A History and Philosophy of Expertise: The Nature and Limits of Authority

Description

In this comprehensive tour of the long history and philosophy of expertise, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Jamie Carlin Watson tackles the question of expertise and why we can be skeptical of what experts say, making a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophical debates on authority, testimony, disagreement and trust. His review sketches out the ancient origins of the concept, discussing its early association with cunning, skill and authority and covering the sort of training that ancient thinkers believed was required for expertise. Watson looks at the evolution of the expert in the middle ages into a type of “genius” or “innate talent” , moving to the role of psychological research in 16th-century Germany, the influence of Darwin, the impact of behaviorism and its interest to computer scientists, and its transformation into the largely cognitive concept psychologists study today. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Figures Preface: What Do Experts Look Like? Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Expertise and Its Discontents Chapter 2: English and Ancient Roots Chapter 3: Expertise from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century Chapter 4: A Brief History of Expertise Studies Chapter 5: Epistemic Placement and Expert Testimony Chapter 6: Expert Authority Chapter 7: The Easy Recognition Problem for Expertise Chapter 8: The Hard Recognition Problem, Disagreement, and Trust Notes References and Further Reading Index