Commentary from Heidi Grasswick

Abstract

Goldberg’s “Expectations of Expertise” offers a challenging and interesting provocation against what he calls the orthodox view on expertise. Goldberg argues that the cost of allowing one’s justification to stand in situations where they have not engaged the expertise that might serve as a defeater is too high, in that the people would have to let go of the important sense in which they expect others to reach for the best knowledge available in being answerable to the reader. Goldberg recognizes the dangers of a position that reifies the “institutional expertise” of a given society, at the expense of those who are engaged in more traditional or folk practices that include some forms of reliable belief-formation. This, of course, rules out the possibility that the “institutionalized expertise” may in some cases have ended up missing something important that a traditional practice is able to tell the reader about the world.