Philosophical Expertise

Abstract

In this chapter we directly address one of the prominent objections to generalizing studies done on non-professional philosophers to experts in philosophy. The Expertise Defense holds that because of the special training, knowledge, or skills of professional philosophers, the potentially problematic biases found in non-professional philosophers will not likely be found in expert philosophers. To assess this argument, we provide a substantial discussion on how expertise is acquired. We focus on the facts that experts are always made and not born, general intelligence cannot explain all there is to expertise, and experts have different knowledge and skills than non-experts. We then use these general points to argue that philosophers are not likely to have the relevant kinds of learning environments, skills, or knowledge that prevents them from being biased in potentially problematic ways. We report results directly testing whether extraversion predicts compatibilist judgments about freedom and moral responsibility in philosophical experts, finding that indeed expert philosophers tend to be biased by their heritable personality traits. We conclude that without further evidence, we do not have reason to think that philosophical expertise will eliminate potentially problematic biases in philosophically relevant judgments.