CARDIFF UNIVERSITY UKCardiff School of Social Sciences

www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/expertise

Phases of work

SSK informed by methodological relativism

University of Chicago Press1985/1992

Golems

Phases of work 2Critique of AI based on ideas of tacit knowledge/the social (Collins + Kusch)

Work on expertise motivated by `The South African Question’

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF EXPERTISES

(based on tacit knowledge)

Work on Expertise by Harry Collins and Robert Evans

`The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience'

Social Studies of Science, 32, 2, (2002) 235-296

Rethinking ExpertiseUniversity of Chicago PressAugust 2007

TACIT KNOWLEDGEContinue the series

2, 4, 6, 8, …

Possible continuations10 (2,4,6,8,10,…)2 (2,4,6,8,2,4,6,8,…)8 (2,4,6,8,8,4,6,2,2,4,6,8,…)4 (2,4,6,8,4,6,8,10,6,8,10,12,…)6 (2,4,6,8,6,8,10,12,10,12,14,18,…)1 (2,4,6,8,1,3,5,7,-1,1,3,5,…)3 (2,4,6,8,3,5,7,9,4,6,8,10,…)5 (2,4,6,8,5,7,9,11,...)

Another continuation

Who (2,4,6,8,who do we appreciate?)

Ubiquitous and Specialist Tacit Knowledge

• Natural language speaking, keeping your distance on the pavement, everything you need to live in society

• The things that people tried to put into computerised expert systems. (In my case the specialist tacit knowledge of gravitational wave physics) www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/gravwave

Periodic Table of ExpertisesUBIQUITOUS EXPERTISES DISPOSITIONS Interactive Ability

Reflective Ability SPECIALIST UBIQUITOUS

TACIT KNOWLEDGE SPECIALIST

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

EXPERTISES Beer-mat

Knowledge Popular

Understanding Primary Source

Knowledge

Interactional Expertise

Contributory Expertise

Polimorphic Mimeomorphic

META- EXTERNAL INTERNAL

EXPERTISES Ubiquitous

Discrimination Local

Discrimination Technical

Connoisseurship Downward

Discrimination Referred Expertise

META-

CRITERIA

Credentials

Experience

Track-Record

Collins and Kusch: The Shape of Actions MIT 1998

Interactional Expertise

Interactional Expertise

Can you learn a domain language without the

domain abilities?

The Strong Interactional Hypothesis

A PERSON WITH MAXIMAL INTERACTIONAL EXPERTISE AND NO CONTRIBUTORY EXPERTISE WILL BE INDISTINGUISHABLE

FROM A PERSON WITH BOTH IN ANY TEST BASED ON VERBAL

INTERCHANGE ALONE

The Imitation Game

Judge(with contributory expertise)

Person with interactional

expertise pretending to

have contributory

expertise

Person with interactional

and contributory

expertise

Experimental configurations

JUDGES

IMITATES

CHANCE

CP

CB

CHANCE

PP

PB

PP

PB

IDENTIFY

IDENTIFY

CB

CP

Hypothesised Outcomes

Pretender is Target Expected

Expertise Outcome

A:Color-blind Color-perceiving Chance

B:Color-perceiving Color-blind Identify

C:Pitch-perceiving Pitch-blind Chance

D:Pitch-blind Pitch-perceiving Identify

Confidence levels

1: I have little or no idea who is who

2: I have some idea who is who but I am more unsure than sure

------------------------------------------------------------------------------3: I have a good idea who is who

and I am more sure than unsure

4: I am pretty sure I know who is who

A colour blind judge guesses correctly at confidence level 4 What do you think are the main problems faced by colourblind people?

Judge's comment: ... B's answer to the main problems one faces is almost exactly what I would say. ... The real clincher for me may strike a colour normal person as odd: the statement by A that "I might not be able to enjoy things like films". This seems a very strange idea, as I have never seen colours normally,

so can't see how being colour-blind would affect my enjoyment of them; although perhaps this reflects each person's personal outlook.

A: Functioning on an every day level can be difficult - trying to get simple things done

e.g. identifiying coloured papers in a meeting, but also enjoyment of things can be affected - I might not be able to enjoy

things like films as much as I can't see the same range of colours as other people,

picking clothes in shops,that kind of thing

B: Distinguishing between shades of colour - this could make life difficult/interesting in a range of contexts - colour coordination with regard to clothes, decorating etc. Obviously if colour perception is extremely limited this

may impact on some kinds of occupational/leisure settings

The Imitation Game Phase 2

?

?

Hypothesis proved!

Chance condition

JUDGES 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 -1 +1 2 -2 +1 2 -2 0 -3 -2 -2 COLOUR 3 +1 -2 -2 +2 BLINDNESS 4 +2 +2 0 +2 DIALOGUES 5 0 +1 +2 6 -2 0 +2 0 7 +2 -1 +1 +2 -3 8 -2 +2 -3 +2 JUDGES 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 -3 0 0 0 -3 PERFECT 2 -2 +3 0 0 -3 PITCH 3 +1 +4 0 -4 DIALOGUES 4 -1 +3 +1 +4 5 +3 -3 +1 -2 0

Binary inspiral

An interferometer affected by a quadrupole gravitational wave

Hanford and Livingston

University of Chicago Press 2004870 pages

Imitating a GW physicist

gwB

CHANCE ?

gwP

Q2) Is a spherical resonant mass detector equally sensitive to radiation from all over the sky? A2)Yes, unlike cylindrical bar detectors which are

most sensitive to gravitational radiation coming from a direction perpendicular to the long axis.

B2) Yes it is.

Q3) State if after a burst of gravitational waves pass by, a bar antenna continues to ring and mirrors of an interferometer continue to oscillate from their mean positions? (only motion in the

relevant frequency range is important). A3)Bars will continue to ring, but the mirrors in the

interferometer will not continue to oscillate.

B3) Bars continue to ring; the separation of interferometer mirrors, however, follows the

pattern of the wave in real time. Q5) A theorist tells you that she has come up with a theory in which a circular ring of particles are displaced by GW so that the circular shape remains the same but the size oscillates about a

mean size. Would it be possible to measure this effect using a laser interferometer? A5) Yes, but you should analyse the sum of the

strains in the two arms, rather than the difference. You don't even need two arms to detect GWs,

provided you can measure the round-trip light travel time along a single arm accurately enough to detect

small changes in its length.

B5) It depends on the direction of the source. There will be no detectable signal if the source lies anywhere on the plane which passes through the

center station and bisects the angle of the two arms. Otherwise there will be a signal, maximised when the source lies along one or other of the two arms.

Q6) Imagine the mirrors of an interferometer are equally but oppositely (electrically) charged. Could the effect of a radio-wave on the interferometer be the same as a gravitational wave?

A6) In principle you could detect the passage of an electromagnetic (EM) wave, but the effect is

different than for a GW. Unlike EM waves, GWs produce quadrupolar deformations. A typical EM wave would change the distance in only one arm

while a typical GW wave would change the distances (in opposite ways) in both, so the differential signal

for the EM wave would be half that for a GW.

B6) Since gravitational waves change the shape of spacetime and radio waves do not, the effect on an interferometer of radio waves can only be to mimic the effects of a gravitational wave, not reproduce

them. An EM wave could, however, produce noise which could be mistaken for a GW under the

circumstances described.

NATURE

6 July 2006

GW scientists who preferred Collins

... I find that I lean to [W]. But [Z] is pretty darn good _ I'd be entirely unsurprised if you told me this was a control run and that you'd used responses from two experts.

Set [P] looked more like they had been answered by looking up a book. Set [Q] looked as if they cam[e] rapidly out of the mind.

Different arrangements of GW imitation game (GW) scientist

(C)Ollins

(L)ay person

Non-GW (S)cientist [Astrophysicists and Astronomers]

(E)vansGW

CGW

GW

SGW

GW

E GWC

E GW

C

SGW

E

CGW

C I I

IIC

L

CGW S

CGW

I

I

ChanceIdentify

Lay persons who preferred Collins

I have no idea about the detail of any sets of answers, not knowing this field. I thought [J] was more persuasive as he/she seemed not to feel the need to elaborate on answers quite so much or set them in some wider didactic context. As such, [J] did not strike me as someone trying to persuade anyone else of their own credentials, presumably because they are not in question.

My guess was based on accumulating evidence from the series of questions, rather than any particular one. It seemed to me that the responses [of Q] were going out of their way to appear knowledgeable and 'scientific/specialist'. I suspect that the specialists actually talk to one another in more natural terms [as in J's answers], being able to assume shared background knowledge. I'm also aware, though, of how I'm interpreting responses to individual questions to fit in with my overall decision. As a possible get-out, of course individuals vary in manner - and a very senior scientist might give different kinds of answers to a junior one than to another senior colleague.

CONCLUSION

YOU CAN LEARN A DOMAIN LANGUAGE WITHOUT THE

DOMAIN ABILITIES !

(interactional expertise without contributory expertise)

Other publications on expertise

• Collins, H. M. (2004) `Interactional Expertise as a Third Kind of Knowledge' Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3 (2) 125-143

• Collins, Harry, (Ed) (2008 – forthcoming) Case Studies in Expertise and Experience: special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 39. 1 [March]

All will be found on the Website

www.cardiff.ac.uk\socsi\expertise

or Google

Harry Collins Expertise

Philosophical Implications

YOU CAN ACQUIRE A COMPLETE DOMAIN LANGUAGE, WITH ALL ITS

TACIT COMPONENTS, WITHOUT ACQIRING THE EMBODIED TACIT

KNOWLEDGE !Many sociological and policy

implications

What are the philosophical implications?

If a lion could talk …

Social and minimal embodiment

Mom!

Grr!

Madeleine`she had never fed herself, used the toilet by herself, or reached out to help herself, always leaving it to others to help her' (p 58)

`spoke freely indeed eloquently ... revealing herself to be a high-spirited woman of exceptional intelligence and literacy' (p56)

Interactional ExpertiseMinimal embodiment required to learn

language: (larynx, ears, brain)

Minimal interaction with the physical world

Cf the deaf, who have lots of interaction but have no ears, and struggle to learn the

native language

It is social embedding that is crucial WITTGENSTEINIAN AI

Mom!

Autism

Feral Children

Frontal Lobe Damage

A judge with perfect pitch guesses correctly at confidence level 3

Do you find perfect pitch a useful skill? Are there times that you wish that you didn't have it? Can you give me an everyday example of a pitch that is always the

same?

Perfect pitch is a useful skill, though there are times when it is annoying. I hear the pitches in people's voices often so I can

imitate quite well. An everyday example of pitch would be my computer - I know every

"note" it makes as it boots up

I hav to say that it has become increaingly less useful as I have diversified the 'styles'

of music that I get involved with. It was useful when singing more traditional pieces, however I have been more

interested in less formulaic styles in the last few years. I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by 'everyday example'. A

pitch as a constant is a pitch at a constant

Here the judge said that hearing pitches in peoples' voices was a valuable clue especially since this was sometimes found to be

annoying whereas B didn't really seem to understand the question

A judge with perfect pitch guesses correctly at confidence level 4

How do you pick up a single voice in a crowded room?

by hearing the individual pitch of the given persons voice although it does depend on

the volume of individual voices as well By trying to concentrate on that voice.

Here the judge thought that only a person with perfect pitch would use pitch to identify voices and that this question alone definitely indicated the person with perfect pitch. Participants

without perfect pitch would not be sure that these things could be accomplished by a person with perfect pitch and

might think that replying positively to the questions would be to fall into a trap set by the judge.

A colour blind judge guesses correctly having reached

confidence level 3 at this point in the questioning When shopping for clothes how do you decide whether a tie will go with a

particular shirt or jacket?

they have complimentary patterns i've never bought a tie in my life

If not a tie how do you decide whether a shirt goes with a pair of trousers?

I follow the choices made by the shops' dummies or displays

just by intuition. if i'm having trouble i might ask my girlfriend. otherwise, there are

particular colours i like, such as red, which obviously go with black

What is the most irritating thing about being colour blind?

having to do experiments! not being able to follow conversations or other people's conversations when they discuss or

mention particular colours

when i was in school i drew a green squirrel - that was quite embarrassing! generally it's

not too bothersome

Here the judge found the answers in the left column referring to clothing implausible. He found the embarrassment caused by drawing

something in the wrong colour evocative of his own experience.

A colour blind judge guesses correctly at confidence level 3

what colours do you have particular difficulty distinguishing?

primary colours - reds, greens, yellows greens and browns mostly although there

are others i have difficulty with

Judge's comment: Participant A claims to have trouble distinguishing "primary" colours, whereas in my experience, it's the shades of colour that

present me with the most trouble; also why red, green and yellow?!

.

END