# Thought in Action ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/eoeUIycxBJJ9VDCgJw759a_ikHoLDdFlP0Gq63mFKcE-cove_doR9IzI.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Barbara Gail Montero]] - Full Title: Thought in Action - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Barbara Gail Montero challenges the idea that expert performance is best when the mind is inactive and actions are automatic. She argues that experts benefit from conscious bodily awareness and thoughtful engagement during performance. Montero's book explores the role of cognition in expert action across various disciplines. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/166509818 - Source File: Thought in Action by Barbara Gail Montero.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The ability to see room for improvement, however, is not of much use unless one also has a strong and ongoing desire to improve. And it may be that, more so than tal- ent, it is this desire to improve, an attitude the Japanese call “kaizen,” that turns a novice into an expert ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa478pq9azt8bzrv95drgkt)) > One theme of this book, to put it baldly, is that controlled settings destroy expertise. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa4r7462a2qzawexamcdxgd)) > For example, some may accept the view that expert action is unreflective because, quite simply, expert actions often appear effortless. This is particularly true of ballet, where movements are often supposed to produce the illu- sion of effortlessness ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa4x0abawwgxhrmqpe059kq)) > The central positive arguments that support my view fall roughly into three catego- ries. First, I rely on case studies for in-depth explorations of specific examples of expert action, such as a head nurse’s description of working in the emergency room, a tennis player’s account of competing in a grand slam, or a chess player’s experience of playing speed chess. Second, I examine and draw inferences from empirical research that iden- tifies psychological factors experts themselves see as conducive to optimal perfor- mance in high-pressure situations; for example, a study by Adam Nicholls and colleagues (2006) suggests that professional rugby players regularly cope with pressure by increasing their concentration on the task. Third, I consider what we should expect would be true about expert action given what we know about experts and the way they train. What can we infer, for example, about expert performance given that experts practice in a thoughtful, analytic manner? How does the often-obsessive drive to improve affect the state of an expert’s mind when she is exercising her skills? And what follows from the need to occasionally take risks in performance? Although no single line of argumentation is conclusive on its own, my hope is that, when taken together, these paths to my theory of effortful expertise lend it what William Wimsatt (2007) sees as a criterion for being the best explanation for the available data, namely, robustness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa4ymvr8wgbqf7hyenf4j5x)) > The starting assumption of many researchers in this area seem to be that when > experts are performing at their best, attention to what they are doing is harmful rather than helpful. Studies are then devised to test this preconception. Yet such studies sometimes seem better designed to substantiate it rather than to question it. If nothing else, I will consider my book a success if it creates a fissure in this approach. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa4zdqsvbc3md7et90w4sgd)) > Methodological 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 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa539n1aevt8wgd6tf2xahg)) > However, barring any good reasons for doubt, I take first-person accounts of one’s own mental pro- cesses at face value.4 This methodological precept follows roughly from what Tyler Burge (1993) calls the “acceptance principle,” which holds that “a person is entitled to accept as true something that is presented as true and that is intelligible to him, unless there are stronger reasons not to do so” (p. 467). Whether the acceptance principle is a fundamental principle that we know a priori, as Burge thought, or is justified through our experience of interacting with people, is a question I leave to the side. I state merely that in my reasoning about expertise, I maintain, in the form of the methodological principle, something very much akin to it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa55jjbykmkmkap9qxpefak)) > 8. Effortlessness with Effort ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0y9xjpmphjfa4a1q8bftsrd)) > [Effortlessness with Effort](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/166509818/#bookmark5) > It ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0y9zr9thbpjm44gpcvpf95z)) > But as Cole and I pointed out, there is also some- thing pleasurable in the experience of bodily movement itself. And it is this pleasure of movement, some think, that an athlete or dancer (or other physically skilled expert) can get “lost” in, a pleasure, some think, that washes away the self. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x6tvqrz3yggx5t9a4nz2j7)) > . However, my concern here is not with the philosopher’s pleasure in movement, but with the pleasure that is experienced by someone who is an expert in physical activities, such as the expert dancer, athlete, or musician. Though expert skills can be painful—to close out a game in the world of professional tennis, for example, is likely going to hurt—they can also be pleasurable; the dancer Fergus Early (Lansley and Early 2011) explains: “I find considered movement deeply pleasurable. I always have and I continue to—movement that has a purpose, that I think about. That’s one of my great pleasures in life” (p. 181). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x6vfxekmd5empvdcxa0fww)) > Though Cole and I were interested in the pleasure associated with bodily activities, one can also find pleasure in acts of mental expertise, such as chess or poetry. The thrill of coming up with a surprising checkmate, or a keen poetic phrase, can be pleasurable. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x67qe456tyaddg05h63zz3)) > One even finds pleasure in those rare moments when one seems to have identified a surprising necessary condition for something (such are the thrills of the analytic p ­hilosopher!). Yet, as with bodily expertise, often there is also a considerable amount of pain involved in such activities; sometimes one perseveres merely because it will be such a relief to be done. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x68245yrznh8fz1827trzb)) > For example, the writer David Foster Wallace (2006) captures an aspect of this enjoyment when he writes about tennis star Roger Federer: “Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise! etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter.” I think Wallace expresses something correct here: expertly moving through space and interacting with matter can be glorious. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x75eptjxwr2qk12v81s1a2)) > Musicians also become immersed in their bodily movements. Charles Rosen (2002), a philosopher as well as professional musician, talks about the sheer pleasure of moving his hands, going so far as claiming that one cannot become a professional pianist without having a deep enjoyment of the physical movements of one’s fingers on the keys: Pianists do not devote their lives to their instrument simply because they like music: that would not be enough to justify a dreary existence of stuffy airplanes, uncomfortable hotel rooms, and the hours spent trying to get the local piano technician to adjust the soft pedal. There has to be a genuine love simply of the mechanics and difficulties of playing, a physical need to contact with the keyboard, a love and need which may be connected with a love of music but are not by any means totally coincident with it. (p. 10) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x8g57r9yj117h3vawhm2w2)) > “Part of the pleasure of playing the piano . . . is purely muscular,” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x8gw3qcxetjr883tpbe417)) > , uses the term “autotelic” to refer to action that is rewarding in and of itself and is done at least in part because it is rewarding in this way (Nakamura and Csikszentmilhalyi 2002). Certainly, there is an autotelic element in what Juleen describes as being immersed in movement, but, again, I do not think that such an element implies that there is no experience of the self: when one is fully immersed in an action, it can be the self that is fully immersed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x8p9fcvszzk13aqt9d3d3q)) > . And these two might not always line up. First off, in contrast to autotelic actions, expert actions are sometimes not rewarding in and of themselves, but are performed because they might lead to a future reward, such as winning a tournament or simply doing better than ever before. Second, as I have been emphasizing throughout the book, expert action does not and should not carry us forward as if by magic. When responses need to be nearly immediate, there is not much time to ponder “why am I doing this?” and “should I be doing something else?” (though as we’ve already seen in Chapter 5 and will see again in Chapter 11, even in high-speed actions, typically there is some time to think and ponder). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x8s5en5e1cbzztfcjw95d8)) > If part of the pleasure of movement, as I have argued, comes from a sense of being immersed in movement, and if proprioception is the sense by which we experience such immersion, I am committed to the view—in as much as the pleasure is con- scious—that such experience is conscious. But is it? Proprioception is a relatively little studied sense among both scientists and philosophers, and among those who do talk about it, a number of philosophers claim that we are rarely aware of proprioceptive information.8 For example, according to Brian O’Shaughnessy (1998), “proprio- ception is attentively recessive in a high degree, it takes a back seat in consciousness almost all of the time” (p. 175). And Gallagher (2003) tells us, “when I am engaged in the world, I tend not to notice my posture or specific movements of my limbs” (p. 54). Are expert athletes and performing artists, then, not attending to proprioceptive input? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x9adwn4nrwzdc15hfrdcrc)) > According to Elizabeth Anscombe (1957/2000), when we know where our limbs are without looking, we know this without the benefit of sensory feedback; nothing shows us, she tells us, the positions of our limbs (pp. 13–14). This knowledge, on her view, is analogous to the knowledge possessed by the director of a building project who may know what a finished building will look like: she knows this not because she has observed it, but because she has designed it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2x9d52gv1hmv8gv9bnpppsx)) ## New highlights added April 30, 2026 at 9:16 AM > ‌flux [that] produces sick children also produced Roger Federer.” However, while a deity, entity, flow of energy, or random genetic flux may be the primary causal force behind birth defects and illness in children, the primary causal force behind Roger Federer—that is, Federer’s athletic prowess—is Roger Federer himself. It may at times be glorious for Federer to interact with matter and to touch, perceive, and move through space. But, as I shall argue, this glory, this pleasure, does not invariably dissolve the self. Furthermore, positing a partial loss of the self explains the relevant pleasure of move- ment just as well as positing total annihilation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqekcsm824k1fqp2a2tee9e7)) > e ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqehz9jqtyg6k82d7d28zjw4)) ## New highlights added April 30, 2026 at 2:48 PM > if you were wondering who it is that holds the reciprocal pleasure principle, let me now tell you that in addition to finding shades of it in popu- lar accounts of the phenomenon known as “flow,” it seems to have been in the back- ground of my work with Cole. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqf6egv5vyy1mxth692bdh79)) > When the pleasure of expert skill does outweigh the pain, one way that dancers (and likely others) experience this pleasure is in “bodily immersion,” that is, in the feeling of being in contact with every point of one’s body.4 Britt Juleen, a dancer with Dutch National Ballet, explained that during a performance she aims to engage fully in the quality of her bodily movements. In her words, the goal “is to be totally immersed the feeling of my body moving” (pers. comm.). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqf2mk15d3r17tyr7187kmhm)) > I, too, felt that my best performances typically involved being immersed in the feeling of movement. I am not sure if this was the most important aspect of a good performance for me, since the experience of being in dialog with the music was also crucial as well as pleasurable (Juleen also commented on how she loved the experience of dancing to music), as was the intimate form of communication one has with one’s partner or fellow dancers. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqf2p3728ge2g8d8agqqrky9)) ## New highlights added April 30, 2026 at 3:44 PM > Rather, the mind, it would seem, is on the feeling of movement, and this experience of movement is at least compatible with a sense of self. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqf8g7bj26yd5azq2v8q267c)) > But does Csikszentmihalyi’s research—research based on the “experience sampling method,’’ which prompts subjects at random times to write down what they are doing and what they are thinking about and then rate their state of consciousness—show that expert action is typically unreflective and involves no awareness of the self? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqf7hzga6vryd0x5efn3dw4r))