Expert Bullshitting: Understanding Epistemic Trespassing through the Lens of Bullshit
lens of Frankfurt; here I’ll provide a thorough explanation of what makes epistemic trespassing bullshit. Objections to my proposal are likely, and those will be addressed as well, before finally discussing the importance of this congruency. Explained When an ordinary agent makes a baseless claim, they can easily be ignored and discredited. Although, this becomes more difficult when the agent is an expert. An expert is generally held with high epistemic regard, and most ordinary people consider what they say to be true (individuals in echo chambers offer a challenge to this generalization, though they make up a relatively small minority of the population). Unfortunately, experts are not always the responsible epistemic agents we take them to be. Experts may be provoked by research funding agencies, greedy corporations, or their own ego to make claims they have no business to make. Ballantyne’s Epistemic Trespassing illustrates a specific instance of this phenomenon. 4 His argument centers around experts and fields, and it’s important to understand what these terms mean as they’ll be used throughout the paper. According to him, a field is defined “by a set of questions or topics,” and experts must have “enough relevant evidence to answer reliably or responsibly their field’s questions; and…enough relevant skills to evaluate or interpret the field’s evidence well.” 5 When an expert trespasses, they lack either the necessary skills, evidence, or both to qualify as an expert in the field they’re trespassing in. In the context of these
4 Ballantyne, 371. 5 Ballantyne, 371-372.
Volume VIII (2025) 36
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker