Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind

Author:   Barbara Gail Montero (The City University of New York)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
ISBN:  

9780199596775


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   26 May 2016
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind


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Overview

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, 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Barbara Gail Montero (The City University of New York)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.50cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.580kg
ISBN:  

9780199596775


ISBN 10:   0199596778
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   26 May 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Can a Philosopher Tell you about Expertise? 1: 'Don't think, dear; just do' and Other Manifestations of the Just-do-it Principle 2: Just-Do-It versus Cognition-in-Action 3: What is an Expert? 4: Does Thinking Interfere with Doing? 5: Thinking Fast 6: Continuous Improvement 7: You Can't Try Too Hard 8: Effortlessness with Effort 9: The Pleasure of Movement and the Awareness of the Self 10: The Aesthetic Experience of Expert Movement 11: Intuition, Rationality, and Chess Expertise 12: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, and the Meaning of Life Bibliography

Reviews

Thought in Action is convincing in its overall argument that philosophers and psychologists are mistaken when they denigrate the usefulness of conscious thought to optimal expert performance. And it also provides a detailed discussion of kinds of expert performance - in dance, athletics, music, medicine, and chess - that will be of interest to those who work in philosophy of mind and psychology, aesthetics, and action theory, whatever their concern with this overall thesis. Joseph Mendola, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online


<em>Thought in Action</em> is convincing in its overall argument that philosophers and psychologists are mistaken when they denigrate the usefulness of conscious thought to optimal expert performance. And it also provides a detailed discussion of kinds of expert performance -- in dance, athletics, music, medicine, and chess -- that will be of interest to those who work in philosophy of mind and psychology, aesthetics, and action theory, whatever their concern with this overall thesis. -- <em>Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online</em>


Author Information

Barbara Gail Montero (B.A. University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York. She has been awarded research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her work focuses on one or the other of two different notions of body: body as the physical or material basis of everything, and body as the moving, breathing, flesh and blood instrument that we use when we run, walk, or dance. Before entering academia, she was a professional ballet dancer.

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