I focus on problems defining skill and a core theoretical dispute over whether skilled action is largely automatic or consciously controlled. The dominant view in philosophy and psychology has been that skills are automatic, but an emerging body of work suggests that conscious cognition plays a significant role.

We present a synthetic theory of skilled action which proposes that cognitive processes make an important contribution to almost all skilled action, contrary to influential views that many skills are performed largely automatically. Cognitive control is focused on strategic aspects of performance, and plays a greater role as difficulty increases. We offer an analysis of various forms of skill experience and show that the theory provides a better explanation for the full set of these experiences than automatic theories. (...) We further show that the theory can explain experimental evidence for skill automaticity, including evidence that secondary tasks do not interfere with expert performance, and evidence that experts have reduced memory for performance of sensorimotor skills. (shrink)

Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to that question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, playing the piano, or (...) archery, creditworthy moral success is a matter of getting things right by way of manifesting a relevant skill. My main aim in this paper is to bring out an important structural difference between moral creditworthiness and creditworthiness in sports, arts, and craft, undermining attempts to use examples of the latter as a model for understanding the former. As an alternative, I propose an account of morally creditworthy action, according to which such action is a matter of manifesting virtue, not skill—a claim that’s based on an important, but underappreciated, difference between the sorts of excellences constituting virtues and skills. The paper thus contributes to a more nuanced picture of normative achievements across different domains of human agency, highlighting largely overlooked structural dissimilarities among them. (shrink)

In this article, I link the empirical hypothesis that neural representations of sensory stimulation near the body involve a unique motor component to the idea that the perceptual field is structured by skillful bodily activity. The neurophenomenological view that emerges is illuminating in its own right, though it may also have practical consequences. I argue that recent experiments attempting to alter the scope of these near space sensorimotor representations are actually equivocal in what they show. I propose resolving this (...) ambiguity by treating these representations as responsive to the development or degeneration of know-how—which can be isolated as an appropriate object for scientific investigation. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held (...) to support anti-intellectualism and argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Theorists have used the concept of habitus to explain how skilled agents are capable of responding in an infinite number of ways to the infinite number of possible situations that they encounter in their field of practice. According to some perspectives, habitus is seen to represent a form of regulated improvisation that functions below the threshold of consciousness. However, Bourdieu argued that rational and conscious computation may be required in situations of ‘crisis’ where habitus proves insufficient as a basis for (...) our actions. In the current article, I draw on a range of evidence which indicates that conscious intervention (including self-reflective sensory consciousness) is required not only at points of crisis but also as skilled performers engage in the mundane actions/practices that characterize their everyday training and performance regimes. The interaction of conscious learning and unconscious schemata leads to the development of a reflexive habitus which allows performers to refine and adapt embodied movement patterns over time. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the neurophenomenology of freediving (NoF) and the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF), using these two components to mutually inform each other in order to better understand cognition in skilled action. First, this paper provides a novel neurophenomenological exposition of the practice of freediving. It combines quantitative neurophysiological data with qualitative phenomenological reports in order to understand the neural and bodily mechanisms that correlate with the phenomenology of freediving. The NoF data suggests that freediving induces a (...) unique neurophysiological state. This unique neurophysiological state forms the basis for a peculiar and exceptional experiential state, which is phenomenologically characterized by a heightened sense of presence, heightened perception, lack of reflective awareness, lack of anticipation in decision-making, and restricted emotional range. Second, this paper synthesizes the NoF data and the SIF conceptual framework of cognition in skilled action in order to investigate how the two can mutually inform one another. This synthesis provides 1) a unified and cohesive understanding of the NoF data; 2) elucidation and clarification of three key features generalizable to SIF’s _metastable zones_; 3) refinement of the role of _anticipation_ in SIF, with the focus shifting instead towards _task-specific constraint_ of action-readiness; and 4) an investigation of the breath, an understudied dynamical oscillator of brain, body, and behavior, which provides an empirical mechanism to support SIF’s theoretical assumption of the _dynamical self-organization_ required in skilled action. Looking more broadly, this neurophenomenological investigation of freediving elucidates a novel case study which can provide rich perspectives and fertile material for further scientific, phenomenological, theoretical, and philosophical investigations in ecological psychology, expertise, reflection, enactivism, and cognition more generally. (shrink)

The influence of movement skill on action representations and identification of agency was investigated. Point-light displays were created of highly skilled gestures of thirteen orchestral conductors in visual, auditory, and audiovisual versions and compared to two control conditions . In subsequent experimental sessions, participants indicated whether displays presented them or other conductors, whether the soundtrack contained their or others’ musical interpretations, and rated the quality and emotional content of the gestures. Self-recognition was more accurate in conditions presenting highly skilled (...) conducting movements as compared to other displays. Participants judged the quality of their own movements to be better than those of others, independently of whether or not they recognized movement agency. Emotional content was perceived accurately across conditions both for own and others’ actions. These results point to the influence of dynamical characteristics of motor skill, rather than merely type of movement or emotional content, on action representations and self-other identification. (shrink)

Perhaps a part of what makes expertise so inspiring to the curious researcher is the possibility of appropriating the structural components of skilled action to draw a roadmap towards their achievement that anyone might be able to follow. Accordingly, the purpose of this essay is to shed light upon the role that creativity plays in the production and environment of skilled action to that foregoing end. In doing so, I suggest that the lessons to be learned from recent (...) empirical research on creativity has much to offer to the cognitive science of skill and expertise. Experts are able to bring their intelligence to bear in controlling fast and seemingly automatic actions by utilizing a form of control often called ‘intelligent automaticity.’ In this spirit, I argue that the environment of intelligently automatic action control curates a similarly ideal environment for the processes of creativity. Moreover, insofar as creativity is ideally operative within the environment of expert action control, I argue further that creativity functions as one representative form of ‘intelligence’ embedded within otherwise fluid, and automatic expert actions. Creativity is able to do so even without conscious representation through the powers of incubated cognition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn keeping with the dominant view that skills are largely automatic, the standard view of memory systems distinguishes between a representational declarative system associated with cognitive processes and a performance-based procedural system. The procedural system is thought to be largely responsible for the performance of well-learned skilled actions. Here we argue that most skills do not fully automate, which entails that the declarative system should make a substantial contribution to skilled performance. To support this view, we review evidence showing that (...) the declarative system does indeed play a number of roles in skilled action. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is often interpreted as claiming that opportunities for action are directly present in perceptual experience. However, he does not provide much evidence for how or why this would occur, and one can doubt that this is an appropriate interpretation of his phenomenological descriptions. In particular, it could be argued the Merleau-Pontyian descriptions mistakenly attribute pre-perceptual or post-perceptual elements such as allocation of attention or judgment to the perceptual experience itself. This paper argues for the Merleau-Pontyian idea that (...) opportunities for action are present in perceptual experience. It further argues that the phenomenological descriptions can be supported and explained via reference to contemporary research on motor imagery. In particular, it will be argued that non-conscious, covert motor imagery is used to prepare for and regulate skilled actions, and that it is plausible that this imagery combines with perception (likely vision) to create a single experience of the environment as enabling action. The paper will also show that contemporary views on motor imagery are broadly compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s aims. (shrink)

The long history of research and debate surrounding expertise has emphasized the importance of both automaticity and intelligent deliberation in the control of skilled, expert action – and often, their mutual exclusion of one another. To the contrary, recent developments in the cognitive science of skill implicate the likelihood of a third, hybrid line of interpretation and a new path forward. This paper surveys these recent developments, arguing that hybrid models of expertise and skill are the most fruitful way (...) forward in interpreting and conducting research on experts. I categorize a new set of interpretations of skill as ‘sophisticated hybrid models’ owing to the fact that they deny the mutual exclusion of automaticity from intelligent action control. I then argue that this interpretive strategy is the most fruitful way forward to making clear much of the complexity of skilled action and expertise. (shrink)

In his paper “Getting Sophisticated: In Favor of Hybrid Views of Skilled Action in Expertise,” Spencer Ivy (2023) argues effectively for what he calls a “sophisticated hybrid” view of expertise, driven by empirical considerations and argument from contemporary phenomenology and cognitive architecture. Here I raise three unfair objections which I think lead to some fair questions that may be productive for discussion and future work.

Traditional models of skill learning posit that skilled action unfolds in an automatic manner and that control will prove deleterious to movement and performance proficiency. These perspectives assume that automated processes are characterised by low levels of control and vice versa. By contrast, a number of authors have recently put forward hybrid theories of skilled action which have sought to capture the close integration between fine-grained automatic motor routines and intentional states. Drawing heavily on the work of Bebko (...) et al. and Christensen et al., we argue that controlled and automated processes must operate in parallel if skilled performers are to address the wide range of challenges that they are faced with in training and competition. More specifically, we show how skilled performers use controlled processes to update and improve motor execution in training contexts and to stabilise performance under pressurised conditions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to understand the functional role of mental representations and intentionality in skilled actions from a systems related perspective. Therefore, we will evaluate the function of representation and then discuss the cognitive architecture of skilled actions in more depth. We are going to describe the building blocks and levels of the action system that enable us to control movements such as striking the tennis ball at the right time, or grasping tools in manual (...) class='Hi'>action. Based on this theoretical understanding the measurement of mental representations and related research results concerning mental representation in skilled action are presented in an overview. This leads to the question how mental representations develop and change during learning. Finally, to consolidate the functional understanding of mental representation in skilled action and interaction, we provide examples how to use the measurement of mental representation in humans to inform technical systems. (shrink)

Skilled sportsmen or musicians—more generally, skilled agents—often fill us with awe with the way they perform their actions. One question we may ask ourselves is whether they intended to perform some awe-inspiring aspects of their actions. This question becomes all the more pressing as it often turns out that these agents were not conscious of some of those aspects at the time of performance. As I shall argue, there are reasons for suspecting lack of conscious access to an aspect of (...) one’s action to be incompatible with intending to perform that aspect of one’s action. Subsequently, though, I will also argue that, in some cases, the incompatibility is only prima facie, and can be dispelled by drawing the following distinction: that between aspects of one’s action that are merely temporarily not consciously accessed, versus aspects of one’s action that are permanently inaccessible to consciousness. I will thus remove an obstacle towards saying that skilled agents intended to perform certain aspects of their actions, despite lack of conscious access to those aspects at the time of performance. (shrink)

According to the early Yogācāra, following non-conceptual awareness, the advanced bodhisattva is said to attain a state characterized by a "subsequent awareness". Yogācāra thinkers identify this state with ultimate knowledge of causality and view it as involving a unique kind of conceptual activity and propositional attitudes, which are very different, however, from ordinary conceptual awareness insofar as they do not involve vikalpa. Translated back into the terms of some version of the contemporary debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists, this would amount (...) to something like the claim that we can use concepts in a non-conceptual way. But how can we make sense... (shrink)

In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle, accurately answer “Anscombean” questions—”what” and “why” questions— about (...) what they do. I argue against this claim and explore the ramifications for theories of skilled action and agency. (shrink)

For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given (...) that Merleau-Ponty suggested that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual’s prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances. (shrink)

According to Rosalind Hursthouse’s virtue based account of right action, an act is right if it is what a fully virtuous person would do in that situation. Robert Johnson has criticized the account on the grounds that the actions a non-virtuous person should take are often uncharacteristic of the virtuous person, and thus Hursthouse’s account of right action is too narrow. The non-virtuous need to take steps to improve themselves morally, and the fully virtuous person need not take (...) these steps. So Johnson argues that any virtue based account of right action will have to find a way to ground a moral obligation to improve oneself. This paper argues that there is an account of virtue that can offer a partial solution to Johnson’s challenge, an account where virtue is a type of practical skill and in which the virtuous person is seen as having expertise. The paper references the account of skill acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus. Their research demonstrates that novices in a skill have to employ different strategies to act well than the strategies used by the experts, and so the ‘virtue as skill’ thesis provides support for Johnson’s claim that the actions of the non-virtuous will differ from the virtuous. On the other hand, their research suggests that there is no separating the commitment to improve yourself from the possession of expertise, and so the ‘virtue as skill’ thesis has the resources for grounding the obligation to improve oneself in an account of virtue. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

What occurs in the mind of an expert who is performing at their very best? In this paper, I survey the history of debate concerning this question. I suggest that expertise is neither solely a mastery of the automatic nor solely a mastery of intelligence in skilled action control. Experts are also capable of performing automatic actions intelligently. Following this, I argue that unconscious-thought theory (UTT) is a powerful tool in coming to understand the role of executive, intelligent (...) class='Hi'>action control in the fluidly automatic performance of expertise. Relying on a body of empirical evidence concerning the cognitive structures and perceptual strategies employed by experts, I show that the realm of skilled action is an ideal environment within which the powers of unconscious cognitive processing can have positive effects on action. I conclude that experts rely upon unconscious thinking in the production of intelligently automatic skilled actions. (shrink)

Skilled activity, such as shaving or dancing, differs in important ways from many of the stock examples that are employed by action theorists. Some critics of the causal theory of action contend that such a view founders on the problem of skilled activity. This paper examines how a causal theory can be extended to the case of skilled activity and defends the account from its critics.

For fifty years Hubert Dreyfus has done pioneering work which brings phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. This is a selection of his most influential essays, developing his critique of the representational model of the mind in analytical philosophy of mind and mainstream cognitive science.

When someone masters a skill, their performance looks to us like second nature: it looks as if their actions are smoothly performed without explicit, knowledge-driven, online monitoring of their performance. Contemporary computational models in motor control theory, however, are instructionist: that is, they cast skillful performance as a knowledge-driven process. Optimal motor control theory, as representative par excellence of such approaches, casts skillful performance as an instruction, instantiated in the brain, that needs to be executed—a motor command. This (...) paper aims to show the limitations of such instructionist approaches to skillful performance. We specifically address the question of whether the assumption of control-theoretic models is warranted. The first section of this paper examines the instructionist assumption, according to which skillful performance consists of the execution of theoretical instructions harnessed in motor representations. The second and third sections characterize the implementation of motor representations as motor commands, with a special focus on formulations from OMCT. The final sections of this paper examine predictive coding and active inference—behavioral modeling frameworks that descend, but are distinct, from OMCT—and argue that the instructionist, control-theoretic assumptions are ill-motivated in light of new developments in active inference. (shrink)

On the surface, it seems intuitively plausible that if an agent luckily manages to perform a desired action (e.g., rolling a six with a fair die or winning the lottery), the performance of which is not the result of any relevant skill on her part, we should not say that she performed the action intentionally. This intuition suggests that our concept of intentional action is sensitive to considerations of skill, luck, and causal control. Indeed, some philosophers have (...) claimed that in order for an action to be performed intentionally it must be performed with a relevant amount of skill or control - i.e., an intentional action cannot simply be the result of luck. On this view, skill and control are necessary conditions of our everyday concept of intentional action. In this essay, I discuss empirical evidence that challenges this claim. After briefly setting the stage, I examine Al Mele and Paul Moser's thorough analysis of intentional action - paying particular attention to some of the interesting scenarios they offer in support of their position. Next, I discuss the results of some simple psychological experiments that show that people's judgments concerning whether actions are intentional can often be affected by the moral features of these actions - features that may trump considerations of skill, luck, and control. Finally, I conclude that if this is correct, philosophers who claim that skill and control are necessary conditions of the folk concept of intentional action appear to be mistaken. One can test attempted philosophical analyses of intentional action partly by ascertaining whether what these analyses entail about particular actions is in line with what the majority of non-specialists would say about these actions if there is a widely shared concept of intentional action, such judgments provide evidence about what the concept is, and a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter. (Mele, 2001, p. 27). (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, (...) which is typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies (...) offer an alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, (...) which is typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as an account (...) of intentional action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently moved toward action-integrated paradigms to account for some of its most remarkable findings. This novel approach has opened up new venues for the sport sciences. In particular, a large body of literature has investigated the relationship between complex motor practice and cognition, which in the sports domain has mostly concerned the effect of imagery and other forms of mental practice on motor skill acquisition and emotional control. Yet recent evidence indicates that this relationship is bidirectional: (...) motor experience also influences higher cognition, with a broad range of cognitive abilities being impacted in various ways. In this paper, I review the latest research exploring the effect of complex motor practice on spatial cognition. After emphasizing the versatility of processes that are recruited in the acquisition of complex motor skills, I present further experimental evidence to suggest that the process of acquiring new motor skills triggers specific adaptions in the brain, which in turn can be critical in numerous aspects of daily life. Finally, I propose a mechanistic explanation to account for motor-induced improvements, within an embodied framework of cognition. (shrink)

For fifty years Hubert Dreyfus has done pioneering work which brings phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. This is a selection of his most influential essays, developing his critique of the representational model of the mind in analytical philosophy of mind and mainstream cognitive science.

Propositionalism in the philosophy of action is the popular view that intentional actions are bodily movements caused and rationalized by certain ‘internal’ propositional attitude states that constitute the agent's perspective. I attack propositionalism's background claim that the genuinely mental/cognitive dimension of human action resides solely in some range of ‘internal’ agency-conferring representational states that causally trigger, and thus are always conceptually disentangle-able from, bodily activity itself. My opposing claim, following Ryle, Wittgenstein, and others, is that mentality and intentionality (...) can be constitutively implicated in bodily actions themselves, as exercises of a distinctive form of embodied practical understanding. I attempt to show this by attending to the fine-grained contours of various skillful actions. (shrink)

On initial analysis, Indian Buddhist philosophers seem to have an inconsistent set of commitments with regard to the nature of action. First, they are committed to the reality of karman (Skt: action), which concerns the moral quality of actions and the short- and long-term effects of those actions on the agent. Second, they are committed to an understanding of karma as deeply connected with intention or volition (cetanā). Third, they are committed to the idea that, through Buddhist practice, (...) one may become liberated from the afflictions of craving, aversion, and ignorance and achieve nirvāṇa. Yet, fourth, while Buddhist philosophers are committed to the reality of action and its results, they are also committed to the unreality of any substantial self or agent of actions. How can one affirm the reality of volition, action, efficacious practice, and liberation, while denying the existence of agents, practitioners, or liberated beings? Reconciling the doctrine of no-self (anātman) with an account of agency and karma was a central task of great Buddhist philosophers such as Vasubandhu (fl. 4th to 5th century CE). This chapter will discuss Buddhist philosophy of action in the context of their views of the self, general ontology, ethics, and soteriology. (shrink)

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action (...) routines that would otherwise overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

Motor learning can be defined as a process that leads to relatively permanent changes in motor behavior through repeated interactions with the environment. Different strategies can be adopted to achieve motor learning: movements can be overtly practiced leading to an amelioration of motor performance; alternatively, covert strategies (e.g., action observation) can promote neuroplastic changes in the motor system even in the absence of real movement execution. However, whether a training regularly alternating action observation and execution (i.e., Action (...) Observation Training, AOT) may surpass the pure motor practice (MP) and observational learning (OL) remains to be established. To address this issue, we enrolled 54 subjects requiring them to learn tying nautical knots via one out of three types of training (AOT, MP, OL) with the scope to investigate which element mostly contributes to motor learning. We evaluated the overall improvement of each group, along with the predictive role that neuropsychological indexes exert on each treatment outcome. The AOT group exhibited the highest performance improvement (42%), indicating that the regular alternation between observation and execution biases participants toward a better performance. The reiteration of this sequence provides an incremental, adjunct value that super-adds onto the efficacy of motor practice or observational learning in isolation (42% > 25% + 10%, i.e., OL + MP). These findings extend the use of the AOT from clinical and rehabilitative contexts to daily routines requiring the learning and perfectioning of new motor skills such as sports training, music, and occupational activities requiring fine motor control. (shrink)

Transform your yoga practice into a force for creating social change with this concise, eloquent guide to social justice tools and skills. Skill in Action asks you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga as a way to become an agent of social change and work toward a just world. Through yoga practices and philosophy, this book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency-whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or (...) changing our relationships with others and ourselves. To provide a strong foundation to begin this work, Michelle Cassandra Johnson clearly defines power and privilege, oppression, liberation, and suffering, and invites you to make changes in your life that promote equality and freedom for all. Each chapter ends with a breathwork, asana, meditation, or interpersonal relational practice to help you incorporate this wisdom into your daily life. Each of the practices extend beyond the individual to offer resources and tools to shift institutional policies and procedures in a culture that has left all of us negatively impacted by white supremacy and social inequity. We must awaken to the injustice and suffering of marginalized communities, and we must use our voices and actions toward the liberation of all people. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently moved toward action-integrated paradigms to account for some of its most remarkable findings. This novel approach has opened up new venues for the sport sciences. In particular, a large body of literature has investigated the relationship between complex motor practice and cognition, which in the sports domain has mostly concerned the effect of imagery and other forms of mental practice on motor skill acquisition and emotional control. Yet recent evidence indicates that this relationship is bidirectional: (...) motor experience also influences higher cognition, with a broad range of cognitive abilities being impacted in various ways. In this paper, I review the latest research exploring the effect of complex motor practice on spatial cognition. After emphasizing the versatility of processes that are recruited in the acquisition of complex motor skills, I present further experimental evidence to suggest that the process of acquiring new motor skills triggers specific adaptions in the brain, which in turn can be critical in numerous aspects of daily life. Finally, I propose a mechanistic explanation to account for motor-induced improvements, within an embodied framework of cognition. (shrink)

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action (...) routines that would otherwise overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)