Abstract
The goal of this article is to expose the structural complexity of citizens’ trust in scientific experts, and to argue for the possibility of a productive cooperation between citizens and scientific experts within a community of inquirers. We firstly distinguish between three different idealized forms of epistemic inequality, with the purpose of shedding light on the distinctive features of the relationship between laypeople and scientific experts. Then, we highlight the multi-layeredness of the layperson-expert trust: though laypeople’s trust in science is of an epistemic kind, we maintain that its grounds are rather deontological and institutional. Finally, we show how the radical epistemic inequality between laypeople and scientific experts does not rule out the possibility of public deliberation on public issues, the latter being conceived of as problems in which scientific and socio-ethical–political components are essentially interwoven.
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Notes
- 1.
In this essay, we adopt a trust-based account of testimony, due to the distinguishing character of the expert-novice relationship. For a general overview of the various forms that such account can take, see (Gelfert 2014, Chap. 8).
- 2.
Starting from the influential (Hardwig 1985), epistemologists have focused on epistemic dependence. We believe that epistemic inequality is more fundamental, from an explanatory point of view, than epistemic dependence: it is because there is an epistemic inequality between A and B that A is epistemic dependent on B. In any case, since the two notions are so strictly interwoven, they are almost perfectly interchangeable.
- 3.
We do not want to take a stance here on the issue of whether competence and expertise should be considered as substantial or comparative notions. We have outlined our views on that matter in (Barrotta and Gronda 2019).
- 4.
The formula “ubiquitous capacities” is modelled after Collins and Evans’ notion of ubiquitous expertise: “What we call ‘ubiquitous expertises’ include all the endlessly indescribable skills it takes to live in a human society; these were once thought of as trivial accomplishments” (Collins and Evans 2007, 16).
- 5.
A word of clarification may be in order here. As has been said, the three forms of expert inequality that we are going to sketch out are ideal types. Accordingly, we by no means hold that it is not possible for a layperson to acquire some kind of interactional expertise that enables her to at least partially assess the truth of an expert testimony. Quite the opposite, the creation of “trading zones” is a distinctive epistemic feature of a sound community of inquirers.
- 6.
A similar approach to trust, which recommends a shift from the epistemic to the non-epistemic (moral) level, has been advanced in (Faulkner 2014).
- 7.
See, for instance (Domenicucci and Holton 2017).
- 8.
We use the term “deontological” to refer to the rules that a scientist is expected and asked to follow in order to be a good scientist. Merton’s CUDOS norms (communism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism) are a very good example of scientific deontology. For an analysis of the notion of deontology, please see (Fabris 2018, 14ff.).
- 9.
See, for instance https://tomstafford.staff.shef.ac.uk/?p=447. See also (Sayer 2011).
- 10.
For a more in-depth discussion of the distinction between scientific and public problems, see (Gronda 2018).
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Barrotta, P., Gronda, R. (2020). Epistemic Inequality and the Grounds of Trust in Scientific Experts. In: Fabris, A. (eds) Trust. Trust 2020. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44018-3_6
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