The Experts’ Dilemma: between Politics and Knowledge

Abstract

Recent works about experts seem to coincide in defining their job as a social intersection between two spheres: knowledge and knowledge. In this paper I review four different theoretical problems derived from such a definition of the role of experts. First of all, I discuss some of the consequences of techno-scientific controversies and their connection with the topic of political representation. After that I address the issue of the relation between debates in public sphere and experts. Then, I review the claims around the idea of “neutral judgment”, which some authors whose purpose is to set a new agenda for social sciences challenge. Finally, I make explicit the sorts of answers proposed by social epistemology to solve possible struggles between experts and laypersons.