What kind of expert is valuable for science? (On the issue of typological characteristics of expert knowledge)

Abstract

The article presents the results of an epistemological study of expertise, taking into account the typologies of this cognitive and social phenomenon that exist today in the world and domestic philosophical and methodological community. The authors reveal its typological characteristics, relying on the phenomenological approach to social and humanitarian subject formations. This approach shows that expertise always involves two levels of assessment: fundamental and applied. At the applied level, the expert solves a very specific problem, in accordance with the goals of the customer, at the fundamental (coexisting with the applied) level, he tries to integrate the result into the expanding knowledge about the world and humanity. Any expertise is subject to an external, social, in its essence, request, and the emphasis on applied knowledge is focused on the implementation of this request in an expert opinion, i. e. fixes the boundaries of the request implementation. As an alternative to this approach, there is an appeal in the course of an expert assessment to the fundamental cognitive attitudes that are present in its basis (orienting the expert analysis to the expansion of the study). Such appeals, among other things, increase the degree of objectivity of expert assessments due to their fundamental intentionality and intersubjective verifiability. And the reflexive hermeneutic competence of an expert helps to overcome cognitive gaps that arise in the process of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. The phenomenological approach allows us to consider expertise as a cultural and historical phenomenon, and the expert not just as an element of the scientific system, but as a well-educated professional who recognizes himself as a part of history and culture.