CARDIFF UNIVERSITY UK
Cardiff School of Social Sciences
www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/expertise
Phases of work
SSK informed by methodological relativism
University of Chicago Press
1985/1992
Golems
Phases of work 2
Critique 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 Expertise
University of Chicago Press
August 2007
TACIT KNOWLEDGE
Continue the series
2, 4, 6, 8, …
Possible continuations
10
2
8
4
6
1
3
5
(2,4,6,8,10,…)
(2,4,6,8,2,4,6,8,…)
(2,4,6,8,8,4,6,2,2,4,6,8,…)
(2,4,6,8,4,6,8,10,6,8,10,12,…)
(2,4,6,8,6,8,10,12,10,12,14,18,…)
(2,4,6,8,1,3,5,7,-1,1,3,5,…)
(2,4,6,8,3,5,7,9,4,6,8,10,…)
(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 Expertises
UBIQUITOUS EXPERTISES
Interactive Ability
Reflective Ability
DISPOSITIONS
SPECIALIST
EXPERTISES
UBIQUITOUS
TACIT KNOWLEDGE
Beer-mat
Popular
Primary
Knowledge Understanding
Source
Knowledge
SPECIALIST
TACIT KNOWLEDGE
Interactional
Contributory
Expertise
Expertise
Polimorphic
Mimeomorphic
Collins and Kusch: The Shape of Actions MIT 1998
METAEXPERTISES
METACRITERIA
EXTERNAL
Ubiquitous
Local
Discrimination Discrimination
Credentials
INTERNAL
Technical
Downward
Connoisseurship Discrimination
Experience
Referred
Expertise
Track-Record
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
Person with
interactional
expertise
pretending to
have
contributory
expertise
Person with
interactional
and
contributory
expertise
Judge
(with
contributory
expertise)
Experimental configurations
JUDGES
CP
CB
PB
PP
CHANCE
IDENTIFY
CP
PB
CB
IDENTIFY
PP
CHANCE
IMITATES
Hypothesised Outcomes
Pretender is
Target
Expertise
Expected
Outcome
A:Color-blind
B:Color-perceiving
C:Pitch-perceiving
D:Pitch-blind
Color-perceiving
Color-blind
Pitch-blind
Pitch-perceiving
Chance
Identify
Chance
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?
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
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.
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 2004
870 pages
Imitating a GW physicist
gwB
gwP
CHANCE ?
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)vans
L
GW
GW
GW
GW
C
GW
GW
I
I
C
Chance
Identify
C
GW
I
S
GW
E
S
E
C
C
I
C
I
I
C
GW
C
GW
S
GW
E
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 highspirited woman of
exceptional intelligence
and literacy' (p56)
Interactional Expertise
Minimal 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?
greens and browns mostly although there
are others i have difficulty with
primary colours - reds, greens, yellows
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