Thought and Effort in Expert Action

FAIN: FB-57978-15

Barbara G. Montero
CUNY Research Foundation, College of Staten Island (Staten Island, NY 10314-6609)

How does thinking affect doing? There is a widely held view that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, interferes with performance. Once you have developed the skill to perform a pirouette, play an arpeggio on the piano, or parallel-park, attention to what you are doing, it is believed, leads to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis. Echoing a theme that one finds in a number of diverse intellectual traditions, the philosopher David Velleman (2008) tells us that, after the requisite training, experts act “without deliberate intention or effort.” But is this true? I am requesting support for the completion of a book, The Myth of ‘Just do it’: Thought and Effort in Expert Action, that develops a theory of expertise according to which expert action is thoughtful, effortful and reflective. Indeed, I argue that experts embody Socratic rationality, as they exemplify both conceptually grounded knowledge of their actions and self-awareness.

Associated Products

Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind (Book)
Title: Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind
Author: Barbara Gail MOntero
Abstract: How 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 ,this book develops a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action. Along the way, it 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.The book 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.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/thought-in-action-expertise-and-the-conscious-mind/oclc/951120393&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat
Secondary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/thought-in-action-9780199596775?cc=us&lang=en&
Secondary URL Description: Oxford University Press
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0199596778
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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