# The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ellen Fridland;Carlotta Pavese;]] - Full Title: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Philosophical questions surrounding skill and expertise can be traced back as far as Ancient Greece, China, and India. - Source File: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise (2020).pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The *VKN*, on the other hand, develops an expansive theory of *upāya* and its role in all of life. Indeed, the two central themes of the sutra are *upāya* and nonduality, and, by linking them, the sutra makes a case for the nonduality of *upāya* and awakening, a case that sets the stage for much of the Chan/Zen tradition’s discourse about the nonduality of practice and awakening, the fact that genuine practice is already a manifestation of awakening, and that awakening can only be manifested in practice. Vimalakīrti himself, the hero of the sutra, is a layperson valorized for his mastery of *upāya.* He is a businessman, but earns money as a lesson to others, and for their benefit; he hangs out in bars and brothels, but does so to benefit others, etc. His life is described as one in which every action he performs and every word he speaks is a manifestation of perfect *upāya*, and this constitutes a complete union of ordinary life and awakened consciousness. Awakening, then, according to the *VKN* consists in a kind of spontaneous, skillful engagement in, rather than a withdrawal from, the world ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwnsjtebswyzamztxyytnef)) > A striking illustration of this idea is the most famous moment in the sutra—Vimalakīrti’s “lion’s roar of silence” at the culmination of the ninth chapter. The scene for the sutra is Vimalakīrti’s house, now occupied by large assemblies of monks who follow the Śrāvakayāna, or *disciples’ vehicle* (the first turning sutras, if we follow the classification introduced in the *SNS*) and a large assembly of bodhisattvas (followers of the second). The *VKN* itself is a second turning (Mahāyāna, or *Great Vehicle*—a term comprising the second and third turnings) text, and is part of a body of literature that disparages the disciples’ vehicle as *Hināyāya* (an inferior vehicle) and a great deal of the sutra involves scenes that are meant to show the superiority of the bodhisattvas of the Mahāyāna over the monks of the Śrāvakayāna. These are often followed by demonstrations that Vimalakīrti, the embodiment of *upāya*, surpasses all of the bodhisattvas, enshrining the idea that skill—understood as the union of wisdom and practice—is the highest form of awakened knowledge ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwnypmdcjm40xq8s6xmk246)) - Note: ???? > But wait! Wasn’t Śāriputra’s silence just the same? A refusal to say anything when language could only undermine what one wants to say? Why was the first silence unskillful and the second skillful? The juxtaposition of these two silences is the heart of the sutra. Śāriputra’s silence has no context; it is unskillful because *he* is unskillful, and has been maneuvered into a spot where there is no right thing to say or to do. Vimalakīrti’s silence is skillful precisely because Mañjuśrī provided the context for him. His silence could be articulate because its content was already available. The silences are the same; their circumstances differ and so their meanings do as well; similarly, the meanings of Mañjuśrī’s speech and Vimalakīrti’s silence are the same; but in the context, only one can be skillful (and, like Śāriputra, Mañjuśrī had no good options: speaking opened him up to Vimalakīrti’s critique just as silence opened Śāriputra to that of the goddess). Everything is in the timing, the circumstance, the context. To pay attention to figure is to fail to be skillful; to pay attention to ground, though, risks making it figure. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwp4nf5mexp7mbs7ydxdbx7)) > This is meant to indicate what a virtuoso life is like. A virtuoso life is one lived effortlessly and spontaneously constantly responsive to context, and a life in which one places oneself in the right contexts. The spontaneity of Vimalakīrti’s silence contrasts with Śāriputra’s studied consternation; his skill in following Mañjuśrī shows that getting to the right context is half the game. The nonduality between what he expresses so articulately and Mañjuśrī does so clumsily demonstrates that real wisdom is in skill, not in declarative knowledge. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwp6ja0c5c3cd1qqxbk1h9h)) > Patience is an important skill to cultivate in moral development, and Śāntideva emphasizes not only its moral importance but the fact that the cultivation of patience is a matter of practice and skill development. It requires coming to see others and ourselves differently; acquiring the habit of reflecting before responding, instead of reacting; and, importantly, developing the right kinds of reflective skills to deploy in those moments. In the end, we replace the disposition to anger with the disposition to care when we or others act in harmful ways. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwpeqcdj60h0gz5h0pwcc1n)) > The entire set of behavioral skills we want to cultivate, on this model, rests on a foundation of perceptual skills. These skills are revealed in the immediate categorization of others in terms appropriate to virtue, not to vice, just as a skilled botanist or an art historian’s perceptual skills are revealed in her seeing plants *as* members of a particular species, or a painting *as* an early Monet (see, in this volume, Siegel, [Chapter 24](private://read/01hnwepy9gcwtts2kasmpsv0y8#book-part-029) and Stokes and Nanay, [Chapter 25](private://read/01hnwepy9gcwtts2kasmpsv0y8#book-part-030)). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwpwcq59jwy42e78zwrxspt)) > This much is a pretty orthodox interpretation of this story in the *Zhuangzi.* And we agree with it. But we also call attention to a small remark near the end of the story that has escaped the notice of commentators, and that we think makes a deep point about the role of conceptual thought and about skill in thinking. The butcher acknowledges that sometimes he comes to difficult places where the meat is knotted. Then he hesitates and his blade slows down. We propose a heterodox reading of this passage: while one aspect of skill is one’s ability much of the time to manifest one’s skill seemingly effortlessly, spontaneously, *without thought* (*wu wei*), another aspect is to know when to slow down, when to think, when to contemplate; and, when those times come, the expert knows *how* to think, how to contemplate, and how to guide action through that contemplation. Even knots and tangles can be handled if one knows when to slow down and how to consider them. That is, skilled behavior is not, on this view, the complete transcendence of thought and reflection; it is also coming to know when thought and reflection is necessary and when it is not, and when it is, we know precisely how to engage in and to apply the requisite thought. For this reason, higher-order skills, such as the effortless background monitoring of one’s own performance, are necessary components of these life-skills ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnwzhh8937awtcfmdq6fa5js)) > On this understanding of the good life, the good life is a highly skilled life—a virtuoso life, as opposed to a merely virtuous life. That is, the highly skilled *karateka* effortlessly (but as a consequence of the prior exertion of great effort), spontaneously (but only following decades of studied practice) perceives and reacts to those around them as potential threats, allies and so forth. Similarly, the highly skilled calligrapher or gardener effortlessly and spontaneously perceives the affordances for and executes highly skilled actions in the situations appropriate to them. In each case, the relevant spontaneity is achieved through extended practice. > It is often emphasized that these actions are performed without thought (*nirvikapla/mushin*), or without deliberation (*wu wei*). And there is a sense in which this is true: spontaneity and lack of premeditation is essential to skilled action as it is understood in this tradition. This, in turn, is grounded in the nonduality of consciousness that emerges from the lack of thematization of oneself as subject, of one’s materials or tools as instruments, and the other as object in such skilled activity, a state referred to in contemporary psychology and sport as *flow*.[13](private://read/01hnwepy9gcwtts2kasmpsv0y8#en14) That nondual experience is important not only because it makes action more fluent, but also because it frees one from the dualism of self and other that distinguishes between subject and the world, occluding one’s basic immersion in the world and from the superimposition of conceptual categorization on a world that is primordially uncategorized. > But one should not press this point too far, lest one construct one more duality: that between thought and no-thought. For thinking and deliberating are activities in which one can engage skillfully or unskillfully. Moreover, they are important activities not only in their own right, as so much of our life can only proceed well if it is done with a certain amount of deliberation, but also because, as we have seen, deliberation and thought are required in order even to achieve the ability to engage in thoughtless, spontaneous activity. Thought is hence not a ladder to be discarded, but rather one to be used when necessary, and stored carefully so as to be ready to hand when needed. > As an example of the case in point, consider the skilled mathematician trying to solve a problem, such as proving or rejecting a conjecture. The mathematician will have spent many years honing their skills in focusing on key elements of a situation, making appropriate mathematical constructions, and so on. When faced with a new problem, these skills are deployed. Thought is certainly required in the matter; but the skills are deployed naturally and without being forced—in the way that a skilled jazz musician, but not the novice, plays. Moreover, the phenomenology is quite distinctive. There is no longer a duality of the mind of the mathematician, and the object at which it is directed. There is simply problem-solving going on. The mathematician may, in fact, “awaken” after some time, realizing that they have been “lost in thought.” > When we think skillfully, just as when we do anything else skillfully, we do so spontaneously, effortlessly, in a state of flow; if we are truly skilled thinkers, we do not deliberate or think about when or how to deliberate or think, nor in our thought do we thematize the duality of self and object of thought; we just think, paradoxically, in *mushin.* To recognize this fact is to recognize the nonduality of thought and no-thought. That no-thought is not *thoughtlessness*, but simply spontaneous engagement, which can be cognitive as well as physical, and to recognize that skillful activity requires the thorough interpenetration of thought and its transcendence. > We should acknowledge at this point that there is a tension in the Buddhist tradition. Following the metaphor introduced by Candrakīrti in *Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatāra)* of the strong potter who sets his wheel in motion and then effortlessly produces pots while it continues to spin without his impelling it, and reflecting the idea that Buddhas have no conceptual thought or explicit intention, some have argued that Buddhas do not act at all, and have no attitudes, and no awareness (see MacKenzie, [Chapter 3](private://read/01hnwepy9gcwtts2kasmpsv0y8#book-part-005) in this volume). There is a strain of thought in classical Buddhist literature along these lines (the 15th-century Tibetan philosopher Gorampa Sonam Sengye, for instance defends this view), and it has received endorsement more recently by such philosophers as Dunne (2017) and Siderits (2011), who has characterized Buddhahood as being a zombie-like state of being, the so-called “robo-Buddha” model. On the other hand, other Buddhist philosophers (including the 14th–15th-century Tibetan philosopher Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa) emphasize that the Buddha is aware of all phenomena, and is simultaneously aware of the two truths, that the Buddha constantly acts from care, etc. > Our purpose in this essay is not to adjudicate this dispute. We simply note here that we find the latter proposal more plausible as an account of a soteriological goal, as well as more consistent with the extensive literature on the path to awakening, and the manifold texts that ascribe qualities to Buddhas that require agency, motivation, knowledge, etc. If Buddhahood is to be worth striving for, and if a Buddha is to serve as a moral and epistemological exemplar, the robo-Buddha view seems far too thin, and too much canonical literature requires dismissal if we take that view. We think instead that, while Buddhas are agents and are conscious, their agency and consciousness is nondual, non-conceptual and spontaneous; that is, absolutely skillful. They are thus the kinds of exemplars toward which it is worth striving. > 1.7 Conclusion > We have been examining two streams of thought in Asian reflection on skill and spontaneity: one emerging in the Indian Buddhist tradition, and one in the classical Chinese Daoist tradition. These streams converge in Chan and, in turn, feed the developments of the practice and theory of the martial arts. There is an important set of insights about skill carried along these streams: One insight is the sheer ubiquity of skill in our lives. *Upāya* comprises not only physical but hermeneutical and pedagogical skill, as well as moral and perceptual skill. While many might hold that maturation consists primarily in acquiring discursive knowledge, these traditions take it that the practical knowledge embodied in skill is our principal cognitive achievement, and that discursive knowledge may be nothing more than the cognitive equipment we use in manifesting that skill, just as a hammer is important to a carpenter, but only as equipment useful in manifesting her skill in building. > Second, skill is deeply bound up with spontaneity. In learning to lead our lives skillfully we free ourselves from the need to deliberate and from the conceptual mediation between ourselves and our worlds that deliberation entails. We learn to improvise as ensemble players, contributing to the joy and success of social performance. The achievement of that easy but focused and attentive spontaneity, or naturalness in our engagement with the world and with our fellows, is the mark of human maturity. > But finally the nonduality between subject and object, agent and patient, self and world that characterizes the experience of acting without thought also applies to thought and action: skill, as it is understood in these Asian traditions is not the *abandonment* of thought but the skillful use of thought, when, and only when it is appropriate. Just as silence can speak volumes—at the right moment—careful deliberate thought can be a spontaneous response to a situation and can facilitate action—at the right moment. Life is improvisation, and improvisation requires practice. > Notes > [1](private://read/01hnwepy9gcwtts2kasmpsv0y8#fnen2)At least in Indo-Tibetan materials, where the Tibetan *thab mkhas* has a clear positive connotat ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hnx09vd2kah1st8da4xxc3wx)) > We propose the following as a straightforward and not particularly controversial way of keeping apart perceptual and post-perceptual cognitive skills: if the perceptual system works in the same way in the case of two very different skills, it is not a perceptual skill. If having different skills entails that the perceptual system works differently during the execution of these skills, it is a perceptual skill. Remember that we defined perceptual skill as something the perceptual system does. If we have acquired a new perceptual skill, this implies that the perceptual system works differently. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpnwqqqdsytkeje0sp22fyxp)) > One robust finding across these disparate domains is an “entry-level shift”: as expertise is acquired, the category invoked for various tasks shifts from basic (e.g., bird) to subordinate (e.g., kingbird) or sub-subordinate (e.g., eastern kingbird) (Tanaka and Taylor 1991). These experts, within their domains, perform both more accurately and more rapidly. For example, expert radiologists can, above chance, identify an anomaly in a radiographic image in 200 ms (Evans et al. 2013). Subjectively, these subjects report pop-out visual phenomenology, often claiming to “just see” the relevant item, performing without felt cognitive effort. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpnx6drpsmv1yabcrw3yt81j))