This paper focuses on the phenomenon of forming one’s judgement about epistemic matters, such as whether one has some reason not to believe false propositions, on the basis of the opinion of somebody one takes to be an expert about them. The paper pursues three aims. First, it argues that some cases of expert deference about epistemic matters are suspicious. Secondly, it provides an explanation of such a suspiciousness. Thirdly, it draws the metaepistemological implications of the proposed (...) explanation. (shrink)

Principles of expert deference say that you should align your credences with those of an expert. This expert could be your doctor, the objective chances, or your future self, after you've learnt something new. These kinds of principles face difficulties in cases in which you are uncertain of the truth-conditions of the thoughts in which you invest credence, as well as cases in which the thoughts have different truth-conditions for you and the expert. For instance, (...) you shouldn't defer to your doctor by aligning your credence in the de se thought 'I am sick' with the doctor's credence in that same de se thought. Here, I generalise principles of expert deference to handle these kinds of problem cases. (shrink)

We sometimes seek expert guidance when we don’t know what to think or do about a problem. In challenging cases concerning medical ethics, we may seek a clinical ethics consultation for guidance. The assumption is that the bioethicist, as an expert on ethical issues, has knowledge and skills that can help us better think about the problem and improve our understanding of what to do regarding the issue. The widespread practice of ethics consultations raises these questions and more: (...) -/- • What would it take to be a moral expert? • Is anyone a moral expert, and if so, how could a non-expert identify one? • Is it in any way problematic to accept and follow the advice of a moral expert as opposed to coming to moral conclusions on your own? • What should we think and do when moral experts disagree about a practical ethical issue? -/- In what follows, we address these theoretical and practical questions about moral expertise. (shrink)

When an agent learns of an expert's credence in a proposition about which they are an expert, the agent should defer to the expert and adopt that credence as their own. This is a popular thought about how agents ought to respond to (ideal) experts. In a Bayesian framework, it is often modelled by endowing the agent with a set of priors that achieves this result. But this model faces a number of challenges, especially when applied to (...) non-ideal agents (who nevertheless interact with ideal experts). I outline these problems, and use them as desiderata for the development of a new model. Taking inspiration from Richard Jeffrey's development of Jeffrey conditioning, I develop a model in which expert reports are taken as exogenous constraints on the agent's posterior probabilities. I show how this model can handle a much wider class of expert reports (for example reports of conditional probabilities), and can be naturally extended to cover propositions for which the agent has no prior. (shrink)

We sometimes seek expert guidance when we don’t know what to think or do about a problem. In challenging cases concerning medical ethics, we may seek a clinical ethics consultation for guidance. The assumption is that the bioethicist, as an expert on ethical issues, has knowledge and skills that can help us better think about the problem and improve our understanding of what to do regarding the issue.The widespread practice of ethics consultations raises these questions and more:What would (...) it take to be a moral expert?Is anyone a moral expert, and if so, how could a non-expert identify one?Is it in any way problematic to accept and follow the advice of a moral expert as opposed to coming to moral conclusions on your own?What should we think and do when moral experts disagree about a practical ethical issue?In what follows, we address these theoretical and practical questions about moral expertise. (shrink)

The standard principle of expert deference says that conditional on the expert’s credence in a proposition _A_ being _x_, your credence in _A_ ought to be _x_. The so-called Adams conditionalization is an attractive update rule in situations when learning experience prompts a shift in your conditional credences. In this paper, I show that, except in some trivial situations, when your prior conditional credence in _A_ obeys the standard principle of expert deference and then is (...) revised by Adams conditionalization in response to a shift in your conditional credence for a proposition _B_ given _A_, your posterior conditional credence in _A_ cannot continue to obey that principle, on pain of inconsistency. I explain why this tension between Adams conditionalization and the standard principle of expert deference is puzzling and why the option of rejecting the update rule appears problematic. Finally, I suggest that in order to avoid this inconsistency, we should abandon the standard principle of expert deference and think of an expert’s probabilistic opinion as a constraint on your posterior credence distribution rather than your prior one. (shrink)

Especially but not exclusively in the United States, there is a significant gulf between expert opinion and public opinion on a range of important political, social, and scientific issues. Large numbers of lay people hold views contrary to the expert consensus on topics such as climate change, vaccines, and economics. Much political commentary assumes that ordinary people should defer to experts more than they do, and this view is certainly lent force by the literally deadly effects of many (...) denials of established science. But there are complex philosophical issues here, concerning, among other things, (i) what an expert is; (ii) what kind of deference is called for; (iii) and when deference is called for. This entry gives an overview of these three issues and recent work on them. It then examines some potential collective and pragmatic disadvantages of deference, before concluding with reflections on what we can say to those who distrust experts. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the debate on expert evidence has constantly been growing. This article tries to give two separate contributions to a subsection of this debate, the one related to the alternative between deference and education. First, it contains an attack to the arguments that Ronald Allen and others have given in favor of the thesis according to which experts should perform a merely educational role at trial. Second, it maintains that the question of whether (...) fact finders should ever “defer” to experts or should be allowed to draw on their opinions only if they “understand” them should be clarified by introducing a distinction between two different senses “deference”, which is paralleled by a similar distinction between two senses of “understanding”. (shrink)

Scientists and their supporters often portray as exasperatingly irrational all those laypersons who refuse to accede to practical recommendations issued by expert scientists and 'science appliers'. After first considering the latter groups’ standard explanations for such non-deference, which focus upon irrationalities besetting the laity, I will propose that a better explanation for at least some of the non-deference is that many laypersons are rationally electing to substitute their own judgments for those urged upon them by the scientific (...) community. Science-based recommendations, as I treat them, have the general form In light of the science on X, if you seek outcome O, you ought to V. Non-deferring laypersons deny the soundness or cogency of the V-supporting argumentation—though they are supposedly not competent to do so, given their gross epistemic inferiority to the scientific authorities who create and endorse the arguments. On account of thus being epistemically irrational, they end up being instrumentally irrational, pursuing courses of action that are poor choices for serving their own interests. The non-deferring laypersons are thought to violate two mandates of rationality: for internal deference to the underlying science as true enough to constitute an unproblematic background for decisionmaking, and for external deference to the practical application of that science to the concrete extra-scientific circumstances in question. I claim that rationality does not require categorical adherence to these mandates. In any given case, non-deference by some laypersons might be warranted by one or more of four distinct rationales. 1. Value-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly includes non-scientific value-choice or value-weighting assumptions. It embodies a certain prioritizing of the plurality of specific values packed within its O parameter, and some laypersons may permissibly substitute their own. 2. Non-scientific-reasoning-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly relies upon reasoning moves that are not distinctive to science, moves whose critical assessment demands no scientific expertise. Error-free reasoning is difficult to attain, and the laypersons may justifiably take themselves to have found weaknesses in the V-supporting argumentation that undermine the case for conformity to the recommendation. 3. Overgeneralization: The science-based recommendation discernibly is not adequately tailored to the specific situation of the laypersons in question. 4. Untrustworthy science: The science-based recommendation discernibly is based upon scientific research that is of doubtful quality. The first three rationales cast doubt upon the External Deference Mandate, questioning not the existence of sound underlying research but the recommendation’s judgments about how this research ought to be applied. The fourth is a challenge to the Internal Deference Mandate. (shrink)

The involvement of ethicists, philosophers or others who might qualify as ‘moral experts’ in policy-development, where they are sometimes, typically as members of a committee, given an advisory role, is often seen as problematic, for several reasons. First, there may be doubts as to the very existence of moral experts, and it may be hard to know who the moral experts are. Next, even if these problems are solved, giving experts a special role in policy-making might be problematic from a (...) democratic point of view, if it involves politicians deferring to the moral judgements of experts. The paper considers possible replies to this problem of moral deference. One reply is that moral deference is unnecessary, because even moral non-experts are well equipped to assess the arguments offered by moral experts; I argue that this reply underestimates the complexity of moral arguments. Another reply is that if moral experts are simply given the ‘technical’ role of clarifying which concrete positions that follow from the values which decision-makers already accept, deference is not problematic. I will argue that this reply underestimates how a given set of moral values underdetermines which concrete positions follow from it. Finally, I will consider and defend the reply that since policy decisions are subject to a requirement that they be justified within the limits of public reason, and since these limits include a requirement that the justification be accessible, moral experts are barred from providing policy advice which rests on too complex moral arguments. (shrink)

Deference principles are principles that describe when, and to what extent, it’s rational to defer to others. Recently, some authors have used such principles to argue for Evidential Uniqueness, the claim that for every batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that it’s permissible for subjects with that total evidence to have. This paper has two aims. The first aim is to assess these deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. I’ll show that these arguments only work given a (...) particular kind of deference principle, and I’ll argue that there are reasons to reject these kinds of principles. The second aim of this paper is to spell out what a plausible generalized deference principle looks like. I’ll start by offering a principled rationale for taking deference to constrain rational belief. Then I’ll flesh out the kind of deference principle suggested by this rationale. Finally, I’ll show that this principle is both more plausible and more general than the principles used in the deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

There are many kinds of epistemic experts to which we might wish to defer in setting our credences. These include: highly rational agents, objective chances, our own future credences, our own current credences, and evidential probabilities. But exactly what constraint does a deference requirement place on an agent's credences? In this paper we consider three answers, inspired by three principles that have been proposed for deference to objective chances. We consider how these options fare when applied to the (...) other kinds of epistemic experts mentioned above. Of the three deference principles we consider, we argue that two of the options face insuperable difficulties. The third, on the other hand, fares well|at least when it is applied in a particular way. (shrink)

There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem often to be no worse informed or any less rational than the majority of those who accept it. It is also tempting to try to explain (...) these beliefs by reference to epistemic overconfidence. However, this kind of overconfidence is apparently ubiquitous, so by itself it cannot explain the difference between those who accept and those who reject expert views. Instead, I will suggest that the difference is in important part explained by differential patterns of epistemic deference, and these patterns, in turn, are explained by the cues that we use to filter testimony. We rely on cues of benevolence and competence to distinguish reliable from unreliable testifiers, but when debates become deeply politicized, asserting a claim may itself constitute signalling lack of reliability. (shrink)

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to (...) make any decision using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

Chance both guides our credences and is an objective feature of the world. How and why we should conform our credences to chance depends on the underlying metaphysical account of what chance is. I use considerations of accuracy (how close your credences come to truth-values) to propose a new way of deferring to chance. The principle I endorse, called the Trust Principle, requires chance to be a good guide to the world, permits modest chances, tells us how to listen to (...) chance even when the chances are modest, and entails but is not entailed by the New Principle. As I show, a rational agent will obey this principle if and only if she expects chance to be at least as accurate as she is on every good way of measuring accuracy. Much of the discussion, and the technical results, extend beyond chance to deference to any kind of expert. Indeed, you will trust someone about a particular question just in case you expect that person to be more accurate than you are about that question. (shrink)

Deference to experts is normal in many areas of inquiry, but suspicious in morality. This is puzzling if one thinks that morality is relevantly like those other areas of inquiry. We argue that this suspiciousness can be explained in terms of the suspiciousness of deferring to an epistemic peer. We then argue that this explanation is preferable to others in the literature, and explore some metaethical implications of this result.

This paper uses the case-study of controversy over the MMT vaccine to suggest that non-expert audiences might have a fairness-based "political" obligation to defer to expert scientific consensus. The first part of the paper notes various reasons why it is implausible to argue that non-experts are epistemically obliged to defer to the consensus. The second draws on the literature on vaccination ethics more generally to argue for the alternative political obligation to defer. The third section considers some objections, (...) and the conclusion discusses how recognising such an obligation might alter contemporary debates. (shrink)

How should we adjust our beliefs in light of the testimony of those who are in a better epistemic position than ourselves, such as experts and other epistemic superiors? In this paper, I develop and defend a deference model of epistemic authority. The paper attempts to resolve the debate between the preemption view and the total evidence view of epistemic authority by taking an accuracy-first approach to the issue of how we should respond to authoritative and expert testimony. (...) I argue that when we look at the debate through the lens of accuracy, it becomes clear that matters are more complicated than either the preemption view or the total evidence view are able to account for. Consequently, a deference model, outlined within a credence-based framework, does a better job of capturing the relevant phenomena, and explaining how we should update our beliefs in response to epistemically authoritative testimony. (shrink)

A norm of local expert deference says that your credence in an arbitrary proposition A, given that the expert's probability for A is n, should be n. A norm of global expert deference says that your credence in A, given that the expert's entire probability function is E, should be E(A). Gaifman (1988) taught us that these two norms are not equivalent. Stalnaker (2019) conjectures that Gaifman's example is "a loophole". Here, I substantiate Stalnaker's (...) suspicions by providing characterisation theorems which tell us precisely when the norms give different advice. They tell us that, in a good sense, Gaifman's example is the only case where the two norms differ. I suggest that the lesson of the theorems is that Bayesian epistemologists need not concern themselves with the differences between these two kinds of norms. While they are not strictly speaking equivalent, they are equivalent for all philosophical purposes. (shrink)

Consider someone whom you know to be an expert about some issue. She knows at least as much as you do and reasons impeccably. The issue is a straightforward case of statistical inference that raises no deep problems of epistemology. You happen to know the expert’s opinion on this issue. Should you defer to her by adopting her opinion as your own? An affirmative answer may appear mandatory. But this paper argues that a crucial factor in answering this (...) question is the description under which you identify the expert. Experts may be identified under various descriptions (e.g., “the expert appearing on Channel 7 at 5 pm”). Section 2 provides cases that illustrate how deference to a known expert may be appropriate under some descriptions, but not others. Section 3 proposes that, in these cases, the differentiating factor is self-identification: deference to an expert under a given description is appropriate when the expert self-identifies under that description. Section 4 presents a formal framework that demonstrates the sufficiency of self-identification for appropriate deference within a significant class of cases. Section 5 notes a way in which this phenomenon allows for a form of “agreeing to disagree” in Robert Aumann’s sense. Section 6 illustrates the practical application of these results to the case of testimonials. (shrink)

Everyone agrees, I think, that there is something fishy about moral deference and expertise, but that's where consensus ends. This paper has two aims – the first is to mount a defense of moral deference, and the second is to offer a (non-debunking) diagnosis of its fishiness. I defend moral deference by connecting the discussion of moral deference to the recent discussion of the appropriate response to uncertainty. It is, I argue, morally obligatory to minimize the (...) risk of one's wrongdoing (at least when all other things are held equal), and this moral requirement entails that deferring to a moral expert is sometimes not just morally permissible but also admirable, and indeed morally required. If moral deference is often justified, why is it fishy? I offer an explanation in terms of the emotions moral judgments are often related to, and their nature (roughly speaking) as directed at the good or bad, right or wrong, de re rather than de dicto. The combination of this vindication of moral deference and diagnosis of its fishiness nicely accommodates, I argue, some related phenomena, like the (neglected) fact that our uneasiness with moral deference is actually a particular instance of uneasiness with opaque evidence in general when it comes to morality, and the (familiar) fact that the scope of this uneasiness is wider than the moral as it includes other normative domains. (shrink)

In the process of natural language functioning, in the speech communication, new regulations and requirements are constantly emerging that become normative. In the paper, in focus are (1) the interaction of meaning and normativity, and 2) the process of norm construal through socio-linguistic practice, namely – through the concept of deference, the phenomenon of borrowing concepts, knowledge, information from other people, linguistic communities and sources of information is considered. With the help of deference, the other side of the (...) meaningful relationship is indicated and described when we rely on other people's thoughts, knowledge that we believe to be true and authoritative. This can happen both consciously (deliberately), and unconsciously (by default). The bearers of the norm we rely on can be individuals, groups and large linguistic communities. The deferential mechanism described in the paper captures the fact that the communication participants can effectively use and reason with the help of concepts, with little or no understanding of their true meaning. The tendency towards normativisation, unification of language and speech and corrections of all that does not agree with the common usage of words, meanings, norms in society is disclosed in the paper. A distinction is also parsed between how norms work in closed language communities and research expert groups capable of "structural cooperation" and functional definition of norms. Lastly, the author emphasizes that deference substantially complements the language in which we describe guidance, in relation to the real and symbolic worlds, where our view goes, what we remember and what we design; it is our habitual, conscious or unconscious, but not always correct, use of words, which is an important part of living communication between the social and linguistic communities. This is the case where, in some sense, a defect, a violation of norms, or a hindrance of speech communication becomes (may be) a creative means of distinguishing between what is and is not an extension of the term. (shrink)

This paper will consider the extent to which patients' dependence on clinical expertise when making medical decisions threatens patient autonomy. I start by discussing whether or not dependence on experts is prima facie troubling for autonomy and suggest that it is not. I then go on to consider doctors' and other healthcare professionals' status as ‘medical experts’ of the relevant sort and highlight a number of ways in which their expertise is likely to be deficient. I then consider how this (...) revised picture of medical expertise should lead us to view the potential threat to patient autonomy that results from depending on such ‘experts’. I argue that, whether or not patients are aware of the limitations of medical expertise, in practice it is difficult to do other than defer to medical advice, and this presents a threat to patient autonomy that should be addressed. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which this threat to autonomy might be mitigated. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 39 What is the correct epistemic stance that laypeople should take vis-a-vis epistemic authorities? The author provides an answer to this question based on a critical examination of Linda Zagzebski’s _Preemption Thesis_, according to which the fact that an authority has a belief p is a reason for a layperson to believe p that replaces her other reasons relevant to believing p and is not simply added to them. In contrast, the author argues that _epistemic deference_ (...) requires a layperson to perform a number of epistemic tasks and involves an active and critical stance that conflicts with the Preemption Thesis. (shrink)

Delegating a policy question to a panel of experts is similar in some ways to deferring to an expert about the right answer to some personal decision, but also crucially distinct from it. Most importantly, delegation is compatible with understanding why the expert’s decision is correct or incorrect, whereas deference excludes such understanding. As a matter of administrative logic, however, delegating agents cannot be required to understand whether the policy questions they delegate are decided correctly. This has (...) important implications for the role of moral experts in delegated policy-making. Notably, while conventional academic wisdom regards deference to moral experts as highly objectionable, no analogous objection applies when policy questions are delegated to panels that include moral experts. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the project of articulating and defending the supra-Bayesian approach to judgment aggregation. I discuss three cases where a person is disposed to defer to two different experts, and ask how they should respond when they learn about the opinion of each. The guiding principles are that this learning should go by conditionalisation, and that they should aim to update on the evidence that the expert had updated on. But this doesn’t settle how the update on (...) pairs of experts should go, because we also need to know how the experts are related. I work through three examples showing how the results change given different prior beliefs about this relationship. (shrink)

Should one trust experts? My answer to this question is a qualified ‘no’. In this paper I explore the conditions under which it is rational to trust and defer to experts, and those under which it may be rational to refrain from doing so. I draw on two important factors for an actor’s trust in a partner: trust depends on the partner’s competence and on the partner’s interests. I propose that the conditions under which it is rational to trust and (...) defer to experts depend on the competences of the layperson and the expert, and the degree of interest alignment. I present a model that demonstrates that it can be practically infeasible and even logically impossible to determine the expert’s level of competence and the degree of interest alignment. Although it may sound pessimistic that one can rationally refrain from trusting experts, I will also explore some more optimistic conclusions. (shrink)

Four experiments investigate the folk concept of “understanding,” in particular when and why it is deployed differently from the concept of knowledge. We argue for the positions that people have higher demands with respect to explanatory depth when it comes to attributing understanding, and that this is true, in part, because understanding attributions play a functional role in identifying experts who should be heeded with respect to the general field in question. These claims are supported by our findings that people (...) differentially withhold attributions of understanding when the object of attribution has minimal explanatory information. We also show that this tendency significantly correlates with people’s willingness to defer to others as potential experts. This work bears on a pressing issue in epistemology concerning the place and value of understanding. Our results also provide reason against positing a simple equation of knowledge and understanding. We contend that, because deference plays a crucial role in many aspects of everyday reasoning, the fact that we use understanding attributions to demarcate experts reveals a potential mechanism for achieving our epistemic aims in many domains. (shrink)

Using the controversy over the MMR vaccine, I consider the reasons why non-experts should defer to experts, and I sketch a model for understanding cases where they fail to defer. I first suggest that an intuitively plausible model of the expert/non-expert relationship is complicated by shifting epistemic standards. One possible moderate response to this challenge, based on a more complex notion of non-experts' relationship with experts, seems unappealing as an account of the MMR controversy. A more radical suggestion (...) is that non-experts might have a political reason to defer to experts, when not doing so will involve ‘epistemological free-riding’. I investigate the implications. (shrink)

The notion of moral expertise poses a variety of challenges concerning both the question of existence of such experts and their identification by laypeople. I argue for a view of ethics expertise, based on moral understanding instead of on moral knowledge, that is less robust than genuine moral expertise and that does not rely on deference to testimony. I propose identification criteria that focus mainly on the awareness and communication of implicit biases and situated ignorance. According to the account (...) of ethics expertise presented in this paper, the expert's testimony is not an epistemic reason for the layperson's belief, but merely an epistemic influence. The epistemic reasons for the layperson's belief are largely independent from the expert. But there is still some epistemic risk involved in the proposed method of knowledge transfer, and therefore criteria for the identification of a trustworthy expert are necessary. The risk involved in knowledge transfer can be both due to willful manipulation and due to the expert's implicit biases and situated ignorance. While willful manipulation cannot really be avoided, the influence from biases and ignorance can be minimized. I argue that the best way to do this is if the expert is aware of their own biases and ignorance and communicates them. Combined with evidence of the expert's education in moral philosophy and experience with the topic in question, this gives the layperson the best chance to identify someone who can really help them consider all relevant aspects of a situation and come to a better justified decision. (shrink)

The notion of moral expertise poses a variety of challenges concerning both the question of existence of such experts and their identification by laypeople. I argue for a view of ethics expertise, based on moral understanding instead of on moral knowledge, that is less robust than genuine moral expertise and that does not rely on deference to testimony. I propose identification criteria that focus mainly on the awareness and communication of implicit biases and situated ignorance. According to the account (...) of ethics expertise presented in this paper, the expert's testimony is not an epistemic reason for the layperson's belief, but merely an epistemic influence. The epistemic reasons for the layperson's belief are largely independent from the expert. But there is still some epistemic risk involved in the proposed method of knowledge transfer, and therefore criteria for the identification of a trustworthy expert are necessary. The risk involved in knowledge transfer can be both due to willful manipulation and due to the expert's implicit biases and situated ignorance. While willful manipulation cannot really be avoided, the influence from biases and ignorance can be minimized. I argue that the best way to do this is if the expert is aware of their own biases and ignorance and communicates them. Combined with evidence of the expert's education in moral philosophy and experience with the topic in question, this gives the layperson the best chance to identify someone who can really help them consider all relevant aspects of a situation and come to a better justified decision. (shrink)

A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-policy decisions and deciding between rival expert testimonies in legal trials. This paper contains a social-epistemic analysis of the high-profile Bendectin drug controversy, which was decided in the courtroom inter alia by deference to a scientific consensus about the safety of Bendectin. Drawing on my previously developed account of knowledge-based consensus, I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, hence (...) courts’ deference to it was not epistemically justified. I draw sceptical lessons from this analysis regarding the value of scientific consensus as a desirable and reliable means of resolving scientific controversies in public life. (shrink)

According to Putnam, meaning and reference depend on acts of structured cooperation between language‐users. For example, laypeople defer to experts regarging the conditions under which something may be called ’gold’. A modest expert may defer to a greater expert. Question: can deference be never‐ending? Two theories say no. I expound these, then criticize them. The theories deal with semantic processes bound by a ’stopping’ constraint which are not cases of ordimary deferring. Deferring is normally done for a (...) reason, and a rational person is always disposed to defer if there is good reason. (shrink)

We offer a new outlook on the vexed question of the reference of natural-kind terms. Since Kripke and Putnam, there is a widespread assumption that natural-kind terms function just like proper names: they designate their referents directly and they are rigid designators: their reference is unchanged even in worlds in which the referent lacks some or all the properties associated with it in the actual world, and which are useful to us in identifying that referent. There have, however, been heated (...) debates about what should be taken as a natural-kind term. Some challenge the very existence of a separate category of natural-kind terms ; some their being directly referential ; some raise the possibility that direct reference extends to terms beyond those usually assumed to fall under the category, e.g. to ‘polemical’ terms. When these debates turn on the question of what natural kinds are, they take on a strong epistemological or metaphysical dimension. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. This we define as speakers’ being disposed to use words in line with the norms of their linguistic community and as consenting to being corrected when it is manifest that their use and understanding of a word does not match common practice. When those dispositions are present, speakers defer semantically to something beyond themselves. Here, our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined. In other words, one can say that the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, participants are confronted with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements, e.g. An emu is a bird. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension, e.g. discoveries that require excluding certain species now thought to be birds from the Aves class. The scenario is such that it is clear that the ‘discoveries’ bring us closer to the actual essence, if there is one, of birds. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms – for instance summer, contract or rape – exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for bird. If so, then there’s a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond the usual set of terms. What would be shown in this way is that speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical. We are at the pre-test stage for the survey. We cannot yet report on our results. We should, however, have initial results by March, which, we believe, will enrich the observations made by previous empirical studies. References: Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Häggqvist, S. & Wikforss, Å. 2015. Experimental semantics: the case of natural kind terms, in J. Haukioja, Experimental Philosophy of Language, London, Bloomsbury./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S. & Stich, S. 2009. Against arguments from reference, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79, 332-356./ Marconi, D. 1997. Language, Speech, and Communication. Lexical Competence. Cambridge : MIT Press./Moravcsik, J. 2016. Meaning, Creativity, and the Partial Inscrutability of the Human Mind, 2nd ed. Stanford: CSLI./Schroeter, L. & Schroeter, F. 2014. Normative concepts: a connectedness model, Philosophers’ Imprint 14, 1-26./ Wikforss, Å. 2010. Are natural kind terms special?, in H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary, The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, New York, Routledge, 64-83. (shrink)

The discrepancy between the theoretical problems experts raise on polysemy, and the ease with which it is everyday understood by speakers, has been defined as the polysemy paradox. The same could be said for other forms of meaning ambiguity in the non-literal side, as for instance metaphor. A sort of metaphor paradox is raised by the fact that metaphor usually goes unnoticed for most people, even though experts claim that it constitutes a theoretical challenge for understanding human thought. In both (...) polysemy and metaphor cases, people’s intuitions clash with experts’ intuitions. Moreover, experts seem to disagree on the very identification criterion of the linguistic phenomena. Deference to experts is anyway important in semantic applications, such as translation, where subtle distinctions in word meaning prove to be not only useful but also essential. However, the apparently wide gap between people’s and experts’ intuitions could be reduced once the paradoxes of meaning ambiguity are explained as a result of semantic underdetermination. (shrink)

Pessimists about moral deference argue that there is something special about moral beliefs which make it impermissible for agents to defer on moral matters. In this paper, I argue that, even if pessimists are right that there is something special about moral beliefs, that is not enough to render moral deference impermissible. A stronger requirement—the rationality requirement—makes deferring to experts not only permissible but also rationally required. When one does not defer to one’s perceived moral expert, one (...) either violates Belief Consistency or violates Belief Closure. The moral considerations, such as moral understanding or virtue, for not deferring to experts either fail to show that not deferring is a better option than deferring or fail to show that those moral considerations outweigh rationality requirements. (shrink)

This article discusses the concept of epistemic authority in the context of English law relating to expert testimony. It distinguishes between two conceptions of epistemic authority, one strong and one weak, and argues that only the weak conception is appropriate in a legal context, or in any other setting where reliance on experts can be publicly justified. It critically examines Linda Zagzebski's defence of a stronger conception of epistemic authority and questions whether epistemic authority is as closely analogous to (...) practical authority as she maintains. Zagzebski elucidates a kind of deference that courts generally, and rightly, try to avoid. Her concept of ‘first person reasons’, however, does capture an important aspect of the deliberations of conscientious legal actors. (shrink)

On a standard understanding of externalist metasemantic theories, such theories require a speaker to defer to other speakers in order to share content with them. We argue that this standard understanding is mistaken, and that, on a proper understanding of externalism, sharing content does not depend in any way on deference, either to experts, or one’s linguistic community. We defend a version of externalism that we call ‘pure externalism’, and we argue that the idea that shared content requires (...) class='Hi'>deference is a residue of internalism/descriptivisism to which externalists ought to be opposed. We also argue that, despite common belief to the contrary, several of the originators of externalism, including Tyler Burge, do not think that deference is in any way relevant, let alone required, for shared externalist content. (shrink)

The increasing demand for transparency in AI has recently come under scrutiny. The question is often posted in terms of “epistemic double standards”, and whether the standards for transparency in AI ought to be higher than, or equivalent to, our standards for ordinary human reasoners. I agree that the push for increased transparency in AI deserves closer examination, and that comparing these standards to our standards of transparency for other opaque systems is an appropriate starting point. I suggest that a (...) more fruitful exploration of this question will involve a different comparison class. We routinely treat judgments made by highly trained experts in specialized fields as fair or well-grounded even though—by the nature of expert/layperson division of epistemic labor—an expert will not be able to provide an explanation of the reasoning behind these judgments that makes sense to most other people. Regardless, laypeople are thought to be acting reasonably—and ethically—in deferring to the judgments of experts that concern their areas of specialization. I suggest that we reframe our question regarding the appropriate standards of transparency in AI as one that asks when, why, and to what degree it would be ethical to accept opacity in AI. I argue that our epistemic relation to certain opaque AI technology may be relevantly similar to the layperson’s epistemic relation to the expert in certain respects, such that the successful expert/layperson division of epistemic labor can serve as a blueprint for the ethical use of opaque AI. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the tendency to defer in matters semantic is rationalized by our reliance on the say-so of others for much of what we know about the world. The result, I contend, is a new and distinctly epistemic source of support for the doctrine of attitude anti-individualism.

I present a puzzle about the epistemic role beliefs about experts' beliefs play in a rational agent's system of beliefs. It is shown that accepting the claim that an expert's degree of belief in a proposition, A, screens off the evidential support another proposition, B, gives to A in case the expert knows and is certain about whether B is true, leads in some cases to highly unintuitive conclusions. I suggest a solution to the puzzle according to which (...) evidential screening off is rejected, but show that the price of this solution is either giving up on the mere idea of deferring to expert's opinion or giving up on Bayesian conditionalization. (shrink)

This thesis addresses two enduring issues in legal theory-- rationality and its association with rule of law values--by offering detailed models of two patterns of legal reasoning. One is reasoning by analogy. The other is the inference process that legal reasoners use when they defer epistemically to scientific experts in the course of reaching legal decisions. Discussions in both chapters reveal that the inference pattern known as "abduction" is a deeply important element of many legal inferences, including analogy and epistemic (...) deference to experts--something that has been largely unrecognized in legal theory. After presenting a detailed model of analogy, Chapter 1 argues that legal reasoning by analogy, like analogical argument in logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences, possesses a great deal of rational force when properly executed. Chapter 2 investigates the reasoning process by which non-expert legal reasoners defer epistemically to the judgments of scientists. It presents five main conclusions or explanations. Every practical syllogism actually consists of two distinct chains of inference, and what is usually considered in writings on practical reasoning to be the minor premise of a practical syllogism is actually the conclusion of a separate chain of argument. When a practical reasoner defers epistemically to a theoretical expert, this separate chain of argument has a special structure, which is modeled in Chapter 2. The non-expert legal reasoner must always make a prescriptive practical judgment about the standard of epistemic appraisal and level of epistemic confidence that the reasoner requires of scientific evidence before it may be relied upon in reaching a legal decision. Legal systems should be committed to an emergent rule of law ideal identified and referred to as "intellectual due process" which condemns epistemically arbitrary reasoning processes insofar as they play a role in legal decisionmaking. Since non-arbitrariness is a necessary condition of both epistemic and legal legitimacy, we have compelling reason to doubt that the non-arbitrariness condition can be met when non-experts defer epistemically to scientific experts. (shrink)

A test for the admissibility of expert evidence, partly derived from Daubert, has recently been introduced into English criminal law by the unusual mechanism of aPractice Direction.This article compares the Daubert trilogy and the English Practice Direction as responses to the problem of epistemic deference by juries to experts. Juries areoften justified in deferring to experts as to the relevance of the underlying evidence examined by the expert, including what inferences can be drawn from it. There is (...) a concern, however, that juries may also defer to experts’ claims about the weight of their own evidence: how strongly or confidently those inferences can be stated. Overly deferential jurors may place excessive weight on forensic science evidence that rests on shaky foundations. The new English admissibility regime (drawing on recommendations by the Law Commission) appears better tailored than Daubert to address this issue about the strength of inferences presented by expert witnesses. As a result, however, it places considerable demands in judges, advocates and expert witnesses, and how successful it will be in practice remains to be seen. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of who should be trusted as an expert and when, particularly in the context of public deliberation. Trust in experts is crucial in making decisions about public policies that involve complex information beyond the expertise of most people. However, fruitful deliberation also requires being able to resist misinformation campaigns, no matter how widespread these might be; being able, in general, to evaluate the evidence at our disposal and form our own opinions. The purpose of (...) this paper is to reflect on this apparent tension between epistemic deference and epistemic independence. The paper has two goals. First, it aims at providing a more nuanced understanding of the question of who should be trusted as an expert by examining cases in which seemingly factual claims are made in public settings by experts. Second, it emphasizes the need to pay attention to the conditions under which we actually trust each other. We suggest that fostering trust in science may be better approached by modifying the conditions under which scientific dialogue takes place, rather than trying to convince the public to trust experts, or blaming them for not doing so. (shrink)

There is a large gap between the specialized knowledge of scientists and laypeople’s understanding of the sciences. The novice-expert problem arises when non-experts are confronted with (real or apparent) scientific disagreement, and when they don’t know whom to trust. Because they are not able to gauge the content of expert testimony, they rely on imperfect heuristics to evaluate the trustworthiness of scientists. This paper investigates why some bodies of scientific knowledge become polarized along political fault lines. Laypeople navigate (...) conflicting epistemic and social demands in their acceptance of scientific testimony; this might explain their deference to scientific fringe theories, which often goes together with denying established scientific theories. I evaluate three approaches to mitigate denialism: improving the message, improving the messenger, and improving the environment in which the message is conveyed. (shrink)

I shall argue that where a coercive public health policy is backed by a clear medical consensus, appropriately reconsidered in the light of claims of doubters, there is sometimes a moral obligation on the part of the public to defer to the experts. The argument will be geared to the continuing controversy in the UK over the safety of the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine. vaccine.