Do they see the same thing? The perceptual experience of novices and experts
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Abstract
This paper argues that the difference between the testimony of novices and that of experts is not merely a matter of degrees of knowledge, but rather involves a structural difference in perceptual experience. Drawing on the notion of cognitive penetrability, it is argued that experts perceive differently due to the cognitive states and theoretical framework that modulate perception. This shapes the very content of experience and enables access to features of the environment that remain unnoticed by the untrained observer. This difference has significant epistemic implications: the expert’s beliefs are formed from a perceptual experience that is richer, but also more opaque to third parties. On this basis, a distinction is introduced between perception as the starting point of reasoning and the inferential chains constructed from it, and an analysis is conducted of where epistemic scrutiny should be directed and its limitations.
Keywords
expert perception, cognitive insight, epistemic justification, evidentiary reasoning, expert testimonyDownloads
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.33115/udg_bib/qf.i11.23275Published
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