Expert Knowledge - Part 4 of 4

In the previous posts, I have argued that (1) knowledge is built on expert communities, (2) these communities legitimately structure knowledge claims in a hierarchy, and (3) they can by and large avoid issues of oppression insofar as they stick to their own internal goals without adding in extraneous concerns. Whether I have argued these well is a separate issue, and I am sure that they need (and probably have received elsewhere) much more fleshing out. But in any case, I want to see what happens with religious expert communities. I will first start with the relation of communities to each other, in a couple brief senses; it really is going to be two posts in one, but I want to finish this series and I've already labeled it as as 4 post series. I may (highly) edit this and add in some citations to risk sending to a conference at some point, so please, please, PLEASE leave a philosophical criticism or two on these entries to help improve the mess if you have the time. Or let me know if this has all been said before by some continental guy I haven't read (which would be any of them) and who has said it better.

Novices vs. Ousiders

There is a difference between two different sorts of non-knowers. The first group is that of the novices, who belong to a given expert community for the time being and so are responsible to that community. If one starts asking medical questions, one is beholden to the medical experts if one actually wants to understand medicine; if one does not, one is not really asking medical questions. On the other hand, there are outsiders. If someone does not want to learn about dead white men, then those communities who specialize in dead white male culture (should) have no control over them. So one can be in a community without being considered a knower. A problem here is that outsiders may have nowhere else to go, but that is another (albeit important and relevant) issue.

Essence vs. Existence

There is also a difference between knowing about a particular topic, and knowing how it fits with other topics. A physicist may know physics thoroughly, but this does not mean that her opinion concerning the relation of physics to other sciences (or worse, to politics or religion) has any weight, except insofar as it is knowledge of physics. Of course, this is already extremely problematic; even what "physics" is has been determined by different conversations between different and interrelated communities sharing many individuals. One cannot simply delineate "this" community from "that" community in reality. But for practical and general purposes, there seems to be some sort of knowledge in which the physicist participates, being trained and ratified by a given community within which she continues to dialogue, and I can't think of a better shorthand term for this sort of knowledge than "physics".

I will refer to this division as between the essence of a body of knowledge (what it is about) and its existence (that is obtains within the broader context). There can be a community of experts about (put your favorite pseudo-science here), and they can legitimately have some body of knowledge, but there are also the interrelations between this community and other communities to be considered. Every body of knowledge both is something, but also fits within the larger context of humanity in a certain way, and these are separate issues. "Existence" as I am using it here refers only to how a thing exists, since it must already exist in some way as a communal practice if any community discusses it, but it seems for the present to make a handy technical term so I will keep it unless someone objects. Someone can talk about a phoenix, and even state truths about it (a phoenix is a bird, for example), so it must exist in some way, or we would have nothing stable to talk about. We could (in theory) disagree over whether it exists in physical reality (whereupon I could reach out and touch it) or merely in the reality of social construction (or perhaps, a differently constructed social reality than the physical one and less likely to harm me via physical contact).

The essence of the topic is something understood truly only by the given community; math is understood by mathematicians and medicine by medical experts (although again, these are not necessarily clearly delimited and defined essences which can be neatly separated from each other). The existence of the topic, though, is even less clearly delimited. There are wider communities which can discuss such issues: how physics exists is discussed in the wider community of modern science, for example. But poets and philosophers and university boards all have some relation to the different ways in which the physics community interacts within the larger world, and ultimately, so does all of humanity (and beyond, if we were to encounter other beings capable of considering these issues). Essence then is largely decided within communities, while how the essence exists is decided within ever-increasing circumferences. To fully and completely understand how anything exists, we would need all of the approaches available to us.

Members of a community must, then, listen to those outside of the community in this respect in order to understand their own field better. The mathematician does not need to listen to everyone concerning what mathematical theorems are true, but she does need to listen to others in understanding what math is. The poet may be clueless when it comes to physics, but can both heighten our appreciation of the grandeur which physics shows us as well as call into question its unjustified dominance; for this reason, the physicist may need to listen to the poet to understand physics. In the end, knowledge and communities are both internally and externally constituted and any individual (whether a human being or a specific community) is also made up by the other communities.

Religious Expert Communities

So, where does this leave religious communities? First, different religious communities set their own rules on a lot of things according to their own internal life. Muslims get to exegete the Qur'an, not Christians or Hindus. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox each get their own communities of understanding their authoritative sources and of understanding. Different religious groups have their own specific experts, and in order to be considered a knower, one must be trained and accepted by these specific experts, as in any other field.

It is one thing to be the spokesperson for a given group; it is another to say that one's given belief really obtains, and this is why I wanted to refer to an essence/existence distinction (which probably makes more sense here with religions than it did with, say, physics). The Christian can argue that, within the Christian community, God's justice needs to have been satiated by Christ's atoning death. But this pulls in notions of justice which are shared by other communities; it is not Christian justice which demands God's act, but some feature of reality which should be accessible to people in general. (In general, any rational argument is such that it should connect together ideas appropriately; other communities may disagree with one's starting position, but if you have a good argument from your own premises, this should be widely recognized or else suspicious). When no one else gets the necessity of atonement, ostensibly argued from concerns beyond those of the Christian community, the Christian community needs to revise its claims. Otherwise, it is stretching beyond its community's own inner life and being either oppressive or foolish, dictating what, say, "justice" is to others without having formed the proper expertise. The Christian community, in this case, can (a) restrict their claims to some specifically Christian form of justice which of course no one else holds by definition (but then, what about original sin?); (b) reject the argument and work within the larger community to come to a better understanding of justice and how it fits with the Atonement (as many contemporary theologians are doing); or (c) revise their arguments so that they actually explain their arguments appropriately to others so that the others can see the internal logic of the Christian position (but then the Christians must also listen to other voices in response).

So the Christian community in this case is making claims beyond itself, as it seems to me that world-wide religions must all do to preserve their claims to heal the human spirit in general. While Christians are the finally arbiters on what Christians actually teach (and not, say, militant atheists or well-meaning religious pluralists), they are not the arbiters on what they say that falls within the scope of humanity at large or within other groups' expertises'. To say otherwise would be like allowing a peculiar sort of Christian math which can trump everyone else's math, perhaps because of some rounding found in the measurements of the bath in Soloman's temple. But this is ridiculous; the community which actually understands math through constant practice and training and in which one can be recognized for knowing math is the arbiter for interpreting Christian mathematical claims, not vice versa. But at the same time, when Christians are confronted by other communities, it is the Christian community which decides how to respond based on its own internal life. It may be oppressive (or foolish) to continue claiming knowledge outside of the community's marked expertise, but there is no single response to having a problem pointed out, as shown in the example above with justice. Religious communities must change based on their own internal principles, as mathematics did in the 18th and 19th centuries when it split into modern math and physics.

Religious Expertise and Laypeople

So this goes some way toward outlining how communities can relate to each other, though it is at best a beginning. But what about the novices in the community of faith? How do they relate to the experts of their faith? Are professors, pastors, and priests more members of a given faith than the common people? That depends on the faith and what it requires for practice; one can practice correctly without complete understanding. The experts in the community decide what is actually the knowledge-base of that community. But, since that community does not have any say outside of its own legitimate principles without becoming oppressive, novices in religious understanding may be the relevant experts in some areas upon which the religion touches. When the experts of the community say that the Bible denies evolution, the microbiologist within that particular church is dependent on those experts for their understanding of the Bible; evolution, however, is also discussed by the scientific and especially biological community, and so she is the expert there. One could also say that married people are better experts on family and procreation than celibate priests, no matter how well the latter have been trained in their own expertises.

So the common people of the religion do lack the sort of knowledge which the experts of their religion have. Further, insofar as religious dialogues are concerned with intersecting expertises, lay people uninvolved with these expertises will be left out. But some issues have broader human concern, and so while many people will have no legitimate opinion about the essence of any of these bodies of expert knowledge, they do have some say on how these bodies of knowledge exist. The working-class person's opinion of what is true in physics is irrelevant, but her opinion of how physics impacts her own life (perhaps in being replaced by a machine at work?) is part of the larger discussion. So too does the person sitting in the pews (or standing, or sitting on the floor, or kneeling in prayer) have some aspect in which her religion is affecting her, as will even the ardently non-religious.