W H A T IS A N E X P E R T ?

BRUCE D. WEINSTEIN

The Center for Health Ethics and Law, West Virginia University, 1354
Health Sciences North, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA

ABSTRACT. Experts play an important role in society, but there has been little
investigation about the nature of expertise. I argue that there are two kinds of experts:
those whose expertise is a function of what they know (epistemic expertise), or what they
do (performative expertise). Epistemic expertise is the capacity to provide strong
justifications for a range of propositions in a domain, while performative expertise is the
capacity to perform a skill well according to the rules and virtues of a practice. Both
epistemic and performative experts may legitimately disagree with orte another, and the
two senses are conceptually and logically distinct.

Key words: epistemic expertise, expert, justification, nature of expe:ttise, performative

expertise, virtue

1. INTRODUCTION

Experts have a profound impact on the world. We defer to experts every day to
inform us, give us advice, and help us to lead safer and healthier lives. Mechani-
cal experts repair our automobiles and household appliances, musical experts
entertain us, and the news media depend upon experts to provide credible
reports to the public about scientific discoveries, politicai developments, and the
like. (The word 'expert' is probably one of the most frequently used descriptors
in the news.) Adjudication of civil and criminal lawsuits often requires tes-
timony from expert witnesses, and scientific experts are developing a vaccine to
prevent infection from the human immunodeficiency virus which is believed to
cause AIDS. In short, the quality of our lives would be quite different without
experts.
An investigation of expertise has intrinsic intellectual value, but since the
work of experts often has important and far-reaching consequences in the world,
such a study has practical implications as well. For example, experts in science
decide "what methods should be accepted, which research directions appear
most promising, which scientists should be selected for prominent positions and
which should be consigned to oblivion" ([1], p. 120), and experts in policy
analysis may affect the distribution of political power in society ([2], p. 6). An
emerging literature in clinical ethics even refers to educators and consultants as

Theoretical Medicine 14: 57-73, 1993.

© 1993 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
58 BRUCED. WEINSTEIN

"ethics experts". 1 Before considering the appropriateness of such social roles, it

is necessary to examine the nature and scope of expertise. This article will be
such an examination.

2. SOME PRELIMINARY DISTINCTIONS AND DEFINITIONS

We speak of experts in family law, experts in AIDS, and experts about the
works of Mozart. Expertise in this sense refers to knowledge in or about a
particular field, and statements about it generally take the form, "S is an expert
in or about domain D." We also speak of expert violinists, expert mechanics,
and expert surgeons. This second sense of expertise refers to domains of
demonstrable skills, and statements about it generally take the form, "S is an
expert at skill Q,,2 There are thus at least two senses of expertise: an
'epistemological' sense 3 and a 'performative' sense.
Epistemic and performative expertise parallel the epistemological distinction
between knowing that and knowing how ([9], pp. 25-61), and like those two
forms of knowing, they are conceptually and logically distinct from one another.
That is, to be an expert at skill Q does not imply that one can explain how one
performs skill Q ([10], p. 62). We are acquainted with mathematical prodigies
who are unable to explain how they perform their astonishing calculations or
jugglers who cannot say precisely how they juggle. As Dustin Hoffman
characterizes in the film Rain Man, autistic savants can perform highly complex
intellectual feats like providing the correct number of toothpicks which fall on
the floor in a large quantity, yet they are incapable of explaining how they do it,
other than, "I see 246 toothpicks". 4 Likewise, epistemic experts need not be able
to perform the cognate skills well.
I wish to characterize three related concepts: 'experts,' 'expert opinions' (of
'judgments,' or 'claims'), and 'expertise' as such. In this article, I will defend
the following theses:

An individual is an expert in the 'epistemic' sense if and only if he or she is

capable of offering strong justifications for a range of propositions in a
domain.

2. An individual is an expert in the 'performative' sense if and only if he or

she is able to perform a skill weU.

3. A claim is an 'expert opinion' if and only if it is offered by an expert, the

expert provides a strong justification for it, and the claim is in the domain of
the expert's experfise.
 WHATIS AN EXPERT? 39

4. 'Expertise' is the capacity either to offer expert opinions or to demonstrate

one or more skills in a domain, and expertise in a domaJn does not entail
expertise in the entire range of the domain.

The following is a glossary of the key terms used in this article:

Domain: A field of knowledge or sldll. Medicine is an example of a
'domain'.
Subdomain: A self-contained portion of a domain. Ophthalmology is an
example of a 'subdomain' of the domain of medicine.
Area: A portion of a subdomain. Glaucomatology is an 'area' of the
subdomain of ophthalmology.
Range: The limits of a domain, subdomain, or area. The study of diseases
of the optic nerve is within the 'range' of ophthalmology, but
outside the 'range' of dermatology.
Subdomains may overlap one another, since an area may be found in more than
orte subdomain. For example, the subdomain of ophthalmology shares principles
and techniques with the subdomain of surgery, and the area of neuro-ophthalmol-
ogy is a part of both the subdomain of ophthalmology and the subdomain of
neurology.
Note that 'expert' and 'specialist' are not synonymous. A specialist is a
person who has the capacity to provide strong justifications for a range of
propositions in a subdomain or area. Thus a specialist is a kind of expert.
However, an expert need not be a specialist; an obvious example of this is the
general practitioner in medicine. Thus, while specialists are experts, not aI1
experts are specialists.

3. PERFORMATIVE EXPERTISE

I begin my exploration of expertise by examining the simpler of the two senses,

performative expertise. Figure 1 represents the continuum of performative
expertise. The extreme left, A, is the point at which a skill cannot be performed
at all. The segment A-B represents a poor level of skill, and this is the range into
which most people fall for most skills. (For example, most people are able to ger
'some' sound of a tuba or clarinet, even if it is a sound few would want to hear.)
The next segment of the continuum B-C represents an adequate level of skill.
How adequacy is to be understood and evaIuated varies from skill to skSll.
Segment C-D represents a level of skitl which exceeds what is merely adequate,
and someone at this level is said to perform the skiI1 well. The last portion of the
continuum, D-E, is reserved for those few who can perform the skitl exception-
allv well.
60 BRUCE D. WEINSTEIN

A B C D E
= i H|I ==

A Cannot perform skill at all

A---B Can perform skiU poorly
B---C Can perform skill adequately
C---D Can perform skill weil
D---E Can perform skill exceptionally weil
E Can perform skill perfectly

Fig. 1. The continuum of performative expertise.

Several points should be made about performative expertise. The first is that
more people are able to perform a skill poorly than are able to perform it
adequately, and more people are able to perform it weil than are able to perform
it exceptionally weil. Whether the skill is playing a musical instrument,
performing a magic trick, juggling oranges or engaging in a sport, a greater
portion of the population can perform the skill poorly than can perform it
adequately, and even fewer can perform it well. (This may be true only for
complex skills; as Arthur Caplan suggests, almost everyone can perform simple
skills well ([12], pp. 75-76).) We reserve the labels 'exceptional' or
'distinguished' for only a very few; otherwise, we would not be able to make
appropriate distinctions between levels of ability.
The second point is that the cutoff points represented on the conUnuum by B,
C, and D, are to be established for a particular skill according to the rules
governing the skill itself. For example, the rules for playing the drums are
different from the rules for performing a magic trick, and excellence is to be
evaluated according to the mies peculiar to each. Furthermore, a particular skill
may apply to several different contexts, so evaluation of the skill must take into
account the context. For instance, playing the violin weil in a symphony
orchestra makes use of different rules than playing the same instrument in a
bluegrass band. What constitutes exceUent playing in the latter may be inap-
propriate or wrong in the classical setüng. Thus one can be both an excellent
classical violinist but a poor fiddle player.
Finally, while rules distinguish an adequate performer from a poor one, it is
the realization of the virtues of the skill or art which distinguishes the expert
performance. I follow Aristotle in defining 'virtue' as:
 WHAT IS AN EXPERT? 61

a characteristic involving choice ... [which] consists in observing the mean relative to us,
a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as a [person] of practical wisdom
would use to determine it. It is the mean by reference to two vices: the one of excess and
the other of deficiency. It is, moreover, a mean because some vices exceed and others fall
short of what is required in emotion and in action, whereas virtue finds and chooses the
median ([13], pp. 43-44).

A performative expert is not merely a rule-follower, but orte who realizes the
virtues of a particular practice. 5 Because some virtues, like rules, do not apply to
all practices, or are applied differently, someone with performative expertise in
orte practice does not necessarily have performative expertise in another.
Segment C-E of the continuum corresponds to performative expertise. A
performative expert is capable of performing a skill weil, so the cutoff point is
C. Setting the cutoff point at D is too restrictive; very few people would be
considered experts. Still, this is an arbitrary decision, and some might wish to
reserve the term 'expert' only for those whose skill is truly exceptional.
The following is an example of how performative experts might be distin-
guished from nonexperts in the domain of medicine. Suppose that Sam has just
been discovered lying unconscious in a crowded urban area. Passerby Ariel has
never taken a course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and knows nothing
about attempting to restore Sam's circulation and respiration. Her level of
performative expertise corresponds to point A on the continuum. Her friend
Bob, however, took a CPR course in college ten years ago, and remembers the
mnemonic 'ABC', which stands for 'Check airway, breathing, and circulation,
in that order'. Unfortunately, he has forgotten how to do these things, other than
by cursorily examining Sam's mouth for foreign objects and listening to his
respirations. Bob's capacity to perform CPR falls with the A-B range. Charlene
took the same course with Bob but remembers that after checking respiration it
is important to yell for help, which she does. Because this action may be
lifesaving, which is the purpose of CPR, she may be considered to have a higher
ability to perform this technique, and thus her capacity falls with the B-C fange.
David, a general physician, hears Charlene and runs to Sam's side. He calls to
Sam, "Are you all right?", shakes hirn and gets no response. He opens the
airway and checks for breathing by looking at the chest wall and listening for air
movement at the mouth. He quickly palpates for a carotid pulse, gives Sam two
quick breaths through the mouth and begins chest compressions with mouth-to-
mouth ventilations in a 5:1 ratio. Through his efforts he is able to restore Sam's
circulation and respiration. David's level of expertise is consonant with the C-D
range. Finally, an ambulance arrives on the scene and whisks Sam away to a
local hospital, where an attending physician and nurse determine that Sam has
become asystolic and administer advanced cardiac life support. This involves
intubating Sam, providing intratracheal epinephrine, and defibrillating the
patient. This level of ability is consonant with the range D-E.
62 BRUCE D. WEINSTEIN

Clearly neither Ariel nor Bob are experts in CPR, and there are good reasons
to avoid referring to Charlene as an expert as well, even if she knew enough to
call for help and thus increase the likelihood of Sam surviving. Only David and
the hospital team may be considered experts in CPR, because only they are able
to apply the rules of this practice to a situation. (While Charlene did remember
an important rule, this is the only one she remembered, and expertise requires
having a capacity to apply a range of rules.) The rules themselves were not
developed arbitrarily; through both clinical investigations and trial and error,
these rules are the ones which have produced the most effective results, viz.
increasing the likelihood that persons who have suffered cardiac or respiratory
arrest can survive the trauma. Since this is the purpose of CPR, it makes sense to
use it as a way of distinguishing persons like Charlene, who were able to apply
only one relevant rule of CPR, from those like David, who were able to apply a
range of rules.
It is important to note that the only skill being considered is the ability to
perform CPR. It is still an open question whether Sam would have wanted to
have CPR performed, and thus neither David nor the emergency room team are
necessarily experts in knowing Sam's wishes or in performing an action that
Sam would consider beneficial (in other words, a morally good action). Thus the
conception of expertise here is value-laden only in the sense that the cutoff point
for distinguishing experts from nonexperts is determined according to the rules
and virtues of a practice, which are themselves set according to the values
shared by members of the practice. It is value-free, however, in the sense that
being considered an expert in skill Q does not entail moral blame- or praisewor-
thiness.
I turn hext to an analysis of epistemic expertise and will again use an example
involving cardiopathology.

4. EPISTEMIC EXPERTISE

4.1. Experts, Expert Opinions, and Expertise

Imagine that Sam is recuperating from his cardiac arrest in the hospital. His wife
Abigail and new friend Baruch are by his side as he regains consciousness.
Suddenly Sam complains of chest pains. "I think I ' m having an attack of angina
again", he exclaims worriedly. Abigail, worried that her husband is having
another heart attack, rushes to get a physician. Baruch agrees with Sam's
diagnosis, because he had just seen a television drama in which a patient had
similar chest pains, and that is what the problem turned out to be, What is the
 WHAT IS AN EXPERT? 63

epistemic status of each belief?

Let us suppose that Sam has had similar chest pains on previous occasions,
and each time the problem turned out to be angina. The claim that Sam makes is
thus a justified belief, since his experience with maintaining his health confers a
degree of knowledgeability about bis heart. Abigail frequently reads magazines
devoted to health issues and regularly watches a cable television show about
health. While she does not know the history of Sam's health problems, since
they have only recently married, she recognizes Sam's gesture immediately. Her
claim too is a justified belief. Baruch, however, bases his belief only on what he
has seen from a televison show, and we may conclude that his belief is not a
justified one.
Attending physician Chu is called to see Sam and after taking a history,
conducting a physical examination and running an electrocardiogram, concludes
that Sam has atypical angina pectoris. It turns out that Sam was correct. Because
Chu can offer good reasons to support her assertion, based on her knowledge of
physical diagnosis, Chu's belief is justified. While Abigail's surmise turned out
to be false, it was nevertheless justified. 6 In summary, both Chu and Sam hold
true justified beliefs, Abigail holds a false justified belief, and Baruch holds a
true unjustified belief. I submit that only Chu's is an expert claim.
What distinguishes Chu's claim from the others is the strength of her
justification. Only Chu understands the principles of how the human body and
its components function normally and abnormally. She knows that different
structural or functional problems may produce similar symptoms. While Sam is
correct in recognizing the similarity of his chest pains to ones he has previously
experienced, he does not know the theory and practice of medicine. Chu does,
and this knowledge makes her claim about Sam's heart more strongly justified
than even Sam's own belief. In short, only Chu is an expert about the nature of
Sam's problem.
Baruch's claim is not an expert opinion, but this is not because it turned out to
be false. Rather, it is because the justification for his belief is not as strong as
Chu's. The knowledge about health that orte develops from reading popular
magazines does not compare in breadth or depth with that of a physician; to be
knowledgeable about a domain is not ipso facto to be an expert in it. Note that
while someone merely knowledgeable abõut a domain may make true justified
claims in it, those claims cannot be considered expert opinions, since the person
is not an expert in the domain. I am •imiting the application of the term 'expert
opinion' to experts only.
The above argument risks appearing circular. Physicians, after all, are the
recognized experts in medicine, and if we rely upon physicians to determine
what counts as a sufficiently strong Austification in order to assess the expert
status of someone's claim about medicine, then we appear to be assuming the
64 BRUCED. WEINSTEIN

very thing that we are trying to establish, viz. that physicians may righfly be
considered the experts in the field. However, there is a rational basis for
deferring to physicians for guidance in diagnostic medical problems. If the
objectives of medicine as an epistemic domain are to understand the functioning
of the human body and to discover principles which will lead to therapeutic
advances, then the medical experts are those whose claims are more likely to
inerease this understanding and lead to such knowledge. The claims of layper-
sons in this domain are less likely to achieve this objective. The strength of
justifications given for medical claims, then, is linked to the degree to which
such claims are likely to promote the epistemic ends of medicine. It is not
because of considerations external to the practice of medicine (e.g., income or
power) that physicians are accorded the title of 'expert' in this domain, but
because physicians are the ones who have proven to be most successful in
accomplishing the objectives of the discipline.
In some domains nonexperts may hold justified beliefs, while in others only
experts may do so. For example, in highly technical or scholarly fields such as
nuclear physics, mechanical engineering, or French Renaissance history, few
persons not professionally committed will know enough about them, or
(particularly in the sciences) understand the language to the degree needed to
make justifiable claims in the field. However, the commitment of Ralph Nader
to consumer affairs or of the late Eric Hoffer to political philosophy illustrates
that individuals may be lacking professional credentials, yet know enough to be
able to make justifiable claims about their fields. In fact, Jeremy Rifkin's
knowledge of biotechnology prompted a reporter to cornment that "[S]cientists
tend to underplay how easily a dedicated amateur can toaster at least the basic
complexities of any scientific discipline" ([15], p. 47). 7 Still, persons like Hoffer
and Rifldn are exceptional in having a sufficient understanding to be able to
make justifiable claims about political philosophy or recombinant DNA. In
fields such as current events or popular music, however, a greater number of
persons are able to make strongly justified claims, and to that extent such fields
admit to a greater number of experts.
Epistemic expertise is transferable, in that others can acquire it provided they
are capable of understanding it or are in a position to acquire it. For example,
persons blind at birth cannot make expert claims about that part of the world
which is accessible only through vision, such as color. 8 The transferable nature
of expertise applies to both the epistemic ([8], p. 42) and performative senses.
Anyone who has the potential to possess the body of knowledge required to be
an expert in biophysics is capable of becoming an expert in the field; similarly
anyone who is capable of developing the motor skills with which one becomes
an expert percussionist may become such an expert. Of course, the capacity to
possess the relevant body of knowledge or to develop the relevant skills in a
 WHATIS AN EXPERT? 65

Domain D

Fig. 2. The concept of a domain.

[ Domain D
(Medicine)

Iogy

I, Neuro-ophthalmotogy
AreaDlb&AreaD2a~!
(Subspecialities)

Fi~. 3. Subdomains and areas.

66 BRUCED. WEINSTEIN

domain is a necessary but not sufficient condition of being an expert in the

dornain. The guidance of others (generally, recognized experts) to realize the
potential an individual has to develop epistemic or performative expertise is also
required.
Given the high degree of specialization in technical fields, it may be more
accurate to refer to expertise in subdomains, so that a person might have
expertise in one subdomain but not another (see Figure 2). For example, while
all physicians have clinical training in surgery and medicine, a surgeon does not
have expertise in immunology, nor does a nephrologist have expertise in
ophthalmology. Even within a medical speciatty (what I am calling a sub-
domain), there are subspecialties or areas. For example, the specialty of
ophthalmology includes retinal specialists, corneal specialists, and pediatric
neuro-ophthalmologists (see Figure 3). A recent journal, Glia, is entirely
devoted to problems of supporting neurological tissue. Sometimes an area is
shared by two subdomains, as is the case with neuro-ophthalmology, represented
as Dlb (an area of ophthalmology) and D2a (an area of neurology). Someone
with expertise in one subdomain has some expertise in another subdomain only
if his or her expertise includes the area shared by the two subdomains. For
example, all ophthalmotogists who have expertise in neuro-ophthalmology may
be considered to have some expertise in neurology, and vice-versa. The neuro-
ophthalmologist's expertise does not to extend to other areas of the two
subdomains, however, at least in virtue of her neuro-ophthalmic expertise.
An expert may have expertise in one 'aspect' of a subdomain but not another.
For example, in the subdomain of nephrology, a nephrologist has expertise
about the physiology and treatment of end-stage renal disease, but not neces-
sarily in the psychology of patients who suffer from the disease. This is because
the class of propositions corresponding to psychology (e.g., "The patient is
suffering from depression associated with end-stage renal disease") does not
formally belong to the domain of nephrology, even though such psychological
statements refer to that subdomain. Similarly, a psychiatrist may have expertise
about illness-related depression, but unless that physician also has training as a
nephrologist, he or she will not have expertise about the physiology of end-stage
renal disease. Statements concerning depression associated with a patient's renal
failure are no more about the physical aspects of kidney disease than statements
about the ethics of withdrawing nutrition and hydration are about the
biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism.9

4.2. Truth, Knowledge, and Epistemic Justification

We speak of epistemic experts only in those domains which admit to objective

truth. For example, if Ingrid loves chocolate ice cream and Reuven does not, we
 WHAT IS AN EXPERT? 67

do not say that Ingrid is an expert in the dessert while Reuven is not, because we
cannot say that the Reuven is mistaken. We do refer to persons who are able to
make distinctions among a variety of chocolate ice creams as 'connoisseurs',
and such persons are even able to appeal to criteria in making their distinctions
(e.g., smoothness, freshness, etc.). Still, someone like Reuven migbt recognize
that chocolate ice cream A is much smoother and fresher than ice cream B but
still say, "I just don't like A", and we do not conclude that he is wrong. There
are no experts in domains whose propositions are merely expressions of
personal preference, like judging whether a particular food is good.
While truth is a necessary condition of the possibility of expertise in a
domain, an expert opinion need not be true. For example, in 1958 most inves-
tigators of mental illness believed that schizophrenia was linked to stressful
family relationships. Most have now rejected this theory in favor of one which
suggests an organic etiology [16]. The evidence available thirty years ago
supported the dynamic theoD', while advances in genetics give credibility to a
biological model of the disease. While we might not say that psychologists
'knew' that schizophrenia was dynamic in origin, since this belief turned out to
be false, we can claim nevertheless that their opinions were ~expert'. However,
if all or even most of the judgments made by a putative expert turned out to be
false, then we would have a 'prima facie' reason to a question that person's
purported expertise.
The mere fact that a judgment turns out to be true does not distinguish it as an
expert judgment, as the following example suggests. In the first half of this
century, ulcer patients were treated with bismuth salts [17]. The physician who
began this practice, Bertram W. Sippy, did so in an attempt to neutra•ize
stomach acid. Bismuth salts were eventually replaced by antacids which were
better at neutralizing acid. Recently gastroenterologists have discovered that the
bacterium 'Campylobacter pylori' may play a role in stomach ulcers and can be
treated with bismuth. Sippy's judgment that bismuth may help to heal stomach
ulcers was thus correct but for the wrong reasons, and it cannot be considered an
expert opinion.
judgments are not necessarily a form of knowledge, if by 'knowledge' it is
meant (at least) t r u e justified beliefs. 10 Expert opinions are justified beliefs
rather than knowledge in a domain. This feature of expert claims is captured by
the term 'opinion', which refers to a different kind of apprehension than
knowledge, as Plato recognized [18]. Indeed, expert claims may be tme and yet
turn out to be unjustified and thus not instances of knowledge, because dis-
coveries, improved methodologies, and paradigm shifts often produce new
standards for evaluating and justifying propositions in a domaim If the criteria
by which the justification of expert claims are evaluated change, then claims
judged as expert at time t 1 may not be considered expert at t2ù However, the
68 BRUCE D. WEINSTEIN

claims made at t 1 may still be considered expert retrospectively. A strongly

justified proposition uttered by an expert at t 1 which is discovered at I2 to be
false, is not a knowledge claim at either t 1 or 12, but it is an expert claim at t 1
because at t 1 its supporting justification was considered sufficiently strong.
Thus, expertise is relative to time. In short, the concept of epistemic expertise
turns on the justification, not the truth, of judgments.
An analysis of expertise will thus need to include an account of the concept of
justification. What does it mean to say that a claim is justified? Epistemologists,
not surprisingly, have given a broad range of answers to this question, but most
agree that the statement, "S is justified in believing that P" is equivalent to
saying, "S has good grounds for believing that P" or, in many instances, "S has
evidence to believe that P" ([10], p. 64). Because some sorts of evidence more
strongly support one's belief than do other sorts, it makes sense to speak of
stronger and weaker, or better and worse evidence. Similarly, we may speak of
stronger or weaker justifications for a belief. Epistemic justification is thus a
continuum concept, and just as there are stronger and weaker justifications for a
claim, there are correspondingly greater and weaker degrees of expert opinions
(see Figure 4).

A B C D E

A N o Justlflcatlonat all
A--B Weakest
B C Weak to Strong
C--D Strong to Very Strong
E Strongest Posslble

Fig. 4. The continuum of epistemic justification.

Point C to point E corresponds to those sufficiently strong justifications which

distinguish expert opinions from nonexpert ones. Point C may thus be con-
sidered the threshold beyond which a justification is strong enough to distin-
guish a claim as an expert one. It is possible for justifications to be even stronger
than the ones at C, and so those to the right of C correspond to judgments which
are more expert than those between it and C. For example, the justification Chu
 WHATIS AN EXPERT? 69

gives about her claim concerning Sam's heart might be strong enough to locate
it at point C, while Dasheeda, a cardiologist, might give an even stronger
justification corresponding to point D, and accordingly her judgment would be
more expert than Chu's. (She might be to perform and interpret more specific
tests which would support the diagnosis of atypical angina pectoris.) Thus, since
epistemic justification is a continuum concept, and the concept of expertise turns
on justification, it follows that episternic expertise itself is a continuum concept,
and we may speak of persons who are more expert than some but less expert
than others. As was the case with performative expertise, the greater the level of
expertise, the fewer persons there are with that degree of expertise.
Experts may legitimately disagree with one another. This is correlative to the
claim that expert opinions need not be true. Suppose that Eva, another car-
diologist at the hospital, examines Sam and concludes that the problem is not
atypical AP but rather ä disease of the pericardium. This dispute is a legitimate
one, because both Dasheeda and Eva have good reasons to believe each holds
the correct explanation, and the diagnosis of atypica| AP is difficult to make
accurately ([19], p. 258). Both cardiologists cannot be correct; either Dasheeda
or Eva is mistaken, or they both are. Still, their level of understanding of
cardiology confers expertise, even though one or both may be mistaken in their
opinions) 1 Disputes among experts in medicine are common; ophthalmologists
may legitimately disagree about whether the symptom of red eye signifies the
presence of bacterial conjunctivitis, sarcoidosis, or rheumatoJd arthritis ([20],
pp. 226-227).
While an expert opinion need not be true, the judgment of an expert is more
likely to be true than a nonexpert's. Since experts in empirical domains are
deferred to largely for their ability to make accurate predictions, some have even
defined such ::xperts as those whose predictions are successful in the long run as
compared with nonexperts' ([21], p. 36). For example, Chu's expertise in
diagnosing heart problems is a function of her ability to make more accurate
predictions about diagnosis than Sam can. Her expertise is due in part to her
knowledge of the domain, and in part to her ability to apply that knowledge to
particular circumstances ([21], p. 43). Also unlike Sam, Chu is able to identify
the relevant features of a problem and to know the degree to which they are
important ([2t], po 43). For all propositions which admit to being true (i.e., all
objective propositions), experts are more likely to discover their truth than can
nonexperts. Nevertheless, experts can be mistaken, so although an expert
opinion is more likely to be true than a nonexpert's, occasiõnally a nonexpert
opinion about a particular matter will turn out to be correct and expert claim to
the contrary will turn out false. 12 One of the reasons why this it so is that
nonexperts sometimes have better access to the relevant justificatory informa-
tion than do experts. An example of this occurs when a family member makes a
70 BRUCED. WEINSTE1N

diagnostic or prognostic claim about a patient based on a medical history which

has not been fully disclosed to the attending physician. In general, however,
experts are more likely to be correct than are nonexperts, because they are
capable of providing strong justifications over a fange of claims in a domain,
they usually have better access to justificatory information, and the strength of a
claim's justification is linked to the likelihood that the claim is true. The fact
that nonexperts occasionally are correct about a matter and experts incorrect
does not mean we ought not to defer to experts, with one important qualifica-
tion.
That is this: An expert's opinion is not necessarily an expert opinion ([22],
p. 137). The mere fact that S2 is more expert than S 1 does not imply that S2's
opinion about a particular matter is necessarily more strongly justified, and thus
more likely to be correct, than Sl'S. Again, S2's evidence to support the claim
may not be as reliable, or more significantly, S 2 may not have expertise in the
domain in which he or she is making a judgment [22]. A judgment given by an
expert must be within the domain of the expert's competence for it to be
considered an expert judgment. For example, technical information about
nuclear physics that physicists provided to Congress following Word War II
constituted expert opinion, but judgments the scientists made later about the
social implications of this work were not expert ([2], p. 46). In domains such as
medicine which have many subdomains, experts in one subdomain will have a
limited degree of expertise in another (see Figure 3). Such experts may have
extensive expertise in subdomain D p but expertise in one subdomain does not
confer expertise in another. For example, dermatologists have expertise to make
some expert claims in other medical subdomains (e.g., about a patient who
presents with manic-depressive disorder), but not others (e.g., about the
appropriate types of treatment for such a patient). Dermatologists have had some
training in psychiatry, and they are able to make a limited number of expert
claims about it, but they will probably not be informed about the latest types of
treatment, models of illness, etc. in other fields, so their expertise in the other
subdomains is limited in scope. An expert in a subdomain D 1 is ipso facto an
expert in D, but his or her expertise in D may not extend to all subdomains, and
perhaps not even the entire fange of D 1. To demand otherwise would place
expertise beyond the scope of human beings, particularly as the range and
complexity of out knowledge increases.
The concept of expertise is relative in several respects. Because the criteria
for what counts as a sufficiently strong justification or a capacity to perform a
skill, the concept of expertise is relative to time. Because a person may be expert
in one performative or epistemic domain but not another, it is also relative to
task or domain. Finally, the tests used to distinguish experts from laypersons
may be different according to the population being tested. With respect to the
 WHAT 1S AN EXPERT? 71

skill of sowing, for example, the test used for a students in a needlepoint class
will be different than for residents in ophthalmology. Thus expertise is also
relative to the p o p u l a t i o n being considered. 13

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The main points of this article are as follows: (1) There are two discrete senses
of expertise, an 'epistemic' sense and a 'performative' sense, (2) an epistemic
expert is a person who is capable of providing strong justifications for a range of
claims in a domain, (3) a performative expertise is a person who is able to
perform a skill well according to the rules and virtues of a practice, and (4)
experts may legitimately disagree with orte another.
Additional work on the rich topic of expertise might consider the role that
race, gender and class play in deciding what counts as sufficiently strong
justifications, and thus who may legitimately be considered the experts in a
domain. Feminist critiques of science have uncovered a tendency to ascribe
expertise in technical domains to white, middle-class men [23-26] and have
suggested that w h o the recognized experts are is directly related to w h a t
problems are considered worth investigating [27-28]. Some work has already
suggested that this blas exists in philosophy [29] as weil as science. It has also
been suggested that expertise is an ideological extension of capitalism and
oppresses those relegated to nonexpert status [30].
Of particular interest would be an attempt to apply the preceding analysis of
expertise to the domain of ethics and to consider whether we might speak of
'ethical' expertise. Are there ethics experts, and if so, what social rotes might
they play?

Acknowledgements - Drs. B,I.B. Lindahl, Robert M. Veatch, Tom L. Beauchamp, LeRoy

Walters, and an anonymous reviewer provided invaluable criticism on an earlier version
of this paper. The author is also indebted to Drs. George W. Weinstein, Alvin H. Moss,
Judith Stitzel, Anthony P. Morise, and to Takayo Mukai, Cathy Stinety and Harry S.
White, Jr. for their help.

NOTES

I See for example [3-5]. While not using the term "ethics expert," Larry ChurcNll and
Alan Cross ascribe similar functions to clinical ethicists as do those using the label. See
[6]. For a critical assessment of this literature, see [7].
2 We do speak of both expertise in a domain and expertise in a skill, however.
3 Epistemic expertise is what Richard DeGeorge refers to as "epistemic anthority". See
([8], pp. 28-61).
4 For more on autistic savants and the metaphor of seeing, see [11].
5 I am using the terms 'practice' and 'skill' synonymously.
72 BRUCE D. WEINSTEIN

6 It is widely accepted among epistemologists that a person may believe a proposition

which turns out to be false. See for example [10, 14].
7 Sloane-Kettering molecular biologist Liebe Cavalieri is quoted as saying, "Jeremy is
extremely intelligent and grasps scientific issues immediately, if you take the trouble to
explain them" ([15], p. 46).
8 Blind individuals can make expert claims about the physiology or history of vision, but
that is because acquiring knowledge about these fields does not depend on being able to
see.
9 Illness-related depression may have a patho-physiological component in some cases,
but statements about the former are still conceptually distinct from those concerning
pathology.
10 Edmund Gettier challenged the traditional formulation of knowledge as true justified
belief by providing two examples of such belief that nevertheless did not constitute
knowledge. See [14]. For the purpose of this investigation I need not enter into the debate
on the Gettier problem, although O'Connor and Carr [10] have offered what appears to
be the most satisfactory solution to it: The three conditions taust not be satisfied
independently of one another.
11 If orte or the other consistently made false claims, we would have sufficient reason to
believe she is not an expert. This is because her level of understanding itself would be
shown to be questionable, and thus her justifications would be suspect. My thesis is that it
is the strength of the justification of a claim rather than its truth which distinguishes it as
an expert opinion, and this thesis is not weakened by the example.
la This feature of expertise explains how a false but strongly justified belief made at t 1 is
an expert claim but not an instance of knowledge.
13 This point may be another way of stating the previous one, since one could argue that
what is being distinguished is not the members within a population but the ability of
those members to perform different skills.

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