Rohan Mahtani
How important are the opinions of experts in the search for knowledge?
Humans finds it enormously easier to rely on one another to provide their beliefs and knowledge base rather than discovering it for themselves. Unique, self-regulated thought is vanishing as society morphs from a mass of fully-educated to a mass of partially-educated. It is this transformation that gives rise to the experts of our world and subsequently allows them to maintain importance in modern times.
Ethics is a knowledge area that revolves around constant debate on issues including but not limited to: capital punishment, animal testing, euthanasia, cheating, forgery, abortion, and gay rights. Furthermore, ethics, more than any other knowledge area, is built upon personal conviction based on the four ways of knowing: language, emotion, reason, and perception. In such a subject area, one may heed the words of experts who have all the knowledge base in the world, but to rely fully on expert opinion to formulate one’s belief on ethical issues ultimately equates to throwing away all personal conviction.
One’s belief, although not always justified and thus not knowledge, should be exacted by past experiences, a deep understanding of both sides, and an emotional response. Expert opinion should lay the ground-work for both sides of the issue and should be interpreted to assist in forming a personal conviction but in the end, should play minimal importance.’ Let’s take an example: The question everyone has asked themselves at least once in their lifetime: Is abortion ethical? There are a variety of doctors, ‘experts’ in the medicinal field, who believe that abortion is illegal as it involves the killing of human being. However, there are also doctors who believe it is a good idea to abort a child, especially if the foetus is suffering a serious illness before it’s born. There are also human geographic experts, who are interested in maintaining the population of a country. These experts could believe that it is necessary to abort children, to prevent an increase in population. We see the wide variety of expert views. They are important as they are educated opinions, based on years of expertise. However, the key advantage is that experts often have varied views. Psychology is a debatable subject, and certain topics have experts with contrasting theories and ideas. Hence, as long as there are experts with a variety of views, it is fine. This is because one is obtaining the most educated opinions. Secondly, there is not only one expert view, so laymen get a wide variety of reliable opinions, allowing to build their own opinion on what is most convincing.
