied upon.
Something else is operative in the case of this sort (p. 5).
Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1990) have made this same point about driving,
chess, and moral development. But what is this 'something else' operating in the case of
the person who no longer consults rules? A standard move is to claim that the person, now
an expert, has internalized the rules; on this view an expert is a fast, fluent, and
"unconscious" rule-executor. But this is not the only story that can be told;
just as compatible with the evidence is the claim that in leaving rule-following the
expert leaves rules altogether!
D. What ought to be done with the outcomes of expert consultation? It
is sometimes rational not to accept expert recommendations, and this suggests that what is
needed is a theory of what the rational relation between the expert and layperson is.
Robert Pierson (1993) claims that expertise is of two basic sorts:
closed-system oriented and lay-person oriented. He uses this distinction to make the
following claim: there is no rational room for lay evaluation when it comes to
closed-system expert claims, but the layperson is rationally obliged to evaluate
expert claims of the second sort. On the way to making this claim Pierson sets up a sort
of dialectic between John Hardwig and Steve Fuller. As Pierson describes it, Hardwig holds
that '...as a general policy it is more rational to defer to the authority of experts
rather than to think for oneself' (p. 2). And Pierson attributes to Fuller the view that
'...generally speaking, we must think for ourselves' (p. 2). Pierson ultimately argues
that Hardwig and Fuller are talking past each other, and that the relationship between
expert and layperson is more complex than either Hardwig or Fuller thinks (p. 20).
Pierson claims that the following three ideas are being mixed up in the
Hardwig/Fuller papers:
One is the claim that we believe more than we could reasonably
be expected to have the relevant evidence for, therefore we must trust others...Another is
that expertise is closed system-oriented, with the implication that criticism can only be
intra-systematic...And another is cost-benefit analysis, that when one decides what to do,
one should act so as to maximize utility or information (p. 10).
Pierson proceeds to claim that Hardwig is mistaken in thinking that the
second claim is needed to support the first claim, whereas Fuller is mistaken in thinking
that Hardwig's main interest is in the second claim, and so Fuller argues against that
claim by supporting the third claim (p. 10). What Pierson attempts to do is reconcile
these three claims by making the distinction between closed-system expertise and
layperson-oriented expertise:
When a doctor diagnoses a patient as having premature
ventricular contractions, she is operating within the boundaries of her discipline —
she is doing cardiology — and so there is no rational room for lay dissent. However,
when the doctor recommends that the patient visit a cardiologist for care of her irregular
heartbeat, she is stepping beyond her discipline of cardiology to "advise" that
person about treatment. In such cases, she is no longer simply controlling and
manipulating her discipline's defining set of variables, but is recommending changes to
the layperson's virtually unlimited set of variables (p. 18).
In the latter case, the expert is not on a superior epistemic footing
to the layperson. Pierson goes so far as to assert '...any claim with respect to how
"I" ought to govern "my" life can only be rationally determined,
assuming I am relatively sane, by "me" (p. 19). Although I am not willing to go
this far — why can't I tell someone wiser than I my nonepistemic ends? — the
main point I want to stress is that Pierson still finds a place in his scheme for expert
consultation even though he admits that it is not always rational to accept the outcomes
of it.
E. Here is another fairly obvious objection to the expert consultation
idea: why is it rational to let expert recommendations affect what we believe when experts
disagree amongst themselves? In medical matters, for example, one is often told to get a
second opinion, but then almost never told what to do when that opinion contradicts the
first opinion. And it is not always rational to get yet more opinions and then side with
the majority of experts, e.g., when a particularly highly-regarded expert is in the
minority. The point is that expert-expert interaction can have a bearing on expert-lay
interaction. And thus there are two kinds of interactions at issue here. In addition to
the layperson-difficulties that arise from the fact of expert disagreement, there is also
the matter of what is rational for the expert to believe and do in the face of expert
disagreement. For present I will offer but one remark about the layperson difficulties.
What is rational for the layperson in the face of expert disagreement?
Is it rational for the layperson to conclude, upon noting expert disagreement, with the
layperson's own belief? The answer here, I suggest, is most often no. The layperson often
has no other rational resource available. It is rather the case that the layperson would
proceed rationally by heeding an expert because either of the disagreeing expert
recommendations is still superior to a random guess! (4)
* * *
The foregoing discussion should make it clear that while I am aware of
objections to the expert consultation idea, I think there are lines of response — or
at least partial response — available. I am therefore not out to disparage expert
consultation as a resource for rationality; I think it often serves as one. But I am out
to identify other ways in which the fact of expertise bears on rationality; I am not
content to let the epistemic import of expertise be understood merely in terms of expert
consultation.
Further Connections Between Expertise and Rationality
A first point is that the expert provides a model for thinking
about the rational agent. The way in which the expert develops physical and cognitive
skills, the way in which the expert arrives at conclusions, the way in which the expert
transforms from the novice stage, and the flexible and adaptable way in which the expert
handles novel situations are just some of the features of expertise that could and indeed
should inform accounts of rationality. This general point can be illustrated by
underscoring an observation that has been made by Pappas, Dreyfus and Dreyfus, Brown, and
others. They note that experts in their expertise do not follow rules! However it
is that experts arrive at beliefs and behaviors, it is pretty clear that they do not get
there by consciously consulting algorithms. Experts are not limited to rule-following;
they have a non-rule-following ability. The analogy I urge is that the rational agent
should be conceived of as having some non-rule-following abilities for arriving at
epistemically normative results. The rational agent, like the expert, is cognitively more
diverse than a mere rule-following being. This model of the rational agent carries with it
at least the following two advantages. First, the model allows us to preserve many
important prima facie cases of rationality. The idea of non-rule-following rational
abilities is of great help in accounting for how cognitively-limited humans manage
to be rational even in those cases where rule-following is not tractably possible (see,
e.g., Cherniak, 1986). Second, the model allows for a conception of an agent flexible
enough to handle rationally the highly-variable and nuanced contexts of real life. Context
sensitivity is just as much a part of rationality as following a set of rules.
The second lesson is that expert-imitation is just as good if
not better than expert-consultation in accounting for some rational beliefs and behaviors.
We do not merely consult experts, we imitate them! Kvanvig is one philosopher who stresses
the importance of expert-imitation for those making their way down the path to cognitive
ideality (1991, p. 172). The point I want to make is that our ability to imitate
experts (and not merely to consult experts) is one resource we have for arriving at
beliefs and behaviors that can be non-arbitrary enough to count as rational.
To conclude, the fact of expertise has more import than many have
recognized for the theory of rationality. One general lesson for our understanding of
rationality is that the fact of expertise serves to focus our attention on the range of
cognitive abilities that can serve as rational resources. Experts have abilities that
allow them to proceed expertly in flexible, non-rule-following ways, and this provides
impetus for moving away from thinking about the rational agent solely in terms of a being
that arrives at beliefs by following rational principles. The fact of expertise also
provides us with a specific example of such a non-rule-following ability that can serve as
a rational resource, viz., the ability to imitate experts.
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