Rethinking Moral Expertise

Abstract

We argue that the way in which the concept of expertise is understood and invoked has prevented progress in the debate as to whether moral philosophers can be said to be 'moral experts'. We offer an account of expertise that draws on the role of tacit knowledge in order to provide a basis upon which the debate can progress. Our analysis consists of three parts. In the first part we highlight two specific problems in the way that the concept of expertise has been invoked in the moral expertise debate, namely the understanding of expertise as an exclusive concept and the conflation of expertise with the idea of 'authority'. In the second part we suggest an alternative way of approaching the concept of expertise. This is based on Collins and Evans' sociological theory of expertises. This theory provides a valuable analytical framework for thinking about claims to expertise and for drawing the kinds of distinctions which allow for different kinds of moral expertises and competencies. In the final part, we show how the application of this theory helps to avoid some of the problematic conclusions which theorists have arrived at to date and provides a common platform for debate. Ultimately, it permits the argument to be made that moral philosophers could be considered specialist members of an expert community of moral decision-makers.

Core competencies for ethics experts in health technology assessment

“…This criticism of ethics expertise assumes that expertise consists of absolute authority (i.e., only experts have the authority to speak on matters within their domain) and is exclusionary (i.e., only experts show elite performance or are better in making judgments within their domain) (15). But, as concluded above, the competency associated with expertise consists of both explicit and tacit knowledge, can be acquired by formal and social learning, and is distributed among a population and occurs in a continuum.…”

“…This makes the identification of experts not always easy, particularly in those cases where the body of knowledge is ubiquitous. For example, all people at least have the capacity to make moral judgments, that is, choices about the right thing to do in a moral dilemma (15). But does this mean that they are experts in making these judgments?…”

“…To help answer these questions, Priaulx et al (15) applied Collins and Evans’ theory of expertise (13;16) to the concept of ethics expertise. Collins and Evans’ concept of expertise can also be applied to illuminate the nature of expertise for other types of judgments, such as claims on causal associations or regarding cost-effectiveness.…”

“…For example, to become a competent astrophysicist, “it is not sufficient to just live in a country where astrophysics is practiced by a subset of the population. What is needed to gain "fluency" is to immerse oneself into the community of astrophysicists, either by enrolling in a University course and then working in the field or by talking to astrophysicists on a regular basis about domain-relevant ‘stuff’” (15).…”

“…As Priaulx et al note (15), the conclusion is that “it is neither necessary nor sufficient that one is a moral philosopher in order to make a claim of moral expertise.” Nevertheless, moral philosophers hold a particular status: in fact, “only the moral philosopher has tacit knowledge that allows them, for example, to know when to take a particular journal article or author seriously, how to convey an advancement in moral argument to a philosophy conference, or to recognize patterns in critical approaches to certain types of moral argument” (15). In this sense, it is possible to argue that they have privileged but not exclusive access to this role.…”