The following is a summary of a book I intend to write. I would be interested in any comments readers might have about what might be included in addition to what is described here.

 

Skill: A Practical Philosophy

Introduction: James Bond and Me

Friends sometimes compare me to James Bond because of my range of skills (“skillset”). Our skills don’t overlap much, though more than you might think (we both do knife throwing and are extremely suave) because we have different occupations, but the range is impressive in both cases. I think he has a slight edge on me, but then he is a fictional character and I am not. My skills include tennis, table tennis, squash, billiards, kayak surfing, windsurfing, skim boarding, skiing, gymnastics, pole vault, trampoline, discus, football, cricket, skateboarding, mountain biking, bowling, swimming, diving, Frisby, drumming, guitar, harmonica, singing, motorcycling, and the aforementioned knife throwing. This is not to mention my intellectual and writing skills or acting and comedic. But my purpose is not to boast (or not much) but to establish my credentials: I am not your typical clumsy ill-coordinated awkward egghead. I have a lot of physical (and other) skills. I also teach many of these skills and love to talk about them. So, this a good book for me to write. I will be mentioning my forays into skill a good deal in what follows.

Chapter 1: What is a Skill?

Here I will define the concept of a skill, so that we know what we are talking about. A skill is a learned ability to perform an activity, job, or task well through training, practice, and experience. It is primarily physical not mental, though it involves the mental. It takes place largely in the brain, though the muscles are crucial (“muscle memory”). It is not just any old ability.  A skill is always an achievement, generally hard-won, a feather in one’s cap.

Chapter 2: The Scope of Skill

Skill is ubiquitous in human life; almost everything we do involves skill. Work, play, sex, art, music, science, hobbies, socializing, cooking, etc. But not everything we do can be called a skill: digest, excrete, breathe, blink, sit down, fall over, jump up and down, and so on. There is unskilled manual labor and expertly playing the violin for a living. Material objects have no skills, nor do plants. Many animals have some skills, but some do not (e.g., jellyfish), and what they do have is nothing like human skill. We are the skilled species. Economies are built on skill, as are cities and countries. Our culture is saturated in skill. You can’t live a normal human life and have no skills–the more the better, and the better the better. We are always exercising our skills in one way or another.

Chapter 3: The Origin of Skill

Our skills go back a long way into pre-history, when we were still up there in the trees, brachiating away to our heart’s content. When we came down to earth, we had free hands and we made good use of them in developing skills, mainly involving tools. Skills saved us from extinction. They gave us purpose. They made us hunters and fighters. The development of civilization was the development of skills, mainly manual skills. Architecture, art, sculpture, heavy machinery—all require sophisticated skills. Brain, mind, body, and skilled behavior all developed together to generate the human package. Skill paved the way. It was one of evolution’s greatest discoveries. Eventually language skills evolved. Our distinctive intelligence is a skilled intelligence not a form of disembodied logical reason–the skilled deed not just the deed or the thought.

Chapter 4: How to Acquire a Skill

This is what you have been waiting for—skills are wonderful, but how do you get them? Not much expertise is innate, so they must be laboriously learned, and it isn’t instantaneous or easy. It takes work. This is where I excel: I’m willing to put in the work, and I enjoy it. You must be patient, disciplined, methodical—no lazing around boozing. A lot of repetition, analysis, focus, commitment. You can do it! Tennis takes a good three years to get even basically competent, even for the most talented players in the world (they are always going on about how much hard work they put in). I believe them; I do too. I favor an incremental method mixed with a more holistic approach. Break the skill down into smaller units; don’t just bash away at the fast forehand. You can practice in your living room—every day if possible. Every now and then try a full stroke and analyze what happens. Learn from your mistakes. Study and copy. Keep at it. I found that knife throwing took me over a year of daily practice, gradually stepping further back from the target. I can now stick it reliably from ten feet away, left-handed, no spin. I never thought that was even possible. Notice your improvement. The same for learning to sing: practice every day, pay attention to detail, don’t give up. Use your head as well as your lungs.

Chater 5: Physical and Mental Skills

We speak as if there are mental skills as well as bodily skills, but it is not clear whether this is metaphorical or not. Is acquiring knowledge a skilled activity? Not always—it just happens when you open your eyes. There is nothing skillful about dreaming or desiring or fantasizing. Mental abilities are not generally skilled performances. The concept of skill is primarily physical with mental performances so described by analogy. True, all skilled abilities have a mental component—they are sensorimotor—but mental actions and states are not generally skilled. When did you ever practice them or study the techniques involved? They are no more skilled than digestion or blood flow or respiration. You don’t learn these things by diligent practice. I don’t think I’m being particularly skillful when I think about philosophy or how to get somewhere. Skill arises mainly in the hands not in the brain alone. The brain houses the machinery of skill, but it itself has no skills to speak of.

Chapter 6: The Value of Skill

But why does skill matter? What makes it good? Two answers suggest themselves: they are useful for survival or obtaining pleasure, and they are intrinsically valuable—good in themselves. Both these things can be true, and I think both are. For sure, skills can get you the good things in life—money, mates, status, admiration. But they are also valuable because they expand the self (the soul); they add to what you are. They promote what psychologists call self-realization—I would prefer to say self-augmentation. A human being with no skills is a paltry being, an object of pity, not envy. But a skilled individual is viewed as well-rounded, impressive, special. Skill is an occasion for pride. Also, it is enjoyable to exercise a skill—to stick a knife in a target, to hit a tennis ball just so. Skills are like knowledge—the more the merrier. Your life is more meaningful the more skilled you are. I have never regretted acquiring a new skill (I took up skateboarding at 74). Skills are fun! They produce self-esteem as well as admiration by others. Dare I say that they make us more godlike? Jesus had a worthy skill, carpentry, and his heavenly father had every skill known to man or God—omni-skillfulness. They make us whole, divine, splendid (I wax poetic, but that’s how I feel). A skill is definitely something worth possessing.

Chapter 7: Capitalism and Skill

Work has always involved skill–economies run on it. It was Adam Smith who extolled the virtues of the division of skilled labor, and capitalism grew from this economic insight. But there is a downside, which we might call skill-starvation: people are condemned to a single limited skill for the whole of their working life (nail sharpener in Smith’s famous example). They used to have a full set of skills adequate to a human life (to human nature), but under capitalism they become one-trick ponies—bored ponies, stilted and stifled ponies. They fall on a single stool. Thus, capitalism fails to respect a central fact of human nature—the fact of poly-skillfulness. True, we can be more productive economically this way, but we become stunted and dissatisfied. I would view my own life as impoverished (poorer) if I were deprived of my range of skills and allowed to practice only one (say, bowling). As an athlete, I like to do many sports. As a musician and singer, I like to play more than one instrument and sing different kinds of song. Capitalism makes us richer but also poorer (did Karl Marx ever make this argument?). Skill starvation is a real thing. You might die of it, spiritually.

Chapter 8: Philosophy of Skill

How should philosophy respond to the centrality of skill in human life? Two areas stand out: philosophy of action and epistemology. We need to distinguish action generally from skilled action: non-skilled action is subject to simple belief-desire psychology, but skilled action also involves the presence of a skill. I eat an apple because I’m hungry and I believe an apple will relieve my hunger, but I hit a tennis ball in a certain way because I am a skilled player—the skill plays an explanatory role (among other things). So, action theory needs to recognize the importance of skill as a determinant of action, not just belief and desire. I hit the ball that way because I am a skilled player—skills explain skilled action. In regard to epistemology, it is generally accepted that there is knowing-how as well as knowing-that; and the former is another way of talking about skilled action. Thus, there is skilled practical knowledge and unskilled factual knowledge. Indeed, this kind of skilled knowledge is arguably the basic kind—knowing how to throw and catch a ball, say. It precedes and underpins theoretical understanding of ball dynamics. Philosophy of skill needs to be added to the curriculum (Wittgenstein got close to this in his emphasis on rule-following ability).

Chapter 9: Happiness and Skill

Here is my considered opinion: a happy life is a life of skills—many of them. In my case intellectual skills (if we allow these to be skills in good standing), athletic skills, and musical skills. Secret agent 007 apparently prefers skills of fighting, driving fast cars, seduction, and martini drinking (he is a skilled shaker). To each his own. But he has a wide range of them, and they make him what he is. Skilled action contributes to human flourishing more than unskilled action, or no action at all, like eating and lying in bed. Bond clearly gets a kick out of his advanced espionage skills, as I get a kick out of my more pacific skills. It’s about doing, and doing it well, not passively feeling pleasure. It’s about having a license to skill. We need to cultivate our skills. Education must inculcate skills in students as well as facts and theories. It already does so in PE, art class, and music class; but I would like there to be an explicit emphasis on skills—they are good preparation for a normal productive life. There is nothing I like better than seeing a young boy or girl hitting a tennis ball skillfully.

Chapter 10: The End of Skill?

Is there a danger that skill may wither and die? Capitalism has caused some withering, along with opportunities for developing other skills, but AI contains a more potent danger, especially in the form of robots. For it threatens to make human skilled behavior redundant: robot doctors, teachers, and lawyers (not to mention bricklayers) are apt to steal jobs from human agents. Why do we need to learn skills if machines can do all the skilled work? We can just lounge around the place instead of acquiring new skills (loafing not learning). This has already happened to some extent with the industrial revolution, but it may become even more pervasive: robot actors, athletes, comedians, hostesses, masseurs, sex partners—these devices might become more skillful than their human counterparts. Then what? Well, life would lose a lot of spice and zing, because we admire and enjoy skill in others and ourselves. It would all be rather mechanical. My own view is that we will come to accept a kind of dual economy—powered by AI skill and HI skill (“H” for “human”). Maybe we will fulfill our skill needs in leisure not work, in games not labor. The future of skill may be very different from hitherto: in some respects worse, in others better. Maybe we will develop our skills for fun not profit.

Inconsistent Perception

There are two aspects to our concept of perception and hence to perception: an intentional object aspect and a causal object aspect. There has to be an object you directly perceive and an object that causes your act of perceiving. To see (say) an object x is for x to be both the immediate object of your seeing and the cause of your seeing it. To see a red patch is to have an experience as of a red patch and for a red patch to cause that experience—and these must be the same red patch. If you have the experience of a red patch but no red patch causes it, then you don’t see a red patch; and if a red patch causes you to have an experience as of a blue ball, then you don’t see the red patch. Seeing is both a causal concept and a phenomenological concept. The sense-datum theory of perception supposes that you see internal mental objects, irrespective of causal history; the causal theory of perception supposes that you see external causes of perceptual states. Neither of these theories is plausible, because sense-data are not causes of perceptual states and external material objects are not intentional objects of perception. Causal objects are not intentional objects because we don’t see them as they objectively are in experiencing perceptual intentional objects. The objects we directly see are not identical to the remote causes of our acts of seeing, any more than stages in the causal chain are. And yet both objects are essential to seeing: the intentional object and the causal object must coincide. The former objects play a psychological role in determining the direction of the mind’s processes (belief formation etc.); the latter objects exist outside this nexus and serve only to trigger the organism’s inner states. These are evidently not the same objects. The proximal phenomenal object is not the distal physical object.

What should we conclude from these familiar points? The only conclusion we can draw is that we don’t see anything: in experiencing an intentional object we don’t see a causal object, and in being caused to have an inner perceptual state (with an intentional object) we don’t see a remote causal object (a bunch of atoms). Seeing requires that we see both, but we see neither. We would only see an object if it were both a direct object of seeing and the cause of the seeing, but that is false. We no more see the remote object than we see the intermediate stages that lead to the percept; and intentional direct objects of seeing are not causes of seeing. The concept of perception imposes impossible demands on perception, rendering it impossible in principle. A distal cause cannot be a proximal intentional object. The ordinary concept of perception lumps these indiscriminately together, thereby hoping to create a coherent story of perception—viz. that we see remote causes in conscious acts of seeing. The causal theory of perception tries to inject the remote cause into the perceiving mind, while the sense-datum theory must claim that immediate objects of seeing cause episodes of seeing. We don’t see the intentional object (a sense-datum) and we don’t see the causal object; we see nothing. The intentional object must be the causal object in order for seeing to occur: this object must be identical to that object. But it isn’t. Perception is therefore impossible. The concept places impossible demands on visual systems. True, we can apprehend intentional objects, like hallucinated red patches, but we can’t literally see them, because they aren’t the cause of our seeing. And true, physical objects can cause us to have visual experiences of various kinds, but we don’t strictly see them either, because they are not immediate intentional objects. We don’t see either, for the familiar reasons given. No single object can occupy both roles, so perception is impossible. The concept of perception tries to pack two jobs into one object, but that cannot be done.[1]

[1] This has really been evident for a long time. According to classical empiricism, we perceive ideas in the mind, while material objects act as unperceived causes. But ideas can’t be external causes of perceptions, as our ordinary concept of perception requires; so, we don’t see them. On the other hand, the true causes of perception in the external material world are removed from the mind and not directly apprehended by it; so, they cannot act as direct objects of perception. But these are the only candidates for the status of perceptual object, so perception is a myth as we naively conceive it. Of course, we can talk this way as a matter of convenience (cf. “the Sun rises in the east”), but as a matter of hard fact there is no seeing going on in “seeing”. There may be a whole lot of shaking going on, but there is zero seeing going on. I can be said to “see” a tree because I have a sense-datum as of a tree and this sense-datum is caused by an actual tree (a certain configuration of atoms); but I see neither thing. The actual physical tree is too far removed, while the phenomenal object of my seeing is too close to be identifiable with the cause. Sense-data are not identical to distal causes of sense-data, and neither is an object of sense perception in the ordinary sense.

Stereotypes

We are all too familiar with stereotypes of other people—people of other races, people of other sexes, people with other accents. We are less familiar with stereotypes of other animals, but we don’t need much persuading that they exist—say, rats. But I want to ask a stranger question: do we harbor stereotypes of ourselves? We each belong to certain general categories, say white European male, and we know it—do we stereotype ourselves according to such stereotypes? It might seem that we don’t and couldn’t, because we have direct access to our own personality and proclivities; but that is superficial, since we really don’t have full knowledge of our nature—we can be wrong about it. People don’t have infallible access to their own character and motivations; self-deception is common. We evidently need a self-conception, but it may not come, wholly or partly, from the faculty of introspection. Where does it come from? The OED gives us for “stereotype”: “an image or idea of a particular type of person or thing that has become fixed through being widely held”. Stereotypes are social constructs, often fictional, that are picked up from others, sometimes positive, more often negative. They become “fixed”—rigid, unquestioned. They don’t come from actual acquaintance with the category of person to which they become attached; they come from representations by other people of that category, verbal or pictorial. They are essentially descriptions—typically, brief and pungent. They purport to be true universally and hence preceded by “all”. They are believed by dint of repetition, prejudice (pro or con), and insistence; the move from “some” to “all” is characteristic. They indicate intellectual ineptitude, oversimplification, and bias.

Given all this, it would not be surprising if members of a certain group found themselves believing the general stereotype associated by others with that group, by virtue of elementary conformity. This would be especially true if the stereotype were positive: “My group is generally good at X, so I am good at X”. That belief might then lead to futile attempts to do X, or to motivation that actually produces some ability at X even though the individual’s talent at X is rather minimal. In either case the person’s self-conception is driven by an inaccurate stereotype absorbed from the surrounding culture: for example, “Ukrainians are naturally good pole vaulters; I am a Ukrainian; therefore, I am a naturally good pole vaulter”. We learn by imitation and testimony, as well as by direct perception. And other minds are not perceivable anyway, leaving a gap easily filled by verbal means. Stereotypes thrive in a state of ignorance.

The interesting case is the negative socially inculcated stereotype that is absorbed by those to whom it is applied. Here an internal battle is going on: on the one hand, the person has personal evidence that the stereotype is untrue and so rejects it; on the other hand, the stereotype is so entrenched that it is accepted as true even by those to whom it is applied. This might even lead to the stereotype becoming true, or somewhat true. I won’t give any examples, but the idea is not psychologically unrealistic: if people keep telling you that you are X, Y, and Z, you might become X, Y, and Z. At the same time, you might know quite well that you are not X, Y, and Z, thus producing cognitive dissonance, which will in turn lead to attempts at dissonance reduction. The evil of negative stereotyping is thus not confined to mistreatment by others but extends to a person’s self-image. How many potentially great composers have not gone into music because of the stereotype associated with them, which they have absorbed and accepted as true, maybe even shunning music altogether? Even if the stereotype is broadly true of their group, they may be an exception to it; that use of “all” discourages them. The trouble is that the weak-minded are too easily led by stereotypes; they seem unable to function without them. There should be anti-stereotype lessons in schools. We might say, charitably, that stereotypes result from the economy of thought and we all need to economize on our intellectual resources; but even still, we should be trained to exercise a little more discretion in our mental economies. In truth, it is sheer laziness backed by a tendency towards prejudice—and the cause of much evil in the world. It should be regarded as more shameful than it actually is. Anyway, I suggest, as an exercise, that you ask yourself whether you stereotype yourself in any way. You might be holding yourself back.[1]

[1] It is an interesting question what social relations would be like without stereotypes, so that we had to fall back on individual direct evidence. It might seem like a kind of heaven, but maybe things would be more chaotic and nebulous without firm stereotypes to go by (and rebel against).

Bowling

It is 64 years since I first went bowling, in Gillingham, Kent, at the age of 12. It was my first exposure to the American lifestyle and I loved it: the high-gloss high-tech world of expensive leisure; the heavy shiny bowling balls; the long gleaming lanes and big solid pins. The sound of ball-pin collisions! The strike. I took to it immediately and was obsessed with doing it. Why the company decided to build a bowling alley in Gillingham I have no idea—it’s a small nothing town (though quite nice). The only problem was the expense—where is a twelve-year-old boy to get the cash? So, I could only progress so much. Soon after that we moved to Blackpool and before long it had a bowling alley too; my parents started playing in a league and I managed to get in some bowling time. I got pretty good, though again the expense was prohibitive; if not, I would have been there all the time. In later years I bowled infrequently, either in England or America. My skills faded. Bowling was no longer part of my life. I did, however, go to a bowling alley at Chelsea piers in New York a few times and even bought my own ball and shoes. In Miami I’ve been once or twice, but not for the last decade or more. I became an ex-bowler.

Then, last Saturday, a friend of mine, Sebastian (tall, young, works out), suggested we go bowling. I dug out my old ball and shoes, and we repaired to Dolphin mall, a cavernous mega-mall in which thousands of people thronged (not many gringos). The bowling alley was large and loud (25 lanes, all full). It took me back. But things did not go well from the start: the soles came off my shoes (age and humidity) and I had to get house shoes; also, my bowling was rubbish. I guttered quite a few balls, which was not my thing at all. The scores were abysmal (Sebastian is a beginner). No strikes in three games (ouch). Didn’t even break a hundred. And yet I felt it coming back—that feeling of cool control. I got re-hooked. It was like the early days back in Gillingham sixty-four years ago as a twelve-year-old boy. Excitement, frustration, determination. Back home I went to YouTube to see how to hook the ball and quickly gained valuable information. Turns out I was doing it all wrong. I realized I could practice in my living room if I kept it gentle and soon felt an improvement. I ordered new bowling shoes and a bowling glove (I like to be well-equipped). I look forward to hitting the lanes again before long (fra poco). I’m a bowler again. I’ll be practicing at home again today—why not do it now?