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Our breathtaking intelligence is embodied in our skills. Think of Olympic gymnastics, and the amount of strength and control required to perform even a simple beam routine; think of a carpenter skillfully carving the wood, where complicated techniques come across as sheer easiness of the bodily movements; of a pianist performing a sonata, balancing technical virtuosity with elegance. Throughout our lifetimes, we acquire and refine a vast number of skills, and the improvement and refinement of skills are not bound to the human lifespan alone either: somehow, they also cross generations. Skills both foster cultural evolution and are refined by it - for example, in the way cultural evolution perfects tools and building techniques. What makes skills possible? And how can skills explain our successes? This book is the first systematic discussion of skills: of their nature, and of their relation to knowledge and reasoning.
List of contents
Part I. Foundations: 1. Skill; 2. Skill in action; 3. Intelligence socialism; 4. Intelligence, regresses, and empiricism; 5. A theory of natural talent; 6. Intellectualisms; Part II. Intellectualism with a Human Face: 7. Anti-intellectualism about skilled action and its discontents; 8. Three kinds of control and the mindedness of skilled action; 9. Practical representation and procedural control; 10. Practical concepts and productive reasoning; 11. An epistemic theory of strategic control; 12. From puzzles about control, learning, and flexibility to a theory of skill; 13. Collective skill, practices, and cultural innovation; Epilogue; References; Index.
About the author
Carlotta Pavese is Fulford Clarendon Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and the Fulford Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science at St Catherine's College. She is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Skills and Expertise (2020) as well as the author of articles appearing in Philosophical Review and many other journals.
