Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious MindHow does thinking affect doing? There is a widely held view--both in academia and in the popular press--that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. Once you have acquired the ability to putt a golf ball, play an arpeggio on the piano, or parallel-park, it is believed that reflecting on your actions leads to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis. Experts, accordingly, don't need to try to do it; they just do it. But is this true? After exploring some of the contemporary and historical manifestations of the idea that highly accomplished skills are automatic and effortless, Barbara Gail Montero develops a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action. Along the way, she dispels various mythical accounts of experts who proceed without any understanding of what guides their action and analyzes research in both philosophy and psychology that is taken to show that conscious control impedes well practiced skills. She also explores real-life examples of optimal performance--culled from sports, the performing arts, chess, nursing, medicine, the military and elsewhere--and draws from psychology, neuroscience, and literature to create a picture of expertise according to which expert action generally is and ought to be thoughtful, effortful, and reflective. |
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Contents
What Can a Philosopher Tell You About Expertise? | 1 |
Dont think dear just do and Other Manifestations of the Justdoit Principle | 14 |
Justdoit VersusCognitioninaction | 32 |
What is an Expert? | 51 |
Does Thinking Interfere With Doing? | 75 |
Thinking Fast | 109 |
Continuous Improvement | 127 |
You Cant Try Too Hard | 146 |
Effortlessness with Effort | 166 |
The Pleasure of Movement and the Awareness of the Self | 178 |
The Aesthetic Experience of Expert Movement | 192 |
Intuition Rationality and Chess Expertise | 210 |
Sex Drugs Rock and Roll and the Meaning of Life | 237 |
| 261 | |
| 285 | |
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Common terms and phrases
ability able activities anxiety argue Arnold Steinhardt athletes attention automatic aware ball ballet Beilock better bodily movements body Chapter chess players chicken sexer choking claim cognition-in-action cognitive conception conscious control course dance dancer deliberate practice distracted Dreyfus and Dreyfus Dreyfus and Kelly Dreyfus’s ecologically valid effort effortless engaged Ericsson everyday actions example expert action expert performance expertise explain feel focus focusing Gobet going grandmaster grandmaster chess Hubert Dreyfus idea improve individuals interfere with performance interferes with expert international master intuition just-do-it principle knowledge least less lightning chess means mental processes mind monitoring Moreover move Nonetheless novices occur one’s optimal perhaps philosophers physical play pleasure position professional proprioception psychologists question reason relevant Roger Federer seems sense simply situations someone sometimes speed chess sprezzatura Steve Blass suggest task tells theory things thought tion typically unconscious understand visual Zhuangzi
Bibliographic information
| Title | Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind |
| Author | Barbara Gail Montero |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2016 |
| ISBN | 0199596778, 9780199596775 |
| Length | 288 pages |
| Subjects | › Philosophy / Epistemology Philosophy / Mind & Body Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |