# The Shape of Agency: Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge  ## Metadata - Author: [[JOSHUA SHEPHERD]] - Full Title: The Shape of Agency: Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The document entitled "The Shape of Agency: Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge" explores various aspects of agency, including control, intentional action, skill, and knowledge. The author emphasizes the importance of control in any activity that involves doing something rather than simply happening. They discuss the possession of control in relation to goals and plans, and the role of intentions and beliefs in intentional action. The document also examines different perspectives on knowledge of action, including the connection to perception and conscious awareness. Overall, the document delves into the complex nature of agency and the various factors that shape it. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/138261380 - Source File: The Shape of Agency Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge by JOSHUA SHEPHERD.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > It should be uncontroversial that one can become skilled at Infinite Stairs. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw8sarknw216n5h86tdvqbh)) > (After all, I did it.) Other, previously practiced abilities, such as familiarity with a tablet’s buttons and with the focusing of attention, will be useful. But one has to structure these abilities in the right way. One has to generate novel visuomotor and visuospatial mappings. So there will be a period during which one is a novice, and then one will gradually improve until at some point, one has become skilled. This might not take very long. In my case, after about a month, the game began to get boring—there were small improve- ments I knew I could make, but they were very small. I was about as good as anyone should reasonably want to be. And I was about as good as I could be, absent, I don’t know, performing quick-twitch exercises with my thumbs. Other skills take much longer to develop, hold an agent’s interest for far longer than a month, and cover more complex territory. Consider the skilled chess player. In cognitive science, this type of person has often served as a paradigm for research into skill—or at least “cognitive” skill—with the result that we know a bit more about skill at chess than in some other areas. Of course, the best chess players in the world today are not humans, and are ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw8sd1dx3bc4wpe6t7mkx7p)) > It should be uncontroversial that one can become skilled at Infinite Stairs. (After all, I did it.) Other, previously practiced abilities, such as familiarity with a tablet’s buttons and with the focusing of attention, will be useful. But one has to structure these abilities in the right way. One has to generate novel visuomotor and visuospatial mappings. So there will be a period during which one is a novice, and then one will gradually improve until at some point, one has become skilled. This might not take very long. In my case, after about a month, the game began to get boring—there were small improve- ments I knew I could make, but they were very small. I was about as good as anyone should reasonably want to be. And I was about as good as I could be, absent, I don’t know, performing quick-twitch exercises with my thumbs. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw8v8k4d5k6ng06d13kteb0)) > Instead of fluid intelligence, or problem-solving ­ability more generally, chess skill may involve something more like the recogni- tional capacities we deploy when we recognize faces or features of faces (see Boggan et al. 2012). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw8yvfw49qnky3x0ywtsgtk)) > Skill at chess often results from the structuring of cognitive ability sets within the normal human range into skill at chess via the acquisition of chess-specific knowledge. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw90my1pg9hnk7ykfe060kr)) > The development of high levels of skill, or even of high levels of control with respect to small components of complex activities like basketball, or violin, or oil painting, can take years even for very advanced agents. One must not only develop a range of abilities and master a range of actions. One must become familiar with complex relationships between circum- stances, abilities, and success. Some activities require one to compete against highly intelligent opponents who anticipate one’s moves and plan counters. One must develop abilities to deploy these behaviors flexibly and appropriately across a range of challenging circumstance-types. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9322r17gx2fr9t5msgg7p)) > If we are building a skill into some agent, where should we start? I suggest control. That’s because one clear element of all skills is control. One cannot ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw957m9p2zhsc1r1tntefa5)) > possess a skill S without possessing control over some sufficient range of behaviors involved in exercising S. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw95ad9gfrwxmbf0e9q1qd1)) > Normal talk is permissive about the boundaries of this something. Philosophers tend to talk of being skilled at an action-type. Indeed, most of the extant accounts of skill bound skill in exactly this way—an account of skill is an account of skill at A-ing, where A-ing is an action-type (e.g., Stanley and Williamson 2017). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9b55zj8wzmkep7k84k10r)) > Assume juggling is a single action-type, with whatever sub-actional co ­mponents (tossing, catching) necessary to fill out the story. What is it to ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9ck2518bsv5rk1yth4gbp)) > be skilled at juggling? I suggest that to be skilled at juggling is to possess s ­ufficiently high levels of control with respect to good plans to juggle. This would decompose into the possession of sufficiently high levels of control at sufficiently many of behavioral components of juggling. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9cr58cb5cf60ykdkrg7eg)) > One’s level of skill at juggling increases along three dimensions. One dimension is completeness—the percentage of behavioral components with respect to which one has some very high degree of control. Another dimension is control—one’s success-rate at plans to juggle, or at the components of plans that have juggling as a key goal, where the successes occur in virtue of the control that one possesses (that is, occur non-deviantly). A third dimension is plan quality—the overall s ­uccess-conduciveness of the agent’s plan for action, given her dispositional structure. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9dfbznwe9a3c6t5e7jv60)) > Reflection on skill’s variety suggests skills often run wider and deeper than talk of action-types alone can capture. A skilled debater is good at vari- ous kinds of reasoning, at listening, at a way of speaking, at synthesizing information, at presenting information. A skilled surgeon possesses a high degree of dexterity of hand and fingers, coupled with a refined understand- ing of the function of some part of the body, the ways this function may break down, the ways it may be repaired, as well as an ability to apply this understanding to a variety of case-types: to micro-differences in injury and damage and body-type. > The skilled agent is typically skilled at clusters of action-types. These clusters tend to hang together in a structured way. In order to understand skill we have to understand the structure of these clusters—of what I call action domains. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9ghm8gr37d3bgcedmb3hd)) > Consider the following four elements, common to more familiar action domains: [a] goal(s), [b] an ordering over the goals in terms of centrality-to-success, [c] restrictions on circumstance-types, [d] restrictions on behavior- (and action-)types. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9nfjgrchvqfewwfw6kk2w)) > In some complex domains, one way to succeed is to develop sub-skills, or partial skill (as you like): e.g., to specialize at one important thing. In bas- ketball, for example, this may be ball-handling, shooting, or shot-blocking. If one is good enough at one thing, the absence of (high levels of) skill at other elements of basketball can be forgiven. But of course a better way to succeed as a basketball player, if one can manage it, is to develop interesting combinations of sub-skills. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9r9kbqrt9gxqrj4kwdvat)) > What are the processes that bring the constituents of an action domain together? It seems foolhardy to try to identify some special class of pro- cesses. Examining the many types of domains we might implicitly have in mind when discussing skill (human or otherwise), it seems that a pluralism of processes may be at work in any given case. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9tk9ktq5d2tdma5y50bb5)) > Less clean—and in that way probably more interesting—are the domains that many practices and professions set up. The practices of woodworking, painting, sculpture, and playing music set up various domains. So do the professions—legal, medical, educational, etc. Other domains may be broader than these, in the sense that the goals pro- prietary to them are largely given by biological needs and drives, and the circumstances are largely given by the contexts in which those needs and drives get expressed or find satisfaction. Additionally, it seems that agents may construct novel domains out of existing resources. Many sports and games begin in this way, but domain construction is not limited to sports and games. Some agents may chart new territory in the space of skill by combining atypically combined domains. The skilled politician, for ex­ample, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9vmxnsp65caq9px08x9fa)) > may represent a fusion of the skilled conversationalist, skilled salesperson, skilled self-promoter, skilled debater, and so on. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnw9vwn1673v2w8z8709frec)) > We need an account of what it is to be skilled at a domain. Here is mine. Skill at a domain essentially involves high success-rates at central goals. > These high success-rates cannot be due to luck, or accidents. They must, then, be due in part to control. But not only control—at least not only con- trol with respect to the plans an agent may token. Remember Fish’s lesson. Good plans do not always come for free. Skill at a domain of much com- plexity must be due not only to control (that is, the capacity to execute plans), but also to the agent’s capacity to (flexibly, reliably) form good—that is, success-conducive—plans. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwa0rz7706cygayqsx3s8v1)) > Now we focus on a particular agent. Now the massive space of behavioral routes is replaced by a space of available, at least partially executable plans. The notions of availability and executability are generous. These plans are concoctable by the agent—she could token these plans in the circumstance at hand. And the plans are not entirely unrealistic, in that she could execute at least parts of the plans she forms. Viewing this space, again a flow of pat- terns will begin to emerge. Some plans will seem more success-conducive than others. And we could toggle features of the agent—arousal levels, motivation levels, physical energy stores—and this would shift the success- conduciveness of the available plans. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwa67153ghpm2t0j2793mnd)) > The space of available, partially executable plans does not characterize the agent’s skill. It may characterize something like her (raw) talent. Talent is associated with unrefined potentiality. It is coherent to say that one agent (Zion Williamson) is far more talented, while another (Julius Randle) is far more skilled. A ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwa7ceebe552xpa2mgn3bsj)) > The skilled agent reliably winds up with plans that are among the best of those available to her. The more skilled she is, the better the plans she forms. What makes a plan better than another is that, when the agent sets out along the paths it specifies, she is more likely to meet success. The quality of a plan is thus not independent of the agent’s possession of control. This is no guar- antee that the agent will successfully exercise her control in some particular circumstance. Even the best laid plans, you know. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwan93rddn20rpdjbjx1xrn)) > This story is a dramatization of a claim Stanley and Williamson (2017) make. The claim is that El Oso isn’t really skilled at boxing. The reason is something like: El Oso’s success is only, or primarily, due to raw physical ability. And raw physical ability is not skill. Here is what Stanley and Williamson say: “Someone’s great strength may enable him to win a boxing match despite his lack of skill at boxing” (2017: 717). I agree, but I disagree with the point behind their claim—that factors like strength and speed are, they explicitly claim, “not themselves part of skill.” Raw physical abilities make important contributions to skills, and the levels of skill agents possess. They are rarely the whole story regarding skill. But El Oso comes close. What to say? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwarmcjnvx3sjpyc5c8zt4n)) > This is not to deny a drive towards fairness, and more watchable competi- tion, in some domains. We manipulate some domains by introducing weight classes, or age restrictions, or whatever. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwav35cq4tqpk8sn5y8f59t)) > When sports writers offer analogies with artistic achievement in more rec­og­niz­ ably aesthetic domains (e.g., “balletic”), they attempt to give voice to the fact that high levels of skill in many sports are aesthetic achievements in their own right. This has to do, it seems to me, with the fact that a drive towards excellence coupled with the complexity of many action domains leaves room for, and indeed, seems in some circumstances to call for, aesthetic creativity, the satisfaction of personal goals, and the expression of some- thing like personal style, in exhibiting skill. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwax01sz6kjxj987ppxz79q)) > Here is how Kyrie Irving— widely considered the best ball-handler alive—explains his approach: “A lot of thoughts that you have to put into action . . . It’s just a constant master- piece that you have to paint. Sometimes it’s going to be all scribble and stuf ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwaxnmg7j0hs6ajc2q65xsk)) > like that. It’s okay to get out of the lines.”7 As usual, it’s not entirely clear what Irving is saying. But in this case it should be expected. Agents driven to pursue excellence may find themselves navigating an increasingly fine- grained space of reasons for action, and in such circumstances the ability to imprint one’s own style on a performance can be an expression of a high level of skill. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwaxr11pfefxkwpy4q9n31w)) > According to Carlotta Pavese, skill is intimately related to (cannot be under- stood independently of understanding) the knowledge of certain pro­posi­ tions. Pavese does not often directly discuss skill—more often, she discusses knowledge how. But two views on skill can be found in her work. Allow me to briefly present both. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwazb5h7fk44fp7w2e2w7s4)) > In several places Pavese (2016a, 2016b, 2018) links skill and knowledge how as follows: Claim 1: If one is skilled at Φ-ing, then one must know how to Φ. > Claim 2: Knowing how to perform a task sufficiently well entails that one is skilled at Φ-ing. > Entailment 1: So S knows how to Φ sufficiently well if and only if S is skilled at Φ-ing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwazg2tzzwykzagb1xnf5rb)) > To the above, Pavese adds an intellectualist view of knowledge how, and thereby of skill. But it comes in two strengths. In her (2016a) and (2016b) she speaks of knowledge how “as a matter of” knowing certain true pro­ posi­tions: “According to intellectualism about know how, a subject S’s knowing how to Φ, for some task Φ, is a matter of S’s knowing a true answer to the question ‘How could he himself Φ?’ An answer to such a question is of the form ‘w is a way he himself could Φ,’ for some way w for S to Φ. Accordingly, S’s knowing how to Φ is a matter of S’s knowing, for some way w to Φ, that w is a way he himself could Φ” (2016b: 650). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwb0snh5cmc9b1pvx05vwsq)) > Given Entailment 1, this suggests a strong connection between skill and propositional knowledge—skill would just be “a matter of knowing,” where the knowledge in question is knowledge of propositional states regarding how to do something. This seems quite strong, but Pavese sometimes speaks of intellectualism about skill as a way of thinking of skill “directly in terms of standing propositional states,” (644) and she characterizes the view in one place as the view that “skills are standing propositional states” (647). Call this strong intellectualism about skill. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwb138r3e5dnzhcbc9zds96)) > My overarching concern in this chapter has been to understand skill. In the > broader context of this book, I wish that understanding to fall into place as a > mode of agentive excellence. Excellence is a kind of perfection of form. So it > helps to understand the form of agency. As I have explicated it, this form is > that of a system whose behavior, internal and external, is integrated in a way > that enables the application of, and the system’s meeting of, behavioral > standards. Skill can be seen as the possession of structure by a system that > enables excellence according to the behavioral standards > that action > domains set. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwb3hq9t7e1z2f0tgx3san6))