Please join us for this week's History of Philosophy Works-in-Progress Luncheon, cosponsored by the Workshop on Ancient Philosophy! This week's presenter is Dr. Máté Veres (Department of Philosophy, University of Geneva), who will present on "The Psychology of Expertise in Early Stoicism" (see abstract below).
Each meeting consists of a presentation by a graduate student or faculty member on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from other participants. The workshop is designed to give contributors the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
Lunch is provided for registered attendees.
Abstract: Early Stoics subscribed to a version of the idea that it is on account of being a practitioner of a form of expertise concerned with the whole of human life that the wise can do well in all relevant respects. Furthermore, they conceived of this higher-order form of expertise as structurally analogous but epistemically superior to first-order forms of expertise. One corollary of the Stoic view is that, for any given first-order form of expertise, only the wise person can be a genuine expert. Indeed, there is evidence for the claim that at least some forms of expertise practiced by the wise are transformed into quasi-virtuous states of the soul. In this paper, I discuss three potential connections a Stoic might draw between first-order forms of expertise and the expertise concerned with the whole of human life. First, insofar as all forms of expertise involve knowledge-that and knowledge-how, the expertise in living well must involve actionable mastery of Stoic doctrine. Second, since virtue is a matter of dealing with indifferents, and forms of expertise are specialized forms of dealing with indifferents, the practice of the expertise in living well must involve some first-order forms of expertise. Third, the motivation and justification for acting on the demands of a specialized expertise ultimately derive from the judgement of the expertise in living well concerning the all-things-considered action to be done, calling into question the epistemic autonomy of first-order forms of expertise.
Originally published at historyofphilosophy.nd.edu.