Epistemic Authority: The Main Arguments

Abstract In this chapter, the main arguments for the claim that experts are epistemic authorities for laypeople in their domain of expertise, i.e., the Preemption View, are assessed. According to the Trust-Based Argument, when a layperson trusts an expert as a source of knowledge, she decouples her belief from her own evidence and connects it with the speaker’s evidence via the latter’s response to this evidence. According to the Track-Record Argument, the layperson considers the expert to be more reliable. Hence, the best strategy for her to improve her track record will be to always follow the expert’s lead. This requires the layperson to become insensitive to her own domain-specific evidence. According to the Argument from Higher-Order Defeat, the layperson is aware of receiving information from an expert who has typically already considered all the relevant domain-specific evidence that she has at her disposal. But then it will be highly likely for the layperson that by using her domain-specific evidence to assess the target proposition, she will viciously use evidence that has already been used by the expert in support of a judgment that the layperson uses as part of her evidence. So, when confronted with an expert judgment, the layperson also receives evidence that suggests that she stop using domain-specific evidence in addition to the expert’s testimony when deliberating what to believe. The use of domain-specific evidence is thus preempted by a higher-order defeater. It is argued that only the Argument from Higher-Order Defeat survives scrutiny.