We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar. Ezio Di Nucci is going to give a talk title Trusting experts: on being a joke (in philosophy). The seminar will take place on the 22th of May at 5:30 p.m. in the room 25 on Grodzka Street and via MS Teams.

Abstract

This paper argues against the claim that ‘expertise requires trust’. It does so by distinguishing between two versions of this claim, one according to which expertise requires trustworthiness and one according to which expertise requires actual trust. The paper then argues that the former version of the claim is obvious and therefore philosophically uninteresting, while the latter version of the claim is, actually, false. Five cases are deployed to defend these arguments, so that along the way we also find out more about the nature of expertise, trust and also, incidentally, corruption and even ChatGPT. The paper concludes with a paradox of sorts: that a scientist who cares about public trust is not trustworthy, exactly because they care about public trust (and not just about evidence, which ought to be their only concern).