The variety of consensus and the epistemic trustworthiness of experts’ claims
Teemu Lari
13 February 2025
Consensus, or agreement, among experts is frequently mentioned as a key indicator that laypeople can use to assess the credibility of experts and their statements. However, current literature still tends to overlook several dimensions along which individual instances of purported consensus or agreement may differ from each other, in particular: 1) The nature of the proposition agreed upon, 2) the boundaries of the agreeing group, 3) the quality of the agreement, and 4) the socio-epistemic processes behind the agreement. The variety among possible instances of consensus implies that the relationship between consensus and credibility is similarly varied. I argue that there is no single correct answer to the question, "when is an expert consensus on P a reason for laypeople to believe that P?" Instead, several suitable constellations of the above variables may function as such a reason. The analysis is illustrated by references to economics and economists' expertise.
