Three Perspectives on Professional Judgment

In this chapter, three forms of professional judgment will be discussed in detail. First, what will be called perceptual-epistemological judgment is judgment that is embedded in collective and professional ways of seeing. In this form of professional judgment, there is a split between, on the one hand, the visual or audible perception of the professional and, on the other hand, the underlying explanatory epistemological and theoretical framework capable of explaining or at least providing some meaningful operative hypothesis of what is being observed. The typical illustrative case here is the physician diagnosing a patient; the doctor speaks to the patient, looks at and touches him or her, and uses a few instruments such as the stethoscope to examine the heart. These observations are related to the various medicinal explanatory frameworks the physician is trained in diagnosing, and after a few iterations between what is visually observed and such operative theories, the physician may be able to articulate the diagnose and prescribe a therapy. Foucault (1973) suggested that the physician working in the clinic must transform him or herself to a “speaking eye,” having the capacity to look and articulate as one interrelated process. Perceptual-epistemological judgment is thus on the one hand embedded in visual practices, mediated or non-mediated, while on the other hand justified on basis of scientific know-how.