Keith Douglas
Recap
Last time, Mike H. asked if I was following basketball. No, I have not followed any basketball this summer (isn’t it usually played over fall-winter?), and that does not appear to be the solution to the puzzle. I will give a hint to those who might want to still try it, rather than solve it. The elements spell out what I was going to be doing if reshuffled and read “correctly” (which is not to say standardly). At the time of writing, I have done one, and not the other, but will have started the second once you read this – if you are reading it in the column, rather than as my editor or reviewer. Also, if you do this naively, you may conclude that something about Pingston. (Yes, with a P.) This is wrong; try again – but putting it that way might give a clue to what I have in mind if one knows Canadian (or Jamaican!) geography.
This time…
I have dealt with expertise several times in this column in the past. I am increasingly thinking about it in the context of both AI and the lack of trust in institutions that seems to be only increasing lately. (I leave it to the reader to think if these are connected; perhaps another time we can address that.)
One way to analyze expertise is via the traditional fallacy of “appeal to illegitimate authority” – where the understanding is that experts are legitimate authorities. (Are they? Are there other kinds of legitimate authorities? More as we go.) I provide a list of human activities; some are professions, some are “just things we do”. For each one, I use it as an example area where given critical questions apply that might articulate one’s misgivings about the claim to the person being an expert. I leave the critical questions unanalyzed; you should analyze them too! I have not been able to systematically arrange these questions and so the “via example” is used instead.
- Professional wine taster. Matters of taste are subjective, so there are therefore no standards; therefore there is no way to tell correct from incorrect.
- Ethics. I took my two required courses in ethics as an undergraduate philosophy student with Sarah Stroud. She, in both courses, said she was not an expert in being ethical, nor would most ethicists claim this, but would claim she was an expert (to some degree) in the subject of ethics, which was distinct. Her remark suggests: is there a contrast between knowing about something vs. knowing about doing something? Even if that’s “the same thing”? When is it the “same thing”?
- How to ride a bicycle. Famously, when we are taught almost any sport, there comes a time when your teacher (a parent, say) will simply say “get on it and try”. So, can one be an expert in something one cannot articulate? If that were so, how are there coaches and trainers for people who do professional bicycling? Also consider the case of my friend who teaches stringed instruments – sometimes she moves her student’s hands and arms to show how to do something. She is clearly (? – see 1) an expert cellist, but does that extend to every part, including this? In general, does knowledge have to be statable in some way?
- Software development. If one takes up a few videos and written texts on this subject at random and then follows their references repeatedly until the group of people start to form clusters, one concludes that there are a certain number of at least well-connected software developers in the world. Are these experts? Popularity itself cannot be why they are experts (why is this?), but could it be a fallible indicator that they are? (Aside: I have done this exact exercise at work and continue to do so. What do you think the reaction was to what I found?)
- Critical thinking. Teachers of critical thinking (including me, I guess) often say that their field is omniapplicable. Yet, when (say) notions of logical validity are brought up in the context of some fields for which the critical thinking expert (?) does not claim expertise, those who hold the views being criticized often say that “you are not getting it, you’re not an expert, your standards don’t apply here”. Are there standards of expertise that are cross-cutting and omniapplicable like this? What would they be? (Logic is the example here; are there more? Is it right to include logic?)
- Cyber security. (Another one that is close to home for me!) Manuals of application security tell the reader to look for so-called business logic flaws in systems when assessing, penetration testing, etc. One example from my own training was a bank, and the students were asked to consider what happens if the users of a banking application were able to withdraw more money than an account had. In particular, whether or not the offensive cybersecurity professional analyzing such an application should be testing such matters. The answer, by an organization often (and in my view, correctly) regarded as experts (why are SANS so regarded? How does one attribute expertise to a group, especially one of variable composition?) in the cybersecurity field, say, emphatically and without ambiguity: “YES!!!” By contrast, I have sometimes been told that I must not evaluate a system in what I regarded as an analogous way because I am not an expert in the subject domain. I think it is fair to say that if no computing systems are in any way involved, there is no cyber security. So, we are not dealing with a case of omniapplicability like the previous, but a restricted area. Does one need expertise in banking to work on cyber security for a bank? You can start your thinking by analyzing what precisely one needs to know to understand why my teacher and the course materials were so emphatic here. Does one need to know arbitrary “business logic” to perform my profession? How does one acquire that knowledge, and how does one tell that one has enough expertise (is expertise a matter of degree?) to use it?
- Theology. As someone who does not believe in any gods, I have sometimes been told that my views on theology are uninformed, because I have not read such and such a text by a theologian or philosopher of religion. Is there expertise possible in a field that (in my view) has no object of study? At McGill, the joke was that theology was the study of religion for those who believed; religious studies was the study of religion socially (etc.). The joke ignored that one of the most famous religious studies professors was a Buddhist monk – who presumably (?) believed (though maybe not in gods – what are “kami”, and what role do they have in Japanese Buddhism, as opposed to Shinto?). Do these latter facts matter?
- Pseudoscience. Can one be an expert in a subject that grossly misunderstands its objects? For example, is homeopathy subject to expertise given that homeopathy grossly misunderstands (for example) the nature of solutions? This consideration could also be put in terms of the question of what E. O. Wilson dubbed consilience, or Bunge’s notion of convergence (which are not quite the same, but we can treat them as such here). Namely, can one be an expert in a field if those in an adjacent field do not recognize you as such? For example, I doubt many chemists would find homeopaths to be experts in at least the composition of their products.
- Physiology vs. anatomy. High school students are told that anatomy studies structure and physiology studies function. Yet if one went to a physiologist (as someone like me) and asked them to describe the structure of an organ, I suspect I would be able to learn something from them. Are they experts? In what? Can there be expertise in what something does rather than what it is made of? Is what something does really that independent of what it is made of? In chemistry, one often classifies based on reactions that give clues as to structure: could there be an expert in chemical structure that disclaimed expertise in function? If your view is different in chemistry vs. the biosciences we started with, why?
- Popular culture. My mother once said I am an expert in Star Trek because I know so much about it. Ignoring how much I know and whether I know enough, for now, consider the field. Can one be an expert in something that is so trivial? Note: I remember episodes, quotations, characters, and such. My mother does not mean I have expertise in (say) the sociology of the fandom. How does this relate to folklore studies, a field that grants PhDs, etc.? If one thinks that my knowledge of Star Trek is not knowledge of folklore, why is this?
- Philosophy (personally). I often say (because I have earned some graduate degrees in and around the subject) I count as an expert of sorts in the subfields of philosophy that I took many courses in, wrote theses on, etc. But I also say that because I have no PhD, I am not an expert relative to someone who has that degree. (So, at work in Statistics Canada’s cyber security unit, I am there an expert philosopher; I am not if in a room at the computing and philosophy conferences where there are – say – nothing but tenured professors.) Can one be a relative expert? When I told this story to Ed Zalta (the editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), he said he could tell from my talk at the conference where we had just spent the day that I was, degree or not, an expert in the metaphysics of computing, at least. Is he right to do this? (I am not asking you to judge his conclusion, but his method – if any.) Does your answer change if you know that I continue to read in the subject, discuss it with others, write columns like this one …?
- Psychology. There are of course degrees and professional qualifications in this field. My sister, for example, has such. However, there are people who claim that one cannot be an expert in psychology for “only god knows the human soul”, that the scientific approach to problems in motivation, etc. is not applicable. Or, alternatively, that expertise in psychology is not acquired (even in part) through the classroom, clinic, etc., that my sister used, but some other way. For example, I have a collection of works by Kierkegaard that call him a “penetrating psychologist”. What would resolve this dispute – is there a way in which both Kierkegaard and my sister can be experts in psychology? He writes satire and autobiographical remarks and what are often called religious meditations – my sister (at least professionally, it seems) does none of these. Is there enough in common to make that “they both are” judgement? Alternatively, if one is and the other is not, how does one tell? Do the professional qualifications make a difference? Why? Consider the “wag” who offers the idea that Kierkegaard is more likely to be an expert psychologist precisely because my sister has a PhD, etc.?
That will do for now. If you have any other interesting cases (I have more myself!), ask about them, analyze them, etc. in the comments below.
¹ This is interesting in light of my first course in ethics – in CEGEP I was also required to take an ethics course, and the one I took was called “Becoming Ethical”.