Five pragmatist insights on scientific expertise

Autori

  • Mathias Girel Lab: République des Savoirs (CNRS-ENS-Collège de France), Centre Cavaillès. Institution: École normale supérieure-PSL, Paris.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v8i2.305

Parole chiave:

pragmatism, scientific expertise, skepticism, criteria, ignorance

Abstract

A common objection to a pragmatist perspective on scientific expertise is that, while there is a well-known pragmatist theory of inquiry, which was formulated first by Peirce, then refined by Dewey and others, this theory cannot provide a clear-cut account of scientific expertise. In this paper, after addressing this objection in the second section, I claim that, on the contrary, pragmatism offers robust tools to think scientific expertise. In Sections 3 to 7, I present five important insights that one can derive from a pragmatist epistemology when responding to contemporary problems posed by expertise: about science and scientific expertise in a legal context (sections 3 and 4), about collective expertise (sections 5 and 6), and even about expertise on ignorance (section 7).

##submission.downloads##

Pubblicato

2020-07-20

Fascicolo

V. 8 N. 2 (2020)

Sezione

Focus

Licenza

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work five (5) years after publication licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

After five years from first publication, Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.