Intellectual Populism & the Crisis of Expertise

Credit: Vadim Sherbakov (Unsplash)

Recently, I listened to a fascinating discussion between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Douglas Murray is a political commentator and journalist who has written several books on politics and culture, most recently On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. Dave Smith is a comedian and podcaster who comments on politics and culture on his YouTube channel and podcast.

Though both had been on Joe Rogan's podcast before, this episode in particular was about two wars: the war between Israel and Hamas and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Murray had written extensively on both conflicts, having traveled to Israel and Ukraine in the midst of both conflicts and having interviewed soldiers and civilians. Smith had discussed both conflicts on his podcasts extensively, but he had never traveled to either country.

What made this discussion interesting is that, from the outset, Murray and Smith had different ways of approaching these topics in mind. Murray begins the discussion by aggressively challenging Joe Rogan for platforming guests who primarily held only one view on the respective conflicts: an anti-Israel perspective and a pro-Russia perspective. He indicates that his concern is that people claiming to be experts were being platformed, including especially the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who, in spite of his lacking any formal education in history, hosts a podcast in which he speaks extensively on historical topics and is seen as an authority on these topics by other podcasters, such as Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.

Murray then proceeds to question Smith's qualification to be able to comment on these conflicts. Smith's retort is that Murray's arguments are a fallacious appeal to authority and that they should instead be focusing on the arguments and evidence that they would both advance in favor of their positions. The discussion continues along these lines for almost three hours, with no clear resolution.

Murray and Smith were clearly talking past each other and never reached common ground on where to start in discussing these issues. For what it's worth, though I agree more readily with Murray's positions on those conflicts, I agree with Smith that the discussion should have centered on the arguments and evidence, rather than who has the proper credentials. This discussion generated a lot of controversy online concerning who had the better points and whether - and to what extent - appeals to authority have a place in these kinds of discussions.

Murray and Smith's exchange on The Joe Rogan Experience is related to a much larger problem in Western culture today, which has come to be called the "crisis in expertise" in the social sciences. There is a pervasive sense of unease in our culture about the value and reliability of experts. Podcasters and political and cultural commentators refer to the "expert class" with derision, claiming that they should not be trusted because they are ideologically compromised. Meanwhile, in the age of the internet, the truth has become more and more difficult to find, and fringe voices are boosted in an algorithm that favors outrage, cynicism, and controversy.

Three factors, I think, have contributed to this crisis. First, the rise of the internet and social media have upended traditional authoritative sources of knowledge, such as traditional news media and the university. This has resulted in a kind of "intellectual populism," which favors the opinions and views of everyday people over the "experts."

Second, as a matter of fact, those traditional sources of knowledge have ruined their credibility in the eyes of the public. There is a widespread and accurate sense that these institutions have become ideologically compromised, favoring their ideologies over the truth and punishing voices of dissent from the status quo. As far back as 2008, the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documented the backlash that scientists who dissented from naturalistic, neo-Darwinistic status quo faced for their views, no matter the scientific merits of the Intelligent Design theory. More recently, professors and students who dissent from a Left-wing, critical theorist view of the world have been punished for doing so. In late 2023, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT testified before Congress about their respective institutions' stances on antisemitism, in the midst of weeks of pro-Hamas protests on their campuses - with disastrous results. So, the public's distrust in these institutions is understandable to an extent.

Finally, in the American context, we have a history of intellectual populism, as has been noted by Dr. Paul Stob, professor of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt, in his book, Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People. This streak of intellectual populism in American culture has three facets: (a) a high trust in the views of "the people," (b) a low trust in so-called "experts," and (c) the formation of what Stob calls "alternative communities of inquiry." (Full disclosure: I have not personally read Intellectual Populism. I mention it just to show how some of these ideas have already been discussed by scholars.) What I find fascinating is the idea that American culture's traditional trend toward intellectual populism seems to have been exacerbated by recent events and the internet.

Some will claim that these cultural influences are positive. They will argue that with the formation of alternative communities of inquiry, the Overton window (i.e., the range of views deemed "acceptable" in a culture) will be opened, and new ideas can be explored. This will, they claim, benefit us in the search for truth. Others, however, are deeply suspicious of these influences. Commentators like Douglas Murray and others note that the boosting of non-expert commentators on social media normalize fringe views that have already been debunked.

A recent example can be found in Tucker Carlson's interview of Darryl Cooper, in which Cooper claimed that Winston Churchill was the primary villain of WWII. The interview, as well as Cooper's claims about Churchill, were widely criticized and debunked for their historical inaccuracies by trained historians. (For just one example, see historian Victor Davis Hanson's article responding to Cooper's claims.) Nonetheless, the way in which Tucker introduced Cooper at the beginning of the interview was striking:

"I think you are the most important popular historian working in the United States today."

Fair enough that Carlson at least introduces Cooper as a "popular" historian, as opposed to a professional historian, which he is not. Still, this is arguably misleading. Darryl Cooper is a podcaster who discusses history; he is in almost no sense a historian. He is not a member of that academic community, and this is important for laypeople (by which I mean people who are not part of an academic community) to understand: Darryl Cooper is, in terms of qualification, no different from the average layperson who has read a few more books on a particular historian topic. That is not the same as being a historian, whether popular or professional, as I will show in this post.

What is this post for? This post is for the average layperson who is trying to make sense of all this confusion and find the truth in the midst of it. My academic training is in philosophy; I am currently in training to become a member of the philosophical academic community at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in their PhD program. My specialization is in epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge, and this field of philosophy has much of relevance to say about this issue in our culture. Therefore, my hope is to speak into this issue in a way that can provide clarity and guidance for navigating claims of expertise and understanding why being part of an academic community - though it comes with dangerous pitfalls - is important for a society.

This post will have three parts. In the first part, I will discuss the epistemology of testimony, which is highly relevant to inquiry and knowledge-attainment in any society. In the second part, I will discuss what it means and what it takes to be part of an academic community and why appeals to authority, in some cases, is important. In the third part, I will bring these ideas together and provide some thoughts on how the lay person can proceed in this context.

Testimonial Knowledge

Testimonial knowledge, at its core, is the knowledge you gain from what other knowers tell you. There are two important - and troubling - features to testimonial knowledge. The first is that most of what we take to be our knowledge about the world is based on testimony. In fact, the very notion of progress in our knowledge, both individually and as a society, depends on testimony, so that what one person discovers to be true does not have to be rediscovered by every individual or generation.

In his book, Warrant and Proper Function, the philosopher Alvin Plantinga drives this point home (77):

"[T]he importance of credulity, testimony, to our entire intellectual enterprise is seldom sufficiently recognized. Testimony is the source of an enormously large proportion of our most important beliefs; it is testimony and learning from others that makes possible intellectual achievement and culture; testimony is the very foundation of civilization."

He goes on to illustrate through examples how even some of our most elementary bits of knowledge, such as that the continent of Australia exists or that New South Wales is in Australia, is ours via testimony. You might have learned these geographical facts via a map, but you did not map the continent; you may be like me and have never visited Australia, but you take yourself to not only justifiably believe but know that it exists.

Another helpful description of the importance of testimonial knowledge comes from philosopher Duncan Pritchard in his introduction to epistemology, What is This Thing Called Knowledge? (79):

"Think of all the things that you think you know right now – such as that the earth is round, or that the Nile flows through Egypt. Most of these beliefs will have been gained not by finding out the truth of the claim in question yourself, but by being told that this claim was true by others. Indeed, often we do not even remember exactly how we come by most of our beliefs."

Notice how Pritchard contrasts two general ways of gaining knowledge: first, through "finding out the truth of the claim" yourself; and second, by "being told that this claim was true by others." One of the reasons why testimony is so vital to human knowledge has to do with numbers: there are lots of truths to discover, and no mere human being has the time or resources to discover all of them. Therefore, our knowledge has a social element to it; we gain more knowledge collectively than we could ever gain on our own. We also build on our knowledge over time.

The second feature of testimonial knowledge is what we might call knowledge transfer. The most common definition of knowledge we find can be expressed in this simple formula, which is called the JTB formula:

Knowledge = Justified True Belief (JTB)

For reasons I won't get into in this essay, most epistemologists now reject this definition of knowledge. (Interested readers can check out Edmund Gettier's 1963 paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?," which can easily be found online.) The basic idea, however, comes from Plato, who recognized that mere true belief is not sufficient for gaining knowledge. Something more is needed. Precisely what this "something more" consists in leads epistemologists to develop various theories of knowledge.

To illustrate the idea, imagine that you asked a friend who the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was in 1945. Your friend confidently tells you, without searching for the answer on the internet, that Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of the U.K. in 1945. Your friend's confidence puzzles you; he is not a historian of British politics or history. You ask him how he knows and can be so confident about his answer. Your friend then informs you that he is confident about his answer because, earlier that day, he asked a magic 8-ball, "Was Clement Attlee the Prime Minister in the U.K. in 1945?" The 8-ball answered yes.

Your friend's claim is true; Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister in 1945 (I googled it to be sure). However, your friend does not know that Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister because his belief, though true, is unjustified. It is unjustified because asking a Magic 8-ball that question is not a reliable way to gain knowledge about past U.K. prime ministers. A better way would be to read a book about U.K. politics during that time period or to ask a historian of British history or politics. The ancient insight here is that merely gaining a true belief is not sufficient for knowledge; how it is gained matters, too.

Notice that the thought experiment above had to do with testimonial knowledge. You were attempting to gain knowledge from your friend's testimony. However, once you questioned your friend's reason for being confident in his answer, arguably this made the prospect of taking his word suspect. In testimony, knowledge transfer is the process by which the testifier's knowledge is "transferred" to another person. One can think of this in terms of a simple three-step argument, where S and T represent persons and p represents a claim:

1. S has testified to T that p.

2. S knows that p.

3. Therefore, T now knows that p.

When your friend told you, on a faulty basis, that Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of the U.K. in 1945, knowledge failed to transfer because your friend did not know that Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of the U.K. in 1945. In testimony, you cannot give what you do not have.

This feature of knowledge transfer, however, raises many troubling issues in the epistemology of testimony. First, does knowledge transfer along "testimonial chains?" A testimonial chain is formed when one person testifies to another the truth of p, and that person testifies to another that p, and so on. This is what happens in a typical K-12 classroom (except for in math class, where you work out problems on your own). Your teacher, we hope, knows who won the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (it will be on the test, by the way), but she is not a historian. She has not read the relevant primary documents from the time period. She "knows" this, if at all, from a textbook she read.

We might suspect that knowledge transfers down every link of the testimonial chain, unaffected by how many links there are, so that the person occupying the final link knows the truth of p no less strongly than the person who originally discovered that p is true. This view is called credulism; you are justified in believing p to be true unless you have reason to suspect otherwise. Other will say that in order to know the truth of p via testimony, you must be able to trace the testimonial chain back to its source, where the truth of p was originally discovered. This view is called reductionism because in it, all testimonial knowledge reduces to non-testimonial knowledge. I favor credulism because I think that reductionism would lead to widespread skepticism. No one has the time and expertise needed to trace everything they believe via testimony back to its original source, though tracing one's testimonial beliefs back to their source can, at times, strengthen one's warrant for holding that belief. Certain epistemic practices can help us to adjudicate between good and bad testimony without our needing to trace every testimonial belief we have to the source.

Second, knowledge transfer raises the question of how to determine whether the testifier is reliable. Remember, your friend is not a historian of British history or politics. What basis does he have for confidently asserting who the Prime Minister of the U.K. was in 1945? By asking that question, you are attempting to trace the justification for his belief, at least at a "local" level. Had he told you that he had taken a class on British history, in which the professor stated that Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of the U.K. in 1945, your inquiry would have likely stopped there. The same would be true, had he said that he had recently read a book on British politics, which had said so. This is consistent with credulism; rarely do we insist that our friend must know where the history professor got his information from, and so on.

Now, consider two ways of modifying the thought experiment. In the first case, your friend is an historian whose specialization is in British history in the mid-20th century. Are you likely to raise further questions about his claim? Probably not. He has the relevant credentials, which we typically take to increase the reliability of his testimony. In the second case, your friend tells you that he received this knowledge from his history professor in college, but you know that your friend is a pathological liar who tends to falsify testimonial claims about his time in college (perhaps, he thinks it funny to mislead peers about obscure historical facts). This knowledge does not entail that his claim is false - it isn't - but it undermines his credibility as a testifier.

Both of these modifications show that relevant expertise and character are important for determining whether a testifier is reliable. Being an "expert," then - or being part of an academic community - is important socially for determining who has the relevant expertise and character necessary for testimonial knowledge, which is part of the foundation of knowledge at a social level. Given that all of us as knowers are reliant on testimonial knowledge for the vast majority of our beliefs, we should be careful in discerning whether the beliefs we accept via testimony are justified or not. In the next section, I will discuss what it means to be in an academic community and why appeals to authority are important for testimonial knowledge.

Academic Communities

If a society relies on testimonial knowledge in order to make progress in the various fields of inquiry, then having various groups of socially recognized experts is vital to that society. In the Western intellectual tradition, there has developed a highly complex taxonomy of fields of inquiry, and scholars associated with those fields are relied upon as experts within those fields. In the modern period (roughly 1800-1950), these fields became more specialized. Now, recipients of Ph.D.'s, no matter the specific field, are highly specialized, becoming experts in one tiny area within their broader field of expertise. Most people who have received Ph.D.'s today are "experts" only in a very general sense in their fields (say, philosophy) and have some specialization that is relatively quite narrow (say, late-2oth century British philosophy, Reformed epistemology, etc.).

What is gained from being part of an academic community? In the previous section, we discussed why it is beneficial for a society to have recognized experts. Given that the vast majority of the knowledge you take for granted is received via testimony, you want there to be some trusted "mechanism" within your society for generating experts. This eases the process of gaining knowledge, since a trusted expert class can provide that knowledge without requiring ordinary laypeople to do the hard intellectual work on their own.

Still, in our internet and social media age, autodidacticism (self-learning or self-education) is on the rise. The most popular podcast in the world today is the Joe Rogan Experience, which is a podcast in which Joe Rogan, the popular comedian, invites guests, many of whom are experts in a particular field, onto his podcast to talk for several hours straight. The most popular form of podcast is the long-form discussion, a multi-hour discussion with an interesting person. One of the great benefits of the internet and social media is that information is more widely and cheaply available than at any other time in human history. But that means that misinformation is likewise more available than ever. Therefore, if laypeople are to engage in this technology, they must be equipped with the skills in critical thinking necessary to determine whether the supposed experts on whom they rely are trustworthy.

So, what is the benefit of being part of an academic community? To answer this question, I will discuss (1) what an academic community is and (2) what it takes to become part of an academic community. Finally, I will discuss (3) why appeals to authority are important. Along the way, I will discuss some of the pitfalls of becoming part of an academic community.

First, what are some of the features of an academic community? In this section, I will argue that academic communities have four dominant features: (a) a research methodology, (b) a shared body of knowledge, (c) an ongoing conversation, and (d) a shared set of guiding values, principles, and virtues. Each of these features are gained by becoming and being part of an academic community.

First, academic communities have a research methodology. When you were in science class in school, you probably heard about the scientific method. Most presentations of the scientific method include an observation, a hypothesis, an experiment, analysis of data, and presentation of results. Most children have, at some point, participated in a science project or fair in which they practiced this methodology and shared their results with a community of peers (and their proud parents). This is a good - if somewhat simplistic - model not only of how experimental science works, but also of what one must do in any academic community.

In philosophy, we do not run make observations of the physical world or run experiments. Our methodology is different. But, if one wants to become a philosopher, one must learn how philosophers research and write. In any field of inquiry, research methodology answers the how question. How is knowledge gained in this field? What are the sources with which members of their community interact? How and when are results shared, and under what circumstances are they accepted? In any field of inquiry, one learns to become proficient in the methodology of that field at the doctoral level. Therefore, across fields of inquiry, proficiency in method is considered necessary for joining an academic community.

A related point about method is important for our consideration as well: proficiency in a research methodology is mastered only through practice. Reading about a research methodology is insufficient (not to mention that most books on methodology are hopelessly boring). When the scientist talks about going out and doing science, this is what she is talking about. Research methodology must also be practiced within a research community. This is what happens in doctoral studies.

Second, academic communities have a shared body of knowledge. In any field of inquiry, there is a base level of knowledge one must acquire to become a member of that community. Typically, this is gained in one's undergraduate and graduate education in a field. The lines here are blurred somewhat; the undergraduate and graduate student will also typically practice doing research, but the primary goal of these levels of education is to gain the general knowledge necessary to operate as a scholar in that field.

A shared body of knowledge is important because it establishes what is and what is not "settled" within that field. For example, in my field (Philosophy of Religion), it is a settled matter of fact that Thomas Aquinas is the most sophisticated defender of the doctrine of divine simplicity in the Medieval Period. He is not the only defender of the doctrine, but he is the most important defender of the doctrine from this period. Therefore, if you want to understand the doctrine of divine simplicity as it was discussed in the Medieval Period, you must read Thomas Aquinas. If someone were to stand up in a classroom or, even worse, an academic conference and claim that Thomas Aquinas did not affirm or defend the doctrine of divine simplicity, he would be laughed out of the room. This is just not an issue that scholars in this field dispute.

An autodidact can gain from study alone the shared body of knowledge within the field, but it is not easy. More importantly, just reading a few books on a topic is not sufficient for gaining this knowledge, and a layperson must be careful about reading only one or two books and taking them seriously, as he may not know that the scholar's views are out of step with the broad consensus of other scholars in this field. This was the problem with Darryl Cooper's views on Winston Churchill. In fairness, there are other historians who agreed with Cooper in his assessment of Churchill, but these scholars are (so I understand) well outside the consensus among historians of Churchill and WWII.

Third, being in an academic community involves being in an ongoing conversation. When I was in seminary pursuing my M.A. in Philosophy, two analogies helped me to understand this feature of being in an academic community. In the first analogy, imagine our body of knowledge as a highly complex tapestry. This tapestry's design is elaborate and beautiful, except for one thing - it has holes. The tapestry as a whole represents the body of knowledge shared by scholars in their field; the holes represent the gaps in that knowledge. The central calling of every scholar is to work with others in their field to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Doing so involves talking to other scholars regularly to find those gaps and fill them.

The second analogy is related to what one must do to write a good academic research paper, and it envisions a table at which a lively discussion is taking place. Through your research into a topic, you will find the major voices discussing that topic and formulate your thesis. Those scholars discussing that topic are like the people sitting at the table. By writing your paper, you join the discussion. It is as if you're sitting at the table with these people and contributing your points to the discussion, pushing it forward and making progress. Becoming a member of an academic community, then, involves earning a seat at the table of scholarly discussion and contributing something of value to that community. This is, in many ways, the most difficult and intimidating part of doctoral research. If a doctoral student cannot contribute meaningfully to the discussion, then he cannot become part of the academic community.

Another important point to consider about the ongoing conversation is this: being part of that conversation means that the scholar can know the "state of play" in that topic within that field of inquiry. By "state of play," I mean where the conversation rests at a given point in time. For example, if you had been a Christian philosopher in the 1950's, the "state of play" would have included the ongoing discussion about a position called logical positivism. Logical positivism was a position developed by analytic philosophers in the early 20th century, and it claimed, among other things, that religious claims, such as the claim that "God exists," were meaningless. Not true or false - meaningless, in the same sense that lines of the "Jabberwocky" are nonsense. Therefore, a Christian philosopher in the 1950's might have set his sights on formulating arguments against logical positivism. Not today, however, because the state of play is different. That is, logical positivism is thankfully dead, and virtually no philosopher believes it anymore. It takes serious time and study to understand the state of play even within subsets of a field of inquiry, let alone multiple areas of the field. Most laypeople lack the time and interest to gain a sense of the state of play, let alone join the ongoing conversation.

Finally, being part of an academic community involves adopting a shared set of guiding values, principles, and virtues. Every academic community includes values, principles, and virtues that guide members on how to practice the discipline within that community. For instance, if you want to become part of a scientific community, then you must learn the ethical principles of that community related to doing good empirical research. Members who fail to follow those guidelines are ostracized from the community. I'll discuss the "virtue" component of this feature more below.

You might be surprised to learn about everything that goes into being part of an academic community. These features relate in clear ways to what it takes to be part of an academic community.

Second, what does it take to be part of an academic community? In 1944, C.S. Lewis delivered a speech at King's College London called "The Inner Ring." In this fascinating speech, Lewis warns students against the allure of what he calls an "inner ring," which is something of a social phenomenon that emerges out of a desire to be "in" with a smaller group of people, to be part of a group that excludes others and participation in which promises satisfaction about being "in the know," being important. Because this concept, I believe, is so important to understanding the dynamics of becoming part of an academic community - and because Lewis describes the phenomenon better than I could ever attempt to do - I quote this speech several times in this section. I encourage you to read the full speech for yourself as well.

At the heart of the inner ring, according to Lewis, is a distinction between what we might call "public hierarchies" and "private hierarchies." Membership in any public hierarchy is conditioned, usually on the basis of possessing certain merits, qualifications, or credentials. To be a plumber, in most states in the U.S., one must be licensed. Acquiring that license requires fulfilling certain relevant requirements. The same is true for most trades. To become an instructor at a college or university, a minimal requirement usually includes sufficient education in the relevant field at the Master's level, as well as the relevant credentials (minimally, a M.A. in that field, but a Ph.D. is of course preferable). These are the sorts of requirements you would find in a catalogue or on a website.

The inner ring, however, involves a private hierarchy. It is private in two senses. First, only the "insiders" know what is required to find oneself inside the inner ring. Second, it is not always clear who is "inside" and who is not. In any inner ring, it is typically easy to see who is clearly "in," but others are on the periphery, not quite "in" but attempting to find their way into the inner ring in any way they can. They are talking to the "right" people, saying the "right" things. And, once they are in, they will want to maintain that position by continuing to do what got them into it in the first place.

I agree with Lewis that the inner ring is a powerful social phenomenon in human societies. I also agree with him that, while inevitable, the inner ring should not be desired or sought after. In a characteristically witty passage, Lewis explains why:

The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempts to expedite her departure. Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

Here, Lewis is making two claims about inner rings. First, they are not inherently evil. They are an inevitable feature of social life and can sometimes even be innocent, as far as it goes. (They are often found on playgrounds among small children, for instance.) Second, they should not be desired or sought after, just as the death of a pious relative, though not evil, should be desired or sought after. When teenage girls form an inner ring, they can be prone to viciously excluding other girls. Girls who desire to join that inner ring will do anything- even up to excluding their previous friend groups, changing their appearance, and listening to different music - to join that inner ring. The desire to be inside an inner ring will easily lead to many types of sin.

Lewis, in another passage, illustrates the allure of the inner ring well:

And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

Lewis's point here is subtle. Given the potentially corrupting influences of an inner ring and what it takes to become part of it, one who is motivated by seeking membership in it will be drawn into it by subtle social factors, such as the use of the word "we." I think of Professor Slughorn in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, who so deeply desired to be "in" that he formed special relationships with his more influential or gifted students - and who so desired that prestige and status that he reluctantly fed the student, Tom Riddle (otherwise known as Voldemort) the crucial information he needed on horcruxes to become immortal. Those who desire membership in an inner ring are easily manipulable, and the temptation to do something morally compromising to be "in" can be very subtle indeed.

The irony, furthermore, is that membership in proper inner rings is a byproduct of not seeking to be part of one. (This is an axiom in Lewis's philosophy, which you can read about in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy: that which is truly worth gaining cannot be gained by seeking it for its own sake; it is a byproduct of seeking the true and highest good.) By directing oneself toward that which is truly desirable, one will find oneself incidentally as part of the group who seeks those things, and that is much more valuable than any inner ring. Lewis goes on:

But if you break [the allure of the Inner Ring], a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

What does all of this have to do with being part of an academic community? This is why Lewis's speech is important for this section: though academic communities have a public hierarchy - a public means of assessing someone's qualifications to count as an expert - they also have inner rings and private hierarchies, and the ideals of the public hierarchy do not always match the means by which one gains membership in the inner ring. Furthermore, in academic communities, it is sometimes the case that public accolades are tied to the inner ring, not one's objective qualifications and achievements. The "right" people are rewarded for saying the "right" things, rather than for embodying the values of the academic community. Those who fall outside the inner ring within an academic community, though they may embody the values of the academic community in a public sense, are excluded, and often viciously so.

Therefore, there are two factors to consider when considering how to become part of an academic community. The first: how does someone gain the qualifications necessary to embody the features of the academic community? This is the public hierarchy. The second: what must someone do to become part of that inner ring within the academic community, and do those unspoken requirements conflict with the values represented in the features of that academic community? My claim is simply this: those who would desire to become part of an academic community should shun the inner ring and focus their attention on the features represented by the public hierarchy. In other words, seek the truth, not acceptance from peers. Do this, and you'll find yourself accepted by other truth-seekers, other people who are directing their attention in the right way.

So, what is the public hierarchy for an academic community? In most cases, a formal education is necessary. One must receive an undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral education in most cases. Each of these levels of education is geared toward developing the student's mastery of each of the features of that community in different ways. For instance, the undergraduate and graduate education develop the student's understanding of the shared body of knowledge in the field and the values embodied by that field. Doctoral education is primarily focused on research methodology and the ongoing conversation, as the doctoral student becomes a fellow partner with other scholars in those conversations. Once these educational milestones are achieved, the student receives a credential verifying his or her knowledge in the field and, by the time his or her doctorate is conferred, membership in the academic community.

Achieving this credential - becoming an expert in the field - requires serious work. I'm convinced that most laypeople have no clear sense of how much work it takes. Just to cite one example, at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the standard reading for every seminar is 4,000-5,000 pages, not including articles and books the student may read in preparation for her final paper. After seminars are completed, the next step is what we call "comps," wherein students will read a bibliography of around 100 books in preparation for a three-hour oral examination on the content of those books. Finally, the student completes her doctoral education by writing her dissertation, an original, book-length piece of research that will be published as a contribution to that field, demonstrating her mastery of all of the features of that academic community. This takes about four to seven years to complete. After doing this, the student has achieved the credential, but she must then continue to constantly read within her field to stay informed about the ongoing conversation. Becoming and being an expert also includes remaining an expert.

In this section, I've discussed what it takes to become part of an academic community. I have also discussed one of the major pitfalls of becoming part of an academic community: the allure of the inner ring(s) within that academic community. In the final section of this discussion of academic communities, I will explain why appeals to authority are important.

Third, why are appeals to authority important? In a well-functioning educational system, credentials operate sociologically as a shorthand way of identifying experts. If you want to find a historian who can tell you something about WWII history, the first step is to find a historian. A second step is to find a historian who specializes in WWII history, which you can find by, in part, finding a historian who has written well-regarded books on WWII history. If that historian has mastered the features of his academic community - he embodies those features virtuously in his academic work - then you can generally trust that what he will tell you will be accurate to the facts of the matter and the "state of play" within his field. In other words, he'll give you accurate information and notify you when a question can or cannot be answered with confidence within the academic community (in other words, where research is still ongoing or where certain claims or approaches are still controversial).

Recall what we've already said about testimonial knowledge. In testimonial knowledge, we gain knowledge via someone else's knowledge, without needing to do the work ourselves. By doing so, we gain knowledge collectively as a society and can build on that knowledge with each new generation. The combination of testimonial knowledge and a well-structured means of determining who is an expert in a given field is a societal "super-charger" for gaining knowledge. If all is right in our academic communities, then members of that society are equipped to gain knowledge far beyond their individual capacities.

For this reason, we give up credentialism and academic authority at a very great price. Imagine that the societally recognized means of identifying trustworthy experts were destroyed all of a sudden. Then - as we said above about testifiers - reliable, trustworthy testifiers in an academic field could not easily be found. Knowledge within that field would then be very hard to come by, and laypeople would approach that field with a high degree of (reasonable) skepticism, slow to accept what the "experts" say. Therefore, any perceived corruption of the academic credentialing process in a society is a serious danger to the entire testimonial knowledge-gaining apparatus in that society.

This is, however, what has happened in the last 20 years, especially with the rise of the internet. Earlier, I mentioned that traditional sources of knowledge have destroyed their credibility in the eyes of the public. Academic communities no longer carry the authority they once had because the public perceives them to be corrupted by ideological influences.

This, I would suggest, is the result of the aforementioned powerful inner ring at work in most academic communities. Take, for instance, a recent academic journal article written for the Obstetric Medicine journal, arguing for the inclusive use of gendered language for patients. One solution presented in the article for perceived "non-inclusive" gendered language in obstetrics medicine was to call some patients "pregnant women," "pregnant men," or "pregnant non-binary persons," but the concern expressed in the article was that such language would be inappropriate. Why? Not because such language falsely calls mothers "pregnant men," thereby ignoring biological and anatomical reality (which OBGYN's supposedly study), but because such language would result in "the amplification of cisnormativity." In other words, the ideological concerns of using language, even if falsely, in a way that offends purveyors of queer theory are more important than using language that reflects biological and anatomical reality. And we wonder why so many people are drawn to sources of information outside traditional academic sources of knowledge. Where's the inner ring? These same doctors would have found its borders - and themselves beyond those borders - had they written an article criticizing the use of this language and arguing for language consistent with biological and anatomical reality.

So, academic communities deserve much of the criticism they're getting. I would argue that this article is indicative of several of the pitfalls academic communities can fall into, each of which can lower their credibility in the eyes of the public. Each of these pitfalls is related to one of the features of an academic community.

1. Ideological influences and an inner ring can skew an academic community's research methodology, leading researchers within that community to use methods or invite concerns inconsistent with that methodology. For instance, in the sciences, scientific theories or ideas that "cut against the grain" of the paradigm in that field should be judged on their scientific merits. Do they accord with what we already know? Do they have evidence backing them? Instead, as so often happens, scientific paradigms become a kind of "orthodox" within that field, and ideas contrary to them are rejected out of hand, without properly applying the research methodology of that field to them.

2. Ideological influences and an inner ring can skew an expert's presentation of the shared body of knowledge, which leads them either to ignore certain arguments or evidence within the field or present certain controversial claims as if they are "settled" within that field. In other words, the "state of play" is inaccurately represented. This often happens in psychology, as clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has pointed out, where certain studies that contradict left-leaning ideas are not presented to the public.

3. Similarly to (2), ideological influences and an inner ring can skew an expert's presentation of the ongoing discussion. This happens, for instance, when atheist philosophers (or popularizers) claim that the problem of evil has never been answered by theists. This is, at best, misleading. First, there are various problems of evil, some of which are still live arguments being debated today. Second, at least one version of the problem of evil, the logical problem of evil, is generally recognized to have been defeated.

4. Perhaps most significantly, ideological influences and an inner ring distort the expert's commitment to the guiding principles, values, and virtues of the academic community. At a macroscopic level, the academic community itself is transformed. I would argue that this has taken place in many academic communities across Western cultures and societies. Ideology - a left-wing ideology obsessed with identity politics, which comes to us from critical theory - trumps truth in many of these communities. Because of this, many of the classical values in academic communities - the open exchange of ideas, commitment to truth, and commitment to rational theorizing and debate - have effectively been subdued, and rejecting the ideology means that one will be "canceled" or excluded from the inner ring of the academic community. This has happened to many heterodox thinkers within their fields, including Jordan Peterson, philosopher Peter Boghossian, and others.

With all of these complex and powerful social forces interacting in Western cultures, how are laypeople to make sense of things? How do we assess reliably who is trustworthy? Or, do we reject traditional expertise altogether and get all our WWII history from non-credentialed figures like Darryl Cooper? In the final section of this post, I bring all of the various strands of our discussion together and suggest how the layperson can proceed.

Bringing It All Together

If the previous sections have left you more than a little confused and unsure how to proceed in our culture, then you are not alone. This is a complex, difficult environment in which to gain knowledge reliably, a fact which many have discussed and written about in previous years. Yet, we might suppose, being informed about the world is important for being a responsible member of your society, and being well-informed is otherwise important for your flourishing personally. So, we should all be motivated to find solutions that help us navigate our informational environment more responsibly. Along these lines, based on what we've already discussed, I have three points of advice to make.

First, expertise is still worthwhile and ought to be relied upon, though not uncritically. Based on what I've said already about testimonial knowledge - including our ubiquitous reliance on it - and about academic communities, we can conclude that well-established academic communities provide a reliable "shorthand" way of determining who is an expert and from whom testimonial knowledge within a given field can be reliably gained.

We cannot dispense with testimonial knowledge. Even those who reject the conclusions of the "experts" by diverting from the consensus view in the field rely on heterodox "experts" to justify doing so. Therefore, lest we lose most of our knowledge entirely, we must continue to rely on it, though not uncritically.

Why should laypeople be critical in their assessment of the conclusions of the experts in a given field? Some might argue that laypeople are not qualified even to assess the reliability of experts, since they are unfamiliar with the features of that academic community. The alternative, it seems, would be a non-critical acceptance of whatever the consensus in that field on a topic happens to be at a given time. This sort of anti-skeptical stance would entail that any layperson is unjustified to adopt the non-consensus position in a field, even if that position has its proponents within the academic community. Deference to the consensus replaces critical thought.

I disagree with this position, and my disagreement relates to the second point of advice I have to make.

Second, laypeople should critically engage with the viewpoints and arguments presented within a field of inquiry by cultivating the intellectual virtues. What are intellectual virtues? Within the subfield of epistemology called virtue epistemology, there is a position called virtue responsibilism, which conceives of the intellectual virtues as intellectual character traits, which a subject must cultivate to more justifiably form beliefs. The entry on virtue epistemology in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes a good summary of intellectual virtues, according to a school of thought called virtue responsibilism:

"Virtue responsibilists conceive of intellectual virtues as good intellectual character traits, like attentiveness, fair-mindedness, open-mindedness, intellectual tenacity, and courage, traits that might be viewed as the traits of a responsible knower or inquirer."

Virtuous inquirers cultivate the intellectual virtues by practicing good intellectual habits. Recall the fourth feature of an academic community: the guiding principles, values, and virtues of the academic community. In a well-functioning academic community, the members have practiced and cultivated the intellectual virtues in themselves. Therefore, they function as exemplars of intellectual virtue for laypeople to imitate as they strive to do the same.

In a well-functioning academic community, that is. In an academic community malformed by ideological influences, which disincentivize the practice of the intellectual virtues (often by punishing their practice when they lead to results that confront the ruling ideology), it is more difficult to find members of that community who have cultivated the intellectual virtues. Therefore, laypeople must be careful to find members of that community who truly practice the virtues and avoid those who do not. Practicing the intellectual virtues oneself guides one in assessing whether others practice them.

I suspect that in the internet age, the perception of intellectual virtues in an influential person is often mistaken for expertise in a field. I say "perception" because it is sufficient for making this mistake, whether or not people have correctly identified an influential person as exemplifying intellectual virtue. (Being an intellectual "renegade," always going against the grain of consensus in an academic community, is not in itself a virtue.) This is important enough to emphasize: even if an influential person online who speaks on a topic exemplifies intellectual virtue in doing so, this does not mean that this person counts as an expert in the field on which he or she is speaking. If a podcaster, say, is intellectually virtuous, she will invite people onto her program who are recognized experts and have the intellectual humility (which is a virtue) to indicate where she is not an expert on a topic. Along these lines, one can make recommendations. For example, one of my favorite podcast shows is Triggernometry because the hosts - comedians Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster - are careful to point out where they are non-experts and invite recognized experts onto their show to talk about various topics. In interviewing those guests, they will also challenge some of the guests' claims and arguments, demonstrating intellectual virtue in demanding that claims be supported with good reasons. These hosts are a good example, I think, of how a layperson can navigate the world of ideas responsibly.

One of the most helpful aspects of intellectual virtue is the fact that anyone can become more intellectually virtuous. Expertise is "locked away," as it were, to the highly interested, highly qualified, and highly resourced. Very few people have the necessary desire, ability, and resources to become an expert in any academic field. One of the most amazing advantages of living in the internet age, in spite of all the potential pitfalls due to misinformation, is that truth is now more freely available than at any other time in human history. But falsehood is always more prevalent than truth, and that is truer now more than ever as well. Therefore, laypeople, who regularly use the internet to gain knowledge, must be serious about cultivating intellectual virtues in themselves so as to be discerning about what is true and what is not. I'll have more to say on how to do this practically below, after I develop my third point of advice.

Third, while expertise is valuable to some extent, ideas matter more than credentials. Credentials focus on the person. What has the person done to become an expert and be qualified to speak on a topic? Have they attended a good university? Who was their doctoral advisor? How is their work received in the larger academic community (this is an important question in some contexts)? Focusing on the person is important when you are weighing the reliability of someone's testimony, and recognized expertise helps to establish reliability in many contexts.

However, at the end of the day, world-renowned experts can get it wrong. Bad arguments are bad, even if made by experts. This means that laypeople must be careful to weigh the value of expertise on a case-by-case basis, considering whether and to what extent it matters to the issue at hand.

Let's consider an example. In his debates on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig has pointed out that a once-common argument of the so-called "New Atheists" - that the Gospels bear certain similarities to certain ancient myths, which were prevalent at the time at which Jesus purportedly lived, and that therefore these texts are historically unreliable as a result - was actually about 100 years out of date. By this, he meant that New Testament scholars no longer made these points because in the mid-20th century, there was a renewed focus on New Testament scholars on the fact that Jesus was a first-century Jew. This "Jewish Reclamation of Jesus" yielded the insight that pagan myths were not the proper interpretive framework for interpreting Jesus' life and teachings. The proper interpretive framework, rather, was Jesus' immediate context as a first-century Jew. Therefore, today very few New Testament scholars appeal to pagan myths of the day to understand the life and teachings of Jesus or assess his historicity.

William Lane Craig is undoubtedly an expert on this topic, having written extensively on it in scholarly titles such as, for example, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (1989). His claim - that appeals to pagan myths to understand the life and teachings of Jesus is 100 years out of date - is a claim about the "state of play" in the field, and his credentials are highly relevant to assessing whether we are justified in believing the claim to be true. Given his credentials and the nature of the claim, I would argue that we are justified in believing this claim to be true purely on the basis of testimony. (You're not going to read all of the relevant literature for yourself, are you?)

This example implies that what we might call "state of play" claims are the sort of claims that ought to be believed more easily on the basis of expert testimony. They are relatively neutral, in the sense that any expert working in the field should agree with them if they are true, and factual in the sense that one must simply read the relevant literature in order to discover if they are true. Because of this, "state of play" claims are generally uncontroversial in the field. From this example, we can derive three general guidelines for assessing whether expertise - and therefore expert testimony - are relevant for assessing on that basis alone whether the claim is true. These guidelines can be expressed as questions:

• Neutrality: does the truth of the claim depend logically on other disputed opinions the expert might take in the field?

• Factuality: is knowledge of the claim dependent on simply having sufficient acquaintance with the field or topic (e.g., reading sufficient relevant literature)?

• Controversy: is the claim a matter of significant dispute among experts in the field?

My claim is that reliance on expert testimony is more relevant to the degree that the claim in question is neutral, factual, and uncontroversial and that it is less relevant to the degree that the claim in question is non-neutral, non-factual, and controversial. Therefore, laypeople, in becoming more acquainted with a field and its claims, should assess whether a claim has these attributes - and to what degree - in order to discern whether relying solely on expert testimony is appropriate in this context. Because of this, the assessment of ideas, or claims, matters more than credentials. Even in a case in which the expert is recognized as such, the claim avowed by that expert should be assessed in order to see whether it is the sort of claim for which reliance on expert testimony is appropriate.

This is, I think, one of the largest "missing pieces" in the popular-level controversies over expertise in our culture today. Lacking in our culture's disputes over expertise is any serious discussion about how to assess whether the claim in question is one for which expert testimony alone is sufficient for justifiably concluding whether it is true. If so, then reliance on expert testimony alone is appropriate. If not, then it is not; the layperson should do a little more work to assess the truth of that kind of claim.

What does that work look like? The intellectual virtues provide a guide here. Intellectually virtuous people will be slow to come to conclusions on an issue, waiting until they have sufficient evidence to reach a sound conclusion. They will weigh the evidence, allowing for both sides of a dispute to speak to an issue. They will carefully avoid fallacious thinking, even when it comes from those with whom they otherwise agree. They will have the sort of curiosity and courage to get into a topic more deeply, exploring it until they have gathered sufficient knowledge to make some conclusions. They will, insofar as they are able, familiarize themselves with the features of the academic community in question, remaining sensitive to things such as the "state of play" of the field. If this is really a topic they want to know more about, they'll be dedicated to putting in the work necessary to gain knowledge.

If this sounds like hard work, that's because it is. Truth is not an easy thing to find. In spite of its benefits, the internet can give the impression that truth comes cheap and is easy to find. It is easier to find now more than ever, in some ways, because it is a store of all the knowledge humans have gained so far, but it doesn't contain everything. And for every truth, there are countless falsehoods, and we must be equipped to wade through the haystack to find the one needle we're looking for.

Conclusion

When I set out to write this essay, I had no idea how much work it would take. Writing this essay was a real challenge for me because it forced me to provide meat for some of the thoughts I've been considering on this topic for several years now. My hope is that, though reading it might be a challenge for you in some ways, it will be helpful as a resource for you to wade through the mire of falsehoods, fallacies, and fictions that make it so difficult in our time to find the truth.

I also hope that those readers who have had a tendency lately to reject all expertise, or the concept of expertise itself, will reflect seriously on whether this is the wise thing to do. If testimony really is an indispensable part of knowledge-acquisition, then the loss of expertise - as a way of establishing reliability - is a massive loss indeed. I hope that, in light of the crisis of expertise in our culture, educational and research institutions will begin addressing this problem seriously. I sense that, before this happens, things will get worse rather than better. Therefore, it is up to us - the laypeople (and everyone is a layperson in most fields) - to learn how to think well. That is our responsibility. For Christians, it is our duty before God.

If you've stuck with me the whole way, then thank you for reading! If you've found this essay helpful and think others could benefit from it, please share it with others. Comment below or leave a like to let me know what you think. And feel free to check out the backlog of posts on this blog to get more content on Christian philosophy, theology, and apologetics!

Thanks again for reading!

Sources

Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Pritchard, Duncan. What is This Thing Called Knowledge?. Fifth Edition. Abington:

Routledge, 2023.