Intuitions without concepts lose the game: mindedness in the art of chess

To gain insight into human nature philosophers often discuss the inferior performance that results from deficits such as blindsight or amnesia. Less often do they look at superior abilities. A notable exception is Herbert Dreyfus who has developed a theory of expertise according to which expert action generally proceeds automatically and unreflectively. We address one of Dreyfus’s primary examples of expertise: chess. At first glance, chess would seem an obvious counterexample to Dreyfus’s view since, clearly, chess experts are engaged in deep strategic thought. However, Dreyfus’s argument is subtle. He accepts that analysis and deliberation play a role in chess, yet he thinks that all such thought is predicated on intuitive, arational expert perception, and action. We argue that even the so-called “intuitive” aspect of chess is rational through and through.     

UNREFLECTIVE ACTION AND THE ARGUMENT FROM SPEED

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know‐how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action.     

Reason explanation a first-order rationalizing account

In this article, I discuss whether intuitive moral judgements have epistemic value. Are they mere expressions of irrational feelings that should be disregarded or should they be taken seriously? In section 2, I discuss the view of some social psychologists that moral intuitions are, like other social intuitions, under certain conditions more reliable than conscious deliberative judgements. In sections 3 and 4, I examine whether intuitive moral judgements can be said not to need inferential justification. I outline a concept of moral intuition as a seeming whose seemingness resides in special, phenomenological features such as a felt veridicality, appropriateness, familiarity, or confidence, and whose justificatory force is influenced by the reliability of the belief-producing procedures and by a subject's competence in applying moral concepts. I argue that subjects can come to realise that the beliefs expressed in their intuitive judgements evoke a sense of non-inferential credibility. In section 5, I first discuss the contribution of moral expertise to the non-inferential credibility of a person's intuitions. Subsequently, I discuss whether Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is right in saying that we can never claim non-inferential justification for our intuitions because they are subject to all kinds of distorting influences.     

The role of intuition and deliberative thinking in experts' superior tactical decision-making

Current theories argue that human decision making is largely based on quick, automatic, and intuitive processes that are occasionally supplemented by slow controlled deliberation. Researchers, therefore, predominantly studied the heuristics of the automatic system in everyday decision making. Our study examines the role of slow deliberation for experts who exhibit superior decision-making outcomes in tactical chess problems with clear best moves. Our study uses advanced computer software to measure the objective value of actions preferred at the start versus the conclusion of decision making. It finds that both experts and less skilled individuals benefit significantly from extra deliberation regardless of whether the problem is easy or difficult. Our findings have important implications for the role of training for increasing decision making accuracy in many domains of expertise.     

Two Objections to Moran’s Transparency Account

Abstract

Gareth Evans and others have argued that our intentional attitudes are transparent to facts in the world. This suggests we can know them by looking outwards to the world rather than inwards to our minds. Richard Moran uses this idea of transparency in his account of self-knowledge. Critics have objected to his account on several counts. For example, Jonathan Way has argued that irrational attitudes can give ordinary self-knowledge when they are not transparent and that there are rational attitudes that are not transparent. I argue here that these objections fail because Way does not fully consider the two different kinds of self-knowledge, ‘ordinary’ and evidence-based, that differentiate the two stances that Moran claims a subject can have towards his attitudes. It is the differences between these two stances and the implications of these that motivate Moran’s account, rather than whether the formed attitude is rational or irrational, as long as the subject avows it from the deliberative stance, focuses on the attitude’s object and conforms to the transparency condition as Moran sets this out.     

Rooted in the Past,Hooked in the Present: Vulnerability to Contingency and Immunity to Regret

The perspective of deliberative choice is constitutively from here. This simple truth carries significant implications for our agency and integrity, some of which are the focus of Wallace's thought‐provoking essay. Wallace is concerned with the discrepancy between our present attachments and the rational justification of past decisions, which threatens our personal and moral integrity. 1 In what follows, I raise some questions about Wallace's claim that attachments make us immune to regret and, ultimately, about his account of the impact of contingency in our practical thought. My argument revolves around two cases of immunity to regret, due to the agent's attachment to a ground project. Contrary to Wallace, I argue that in these cases the agent's inability to regret that things had not gone otherwise is neither unreasonable nor morally objectionable.     

Kant on Duty in the Groundwork

Barbara Herman offers an interpretation of Kant??s Groundwork on which an action has moral worth if the primary motive for the action is the motive of duty. She offers this approach in place of Richard Henson??s sufficiency-based interpretation, according to which an action has moral worth when the motive of duty is sufficient by itself to generate the action. Noa Latham criticizes Herman??s account and argues that we cannot make sense of the position that an agent can hold multiple motives for action and yet be motivated by only one of them, concluding that we must accept a face-value interpretation of the Groundwork where morally worthy actions obtain only when the agent??s sole motive is the motive of duty. This paper has two goals, one broad and one more constrained. The broader objective is to argue that interpretations of moral worth, as it is presented in the Groundwork, depend on interpretations of Kant??s theory of freedom. I show that whether we can make sense of the inclusion of nonmoral motives in morally worthy actions depends on whether the ??always causal framework?? is consistent with Kant??s theory of freedom. The narrow goal is to show that if we adopt an ??always causal?? framework for moral motivation, then Herman??s position and her critique of the sufficiency-based approach fail. Furthermore, within this framework I will specify a criterion for judging whether an action is determined by the motive of duty, even in the presence of nonmoral motives. Thus, I argue Latham??s conclusion that we must accept a face-value interpretation is incorrect.     

Expertise in complex decision making: the role of search in chess 70 years after de Groot

One of the most influential studies in all expertise research is de Groot's (1946) study of chess players, which suggested that pattern recognition, rather than search, was the key determinant of expertise. Many changes have occurred in the chess world since de Groot's study, leading some authors to argue that the cognitive mechanisms underlying expertise have also changed. We decided to replicate de Groot's study to empirically test these claims and to examine whether the trends in the data have changed over time. Six Grandmasters, five International Masters, six Experts, and five Class A players completed the think-aloud procedure for two chess positions. Findings indicate that Grandmasters and International Masters search more quickly than Experts and Class A players, and that both groups today search substantially faster than players in previous studies. The findings, however, support de Groot's overall conclusions and are consistent with predictions made by pattern recognition models.     

Heidegger,Dreyfus, and the Intelligibility of Practical Comportment

Most scholars agree that meaning and intelligibility are central to Heidegger’s account of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, but there is some confusion about the nature of this intelligibility. In his debate with McDowell, Dreyfus draws on phenomenologists like Heidegger to argue that there are two kinds of intelligibility: a basic, nonconceptual, practical intelligibility found in practical comportment and a conceptual, discursive intelligibility. I explore two possible ways that Dreyfus might ground this twofold account of intelligibility in Heidegger: first in the distinction between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as”, and second in the presence and absence of the as-structure. I argue that neither approach succeeds because practical intelligibility is always already discursive and discursive articulation is a condition of practical comportment.     

Dismantling Desert

Abstract

In this paper I argue that we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that we justly deserve to be rewarded or punished for them. I examine two distinctions: (1) the distinction set out by Gary Watson between two distinct types of responsibility: accountability and attributability and (2) the distinction set out by Ted Honderich between origination and voluntariness. I argue that Watson’s distinction maps onto Honderich’s distinction in the sense that we can only properly be held accountable if we are the originators of our actions, and actions can be seen as attributable to us as their authors if they flow voluntarily from our endorsed beliefs, intentions and character. It seems to me that attributability and accountability can be held apart so that an action can be attributable to me without this necessarily entailing that I can properly be held accountable for it in the sense of deserving the type of praise and blame that entails retributive-style reward and punishment. I argue further that compatibilists can only properly defend the weaker attributability. If my argument is correct then the classic determinist divide collapses - since compatibilism can only properly defend voluntariness and attributability and both concepts are prima facie compatible with hard determinism. Given this (and given the standard failures of libertarianism) I argue that it is most plausible for us to be committed to a new position in the free will debate which combines the important insights of compatibilism with the intuitive force of hard determinism.     

Defining agency after implicit bias

Recent findings in empirical psychology show that implicit biases can affect behavior in ways that are difficult to control deliberatively. Doris argues that findings like these constitute a threat to agency, if agency is defined as the ability to reflectively, deliberatively direct one’s actions. I argue, however, that implicit biases pose no fundamental threat to agency since they can be brought under indirect deliberative control, whereby deliberative, reflective actions put in place automatic processes that automatically inhibit unwanted biases. Since automatic processes can be thus used to achieve deliberatively, reflectively endorsed goals, agency should be defined as the ability to act in line with reflectively endorsed goals, whether by deliberative or automatic processes.     

Reenactment: an embodied cognition approach to meaning and linguistic content

A central finding in experimental research identified with embodied cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e., executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment??the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances??makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions performed with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction.     

Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity

Dual process theorists in psychology maintain that the mind’s workings can be explained in terms of conscious or controlled processes and automatic processes. Automatic processes are largely nonconscious, that is, triggered by environmental stimuli without the agent’s conscious awareness or deliberation. Automaticity researchers contend that even higher level habitual social behaviors can be nonconsciously primed. This article brings work on automaticity to bear on our understanding of habitual virtuous actions. After examining a recent intuitive account of habitual actions and habitual virtuous actions, the author offers her own explanation in terms of goal-dependent automaticity. This form of automaticity provides an account of habitual virtuous actions that explains the sense in which these actions are rational, that is, done for reasons. Habitual virtuous actions are rational in the sense of being purposive or goal-directed and are essentially linked with the agent’s psychological states. Unlike deliberative virtuous actions, the agent’s reasons for habitual virtuous actions are not present to her conscious awareness at the time of acting.

Epistemic Justice and Democratic Legitimacy

The deliberative turn in political philosophy sees theorists attempting to ground democratic legitimacy in free, rational, and public deliberation among citizens. However, feminist theorists have criticized prominent accounts of deliberative democracy, and of the public sphere that is its site, for being too exclusionary. Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser, and Seyla Benhabib show that deliberative democrats generally fail to attend to substantive inclusion in their conceptions of deliberative space, even though they endorse formal inclusion. If we take these criticisms seriously, we are tasked with articulating a substantively inclusive account of deliberation. I argue in this article that enriching existing theories of deliberative democracy with Fricker's conception of epistemic in/justice yields two specific benefits. First, it enables us to detect instances of epistemic injustice, and therefore failures of inclusion, within deliberative spaces. Second, it can act as a model for constructing deliberative spaces that are more inclusive and therefore better able to ground democratic legitimacy.     

Judgements,Expertise, and Counterfactuals

Abstract

In The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), Tim Williamson has offered a sophisticated account of thought experiments and of modal epistemology. More recently, he has also engaged in a variant of the so-called ‘expertise defence’ of traditional philosophical methodology. In this paper I argue that if Williamson’s account of thought experiments and of modal epistemology is right, this seriously undermines his version of the expertise defence.     

Slow and fast chess performance across three expert levels

ObjectivesSlow and fast thinking are crucial for human decision making in several domains of human activity including sports. These cognitive processes are remarkable in the intellectually demanding sport of chess. Slow and fast thinking underlie chess performance. However, the relative influence of each process has elicited controversial findings. Moreover, individual differences in chess skill are likely to moderate the integration of both processes.DesignThe simultaneous change over six time points in slow and fast chess performance was analyzed with a cross-domain latent curve model (LCM).MethodArchival data from an extensive group of chess players (n = 32,173) were included in these analyses at untitled, intermediate, and advanced levels of expertise. Intercept and slope latent factors of growth were specified and correlated for both processes.ResultsThere were remarkable differences in the change in slow and fast performance regarding the three expert levels, and in the concurrent interrelationship of both processes. The interdependence between both processes was more robust for the advanced than for the untitled and intermediate players.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that a better integration of slow and fast performance is produced at higher levels of expertise.     

Justifying the evidential use of linguistic intuitions

Linguistic intuitive judgements are the de facto data source of choice within generative linguistics. But why we are justified in relying on intuitive judgements as evidence for grammars? In the philosophy of linguistics, this question has been hotly debated. I argue that the three most prominent views of that debate all have their problems. Devitt’s Modest Explanation accounts for the wrong kind of intuitive judgements. The Voice of Competence view and Rey’s account both lack independent evidence. I introduce and defend a novel proposal that accounts for the evidential role of linguistic intuitive judgements and avoids these shortcomings. On this account, linguistic intuitive judgements are reports of the speaker’s immediate experience of trying to comprehend the sentence. This experience is due to the speaker’s linguistic competence, at least in part, and so the justification for the evidential use of linguistic intuitions ultimately comes from the speaker’s competence. However, the account does not rely on any special input from the speaker’s competence being available as the basis for linguistic intuitive judgements.

     

Is There a Puzzle About How Authentic Dasein Can Act?: A Critique of Dreyfus and Rubin on Being and Time,Division II

Dreyfus and Rubin's commentary on Division II of Being and Time raises three closely related puzzles about the possibility of authenticity: (i) how could Dasein ever choose to become authentic, (ii) how could authentic Dasein ever choose to take up any particular possibility, and (iii) how could anything matter to authentic Dasein? They argue that Heidegger has a convincing answer to the first two puzzles, but they find his answer to the third “indirect and not totally convincing” (D&;R, p.?332). I argue that they should find Heidegger's answer to the third puzzle far worse than “not totally convincing”, given their interpretation of his account of anxiety, and that the answers they claim he has in response to the first two puzzles are not supported by the text. I then show that the puzzles arise from distortions in Dreyfus and Rubin's interpretation of Heidegger's account of anxiety. The puzzles dissolve once the distortions are identified.     

Heidegger à la Wittgenstein or ‘coping’ with Professor Dreyfus

This is a critique of the interpretation of Heidegger's Being and Time that has been proposed by Hubert Dreyfus. Through an assimilation of much of Heidegger's thought to that of Wittgenstein, Dreyfus treats human being (Dasein) as being principally defined by its embeddedness in ‘shared social practices’ and claims that the mode of comportment he calls ‘coping’ is the source of the intelligibility of our world which he also identifies with being as such. Against this, I argue that unless it is brought into much closer contact with Heidegger's ontological account of the kind of entity Dasein is, ‘coping’ remains an ontic concept that cannot perform the function Dreyfus assigns to it. The thesis that Dasein is distinguished by the fact that it is self‐interpreting is also examined and found wanting for much the same reasons; and Dreyfus's conception of the larger design of Being and Time is shown to be seriously flawed by his failure to do justice to Heidegger's central theme ‐being as presence. In a final section, Heidegger's account of Das Man is reviewed as is Dreyfus's thesis that this anonymous modality of social existence is the master concept for understanding Dasein. This paradoxical magnification of the role of Das Man within human being is shown to fail because it does not distinguish between skills and social norms, and misses the fact that Das Man is a deformation of our social being (Mitsein), not its highest achievement as Dreyfus apparently supposed it to be.     

Knowledge, doubt, and circularity

Ernest Sosa??s virtue perspectivism can be thought of as an attempt to capture as much as possible of the Cartesian project in epistemology while remaining within the framework of externalist fallibilism. I argue (a) that Descartes??s project was motivated by a desire for intellectual stability and (b) that his project does not suffer from epistemic circularity. By contrast, Sosa??s epistemology does entail epistemic circularity and, for this reason, proves unable to secure the sort of intellectual stability Descartes wanted. I then argue that this leaves Sosa??s epistemology vulnerable to an important kind of skepticism.