Outlines for a Metatheory of Expertise from the Veritistic Approach and Its Main Problems

Resumo

Whenever we think of expertise we think of someone who is either in a better or worse epistemic position than us regarding certain topic. Complications arise when we try to explain what makes up expertise: is epistemic asymmetry sufficient? How to characterize such asymmetry? Is it a matter of having more true beliefs (than)? These traits and others have already been claimed as defining features of expertise in many theories that attempt to answer the question "What is expertise?”. It is my understanding that the enterprise of providing a unified conception of expertise needs some clarification about what we should be looking for when trying to answer the question of what expertise is. I aim to examine Alvin Goldman’s conception of expertise and its most salient problems, and then extrapolate from those to a few general concerns that could be applied to competing theories of expertise. I end with a few provisional and expandable recommendations on how to approach the problem of the concept of expertise from a metatheoretical point of view.