Expert Judgement and Expert Disagreement

As Hammond has argued, traditional explanations for disagreement among experts (incompetence, venality, and ideology) are inadequate. The character and fallibilities of the human judgement process itself lead to persistent disagreements even among competent, honest, and disinterested experts. Social Judgement Theory provides powerful methods for analysing such judgementally based disagreements when the experts' judgement processes can be represented by additive models involving the same cues. However, the validity and usefulness of such representations depend on several conditions: (a) experts must agree on a problem definition, (b) experts must have access to the same information, and (c) experts must use the same organising principles. When these conditions are not met, methods for diagnosing and treating disagreement are poorly understood. As a start towards developing such an understanding, sources of expert disagreement are discussed and categorised.     

Practical Skepticism and the Reasons for Action

There is nearly universal agreement that coercion is an evil. Even when it is necessary to avoid a greater evil or to attain some good, it is still a necessary evil. There is also nearly universal agreement that, other things being equal, one ought not to exercise coercion. Here the agreement ends. There is little agreement about just when coercion is justified. More surprisingly, there is little agreement about what coercion is. This latter controversy is more fundamental, and this paper is an attempt to shed some light on it.     

Practical rationality for pluralists about the good

I argue that if a normative theory of practical rationality is to represent an adequate and coherent response to a plurality of incommensurable goods, it cannot be a maximising theory. It will have to be a theory that recognises two responses to goods as morally licit – promotion and respect – and one as morally illicit – violation. This result has a number of interesting corollaries, some of which I indicate. Perhaps the most interesting is that it makes the existence of a plurality of incommensurable goods incompatible with consequentialism.     

Believing for Practical Reasons

Some prominent evidentialists argue that practical considerations cannot be normative reasons for belief because they can't be motivating reasons for belief. Existing pragmatist responses turn out to depend on the assumption that it's possible to believe in the absence of evidence. The evidentialist may deny this, at which point the debate ends in an impasse. I propose a new strategy for the pragmatist. This involves conceding that belief in the absence of evidence is impossible. We then argue that evidence can play a role in bringing about belief without being a motivating reason for belief, thereby leaving room for practical considerations to serve as motivating reasons. I present two ways in which this can happen. First, agents can use evidence as a mere means by which to believe, with practical considerations serving as motivating reasons for belief, just as we use tools (e.g. a brake pedal) as mere means by which to do something (e.g. slow down) which we are motivated to do for practical reasons. Second, evidence can make it possible for one to choose whether or not to believe – a choice one can then make for practical reasons. These arguments push the debate between the evidentialist and the pragmatist into new territory. It is no longer enough for an evidentialist to insist that belief is impossible without evidence. Even if this is right, the outcome of the debate remains unsettled. It will hang on the ability of the evidentialist to respond to the new pragmatist strategy presented here.     

When Expert Disagreement Supports the Consensus

It is often suggested that disagreement among scientific experts is a reason not to trust those experts, even about matters on which they are in agreement. In direct opposition to this view, I argue here that the very fact that there is disagreement among experts on a given issue provides a positive reason for non-experts to trust that the experts really are justified in their attitudes towards consensus theories. I show how this line of thought can be spelled out in three distinct frameworks for non-deductive reasoning: namely, Bayesian Confirmation Theory, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Inferential Robustness Analysis.     

Practical Arguments for Theoretical Theses

Pascals wager is expounded as a paradigm case of a practical,decision-theoretical argument for acting as if a proposition is true when wehave no theoretical reasons to accept or reject it (1.1.–1.2.). Thoughthe paradigm is fallacious in various respects there are valid and adequatearguments for acting as if certain propositions are true: that theoreticalentities exist, that there are material perceptual objects, that the worldis uniform across time (1.3). After this analysis of examples the authorsgeneral approach for developing criteria for the validity and adequacy oftypes of argument (2.1.) is applied: Having discussed some problems(2.2.–2.3.), a general epistemic principle for such pascal argumentsis developed, which characterizes their premisses and, if introduced as anadditional premiss, can make them deductively valid (2.4).     

Expert testimony in pornography trials: A role for the social scientist

This article attempts to clarify the concepts of law, pornography, and the special role of the expert witness in pornography. Different conceptual frameworks taken by experts in this field are addressed, as are the shortcomings of various approaches. Finally, the critical role of ethics in giving expert witness testimony in pornography is discussed.     

Practical Reasons, Practical Rationality, Practical Wisdom

There are a number of proposals as to exactly how reasons, ends and rationality are related. It is often thought that practical reasons can be analyzed in terms of practical rationality, which, in turn, has something to do with the pursuit of ends. I want to argue against the conceptual priority of rationality and the pursuit of ends, and in favor of the conceptual priority of reasons. This case comes in two parts. I first argue for a new conception of ends by which all ends are had under the guise of reasons. I then articulate a sense of rationality, procedural rationality, that is connected with the pursuit of ends so conceived, where one is rational to the extent that one is motivated to act in accordance with reasons as they appear to be. Unfortunately, these conceptions of ends and procedural rationality are inadequate for building an account of practical reasons, though I try to explain why it is that the rational pursuit of ends generates intuitive but misleading accounts of genuine normative reasons. The crux of the problem is an insensitivity to an is-seems distinction, where procedural rationality concerns reasons as they appear, and what we are after is a substantive sense of rationality that concerns reasons as they are. Based on these distinct senses of rationality, and some disambiguation of what it is to have a reason, I offer a critique of internalist analyses of one’s reasons in terms of the motivational states of one’s ideal, procedurally rational self, and I offer an alternative analysis of one’s practical reasons in terms of practical wisdom that overcomes objections to related reasons externalist views. The resulting theory is roughly Humean about procedural rationality and roughly Aristotelian about reasons, capturing the core truths of both camps.

Evidence: A Guide for the Uncertain

Assume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. It is surprisingly difficult to vindicate these dual constraints. But diagnosing why this is so leads to a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I argue that Trust is the Goldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self-doubt—a modest epistemology.     

Toward the Development of Expert Assessment Systems

Artificially intelligent (AI) computer programs are emerging in several disciplines including education. This paper provides an overview of one type of AI program called, "expert systems." The potential application of expert systems to the diagnosis and assessment of special-needs chlidren is examined and existing prototype systems are reviewed. The future of this technology is discussed in relation to emerging development tools designed for the creation of expert systems by the lay public.     

Preventing the need for whistleblowing: Practical advice for university administrators

A thoughtful and well-designed institutional response to a whistleblower starts long before a problem ever arises. Important elements include efforts by the institution’s leaders to cultivate an ethical environment, provide clear and fair personnel policies, support internal systems for resolving complaints and grievances, and be willing to address problems when they are revealed. While many institutions have well-developed procedures for handling formal grievances, systems for handling complaints at their earliest stages usually receive less attention. This article focuses on systemic elements necessary for cultivating an ethical environment, good practices in responding to complaints, and the role those practices can play in preventing a confrontation with a whistleblower.     

Evidence for feature perturbations

Feature perturbations were proposed by Wolford (1975) to explain the pattern of errors generated by subjects in experiments involving speeded presentations. These experiments were carried out to test the notion of feature perturbations in a fairly direct fashion. The logic of the experiments involved the creation of an artificial alphabet in which feature perturbations, if they occurred, would lead to predictable error patterns. The results of the three experiments supported the notion of feature perturbations. Evidence was also found for errors which resulted from items that were correctly identified but that were reported in an incorrect order. These latter errors were shown to be distinct from errors resulting from feature perturbations.     

事件率对专家与新手放射科医生医学图像视觉搜索的影响:来自眼动的证据

探讨低事件率对医学图像视觉搜索漏报的影响,用SMI250眼动仪记录放射科专家与新手检测胸部X光片的过程。结果发现:(1)专家和新手在低事件率(10%)下的漏报率多于高事件率(50%),但专家在高低事件率的漏报率的差值小于新手。(2)专家和新手在低事件率下的注视次数少于高事件率,眼跳幅度、扫描错误比例大于高事件率。结论认为:专家与新手进行医学图像视觉搜索时出现低事件率效应,低事件率效应主要是由于扫描错误引起的。