Barbara Gail Montero’s Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind is a substantial contribution to our philosophical understanding of expertise, skill, and indeed the relationship between mind and body generally. Her views on expertise may well represent the next stage in the evolution of this concept. In what seems like a sea of contrary views of skilled practice and proficiency, Montero swims gracefully against the tide of much stubborn technical and popular punditry according to which expertise is unmindful if not outright mindless. Both students and experts—in Montero’s sense or any other—should find this book amply rewarding.

          The book comprises twelve chapters, the first three of which, together with the helpful Introduction, lay the foundation of Montero’s position. The Introduction, along with framing certain difficulties in studying expertise, reveals the methodological heart on Montero’s sleeve, including this eminently sensible principle: “First-person reports of what goes on in one’s own mind should be accepted as (defeasible) evidence for the truth of the report unless we have good reason to question them” (p. 8). The book contains a wealth of examples from different fields of expertise by turns illustrating and confirming Montero’s view. Although I did worry for a while in the middle of reading that recalcitrant first-person reports would not be addressed sufficiently, this fear was eventually dissipated.

Various manifestations of Montero’s target, which she dubs “the just-do-it principle” or simply “just-do-it,” are discussed in Chapter 1, including examples from popular culture (from self-help to sport gurus), and various technical views of expertise as attaining or being receptive to divine inspiration, automaticity, or the unconscious or intuitive mind. I was glad to see here a discussion of Zen Buddhism and Taoism and how problematic interpretations of these are partly responsible for the cultural prevalence of the just-do-it view.

But what is the view? Chapter 2 offers a characterization of it, a systematic untangling of its several constituents strands, as well as Montero’s own alternative position. She articulates the target position as follows:

The just-do-it principle: For experts, when all is going well, optimal or near-optimal performance proceeds without any of the following mental processes: self-reflective thinking, planning, predicting, deliberation, attention to or monitoring of their actions, conceptualizing their actions, conscious control, trying, effort, having a sense of the self, or acting for a reason. Moreover, when all is going well, such processes interfere with expert performance and should be avoided. (p. 35)

(To appreciate the sheer cultural prevalence of the just-do-it view, just consider Yoda’s dictum “Do or do not. There is no try.”) Montero unbraids three distinct, significant strands of the just-do-it principle:

Descriptive just-do-it: For experts, when all is going well, optimal or near-optimal performance proceeds without thought….

Principle of interference: For experts, when all is going well, thinking interferes with expert performance….

Proscriptive just-do-it: When all is going well, experts should avoid thinking. (p. 37)

Montero’s contrary position, which she calls “the cognition-in-action principle,” or simply “cognition-in-action,” is presented in stark contrast to just-do-it, though she admits that the difference between the two ultimately might boil down to one of emphasis (p. 50):

Cognition-in-action: For experts, when all is going well, optimal or near-optimal performance frequently employs some of the following conscious mental processes: self-reflective thinking, planning, predicting, deliberation, attention to or monitoring of their actions, conceptualizing their actions, control, trying, effort, having a sense of self, and acting for a reason. Moreover, such mental processes do not necessarily or even generally interfere with expert performance, and should not generally be avoided by experts. (p. 38)

Much in the book depends on Montero’s particular, nuanced understanding of expertise, of what it means to be and perform as an expert. It is an ambitious account, meant to encompass a wide swath of skilled experts: from the cognitive prowess of chess grandmasters to the motor prowess of elite athletes. (One senses a pragmatist influence here, and this is confirmed, if never explicitly stated, by Montero’s account in Chapter 10 of proprioception—the nonvisual sense of one’s own body movements and positions—as an aesthetic sense.) As Montero conceives them, “experts are those who have engaged in around ten or more years of deliberate practice and are still passionate about improving (that is, they aren’t just resting on their laurels);” and it follows from this that “expert actions are the domain-related actions of such individuals; and expertise is the ability experts have to perform such actions” (p. 67). She meets anticipated objections to this account—that it departs from common use, that it is more practice- than performance-based, that it seems to marginalize the naturally gifted, and so on—in large measure successfully. Given the emphasis on practice, however, I was expecting a discussion and half-endorsement of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule,” according to which it takes about that much deliberate practice to achieve mastery in a given field. Where Gladwell is mentioned, however, it is as a champion of just-do-it rather than cognition-in-action. Also, if experts must be passionate, as Montero puts it, about improving, it seems that this needlessly excludes experts in mid to late career who have to work to maintain or inhibit the decline of their prowess. (As a fortysomething male professor whose testosterone is on the wane, and being realistic, I would be happy, and seemingly still an expert, to keep producing work of definite if somewhat diminished quality). In a nutshell, then, Montero’s definition could be suitably broadened without losing any theoretical payoff.

The rest of the book systematically attacks different facets of the just-do-it principle. In Chapter 4 Montero shows that on the whole thinking does not interfere with doing but is rather crucial to doing at an expert level. Chapter 5 takes aim at quick response time scenarios that might falsely appear to marginalize expert thinking. Where Chapter 6 explores the relationship between practice as a preparation for performance versus practice as performance, Chapter 7 suggests, with a playful air of paradox, that “You Can’t Try Too Hard,” and Chapter 8 reveals that the appearance of an effortless performance in dance often takes a lot of concerted effort, and not just in rehearsal. In Chapters 9 and 10 respectively Montero focuses on the pleasures of movement, proprioceptive and aesthetic, arguing that these involve rather than dispersing the self. Chapter 11 is a riveting case study of chess, in which the role of thinking even in inspired players is stressed. Chapter 12 a sketch of interesting connections between expertise, its pursuit, and the meaning of life. Implicit all along, and no doubt partly underlying Montero’s account of expertise, is a kind of work ethic whose strength is perhaps less surprising when one appreciates that Montero was for years a professional ballet dancer. In such a performing art it appears that nothing less than total dedication will do, though this might not be the case in all domains.

If there is anything lacking in the book, it is an engagement of the traditional knowing that/knowing how distinction, which seems especially pertinent to Montero’s project, as it is meant to cover both cognitive and motor expertise. She does briefly discuss skill as a kind of know-how, and yet there are no references to Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind or Michael Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension. But such a complaint is minor and perhaps idiosyncratic.

Overall, Montero’s book is an impressive achievement, an insightful, often delightful read. I highly recommend it.

 

© 2017 Jason Holt

 

Jason Holt is Professor in the School of Kinesiology at Acadia University. His books include Meanings of Art: Essays in Aesthetics (Minkowski Institute) and Blindsight and the Nature of Consciousness (Broadview).