Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium - Errol Lord

It has been popular amongst philosophers to doubt that there are any genuine experts about ethics. Participants in the debate assume that moral philosophers are going to be moral experts if anyone is. In this talk I will first argue that by looking to the organization of inquiry into aesthetics casts doubt on this assumption. When it comes to aesthetics, there is a model of expertise that is not analogous to anything traditionally done by moral philosophers. This model is provided by the art critic. The bulk of the talk will explore the implications of this model. I will argue first that the sort of expertise critics possess is a sort of perceptual expertise. I will then argue that reflection on this sort of expertise presses the need for a new field of inquiry into ethics. This field is to ethics as art criticism is to aesthetics.