Barbara Gail Montero
The City University of New York bmontero@gc.cuny.edu
A Night of Philosophy April 2015

We’ve all experienced times when thinking seems to interfere with doing.
Hamlet laments how “the pale cast of thought,” which impedes “the native hue of resolution,” makes
“enterprises of great pith and moment . . . lose the name of action” (Act V, Scene ii).

But would Hamlet have performed better if he thought less and acted more?
Does thinking interfere with performing your best?
Quick answer: No
My focus: Expert level skill

Thirteen-time PGA winner Dave Hill claimed, “Golf is like sex. You can’t be thinking about the mechanics of the act while you are performing.”
But why not?

I . Verbal Overshadowing
II . Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Dewy on
“Blanking Out”
III . Hamlet and Paralysis by Analysis
IV . Dave Hill’s Analogy

I. Verbal Overshadowing
Conceptualization is thought to hinder perceptual judgments.
Wilson and Schooler’s (1991) jam-tasting
experiment.
The researchers’ conclusion: “Analyzing reasons can focus people's attention on nonoptimal criteria.”

Malcolm Gladwell (2000) puts it more colorfully:
“By making people think about jam, Wilson and
Schooler turned them into jam idiots.”
Yet the expert jam tasters employed by
Consumer Reports were, presumably, not negatively affected by verbalizing their preferences.

Schooler's more recent work suggests that with training people are able to conceptualize their perceptual judgments without this interfering with their performance.
Melcher & Schooler’s (2004) mycology experiment.

Cellist Inbal Segev:
My teacher, who was a student of Casals would say “don’t let the music lead you; you need to direct it.
Getting lost in the music is a mistake, she said, as it precludes thought.

II
Hubert Dreyfus (2013):
[I]n total absorption, sometimes called flow, one is so fully absorbed in one’s activity that one is not even marginally thinking about what one is doing.
Mauriece Merleau-Ponty (1945):
The orator does not think before speaking, nor even while speaking; his speech is his thought. The end of the speech or text will be the lifting of a spell. It is at this stage that thoughts on the speech or text will be able to arise.

All agree that thinking occurs when there are difficulties that need to be addressed.
John Dewy (1910):
Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives
[yet]…as long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another…there is no call for reflection.
Experts are continually in forked-road situations.

Heidegger (1927) :
[I]n our natural comportment towards things we never think a single thing, and whenever we seize upon it expressly for itself we are taking it out of a contexture to which it belongs in its real content.
This may be generally true, but expertise is not natural; it involves pushing beyond what is natural.

III. Hamlet and paralysis by analysis
Hamlet opines that his inability to take action is due to his “thinking too precisely on the event.”
Is this an example of paralysis by analysis?

Hamlet might think so, but Shakespeare doesn’t.
The play illustrates the importance of reflection.
Instinctive behavior has disastrous consequences:
Hamlet impulsively stabs Polonius.
A moment of reflection and he would have realizes that he had, on his way to his mother’s room, passed his intended victim (Claudius) praying in the church.

IV .
Earlier I quoted golfer Dave Hill: “Golf is like sex. You can’t be thinking about the mechanics of the act while you are performing.”
Is sex like golf?

Aristotle had something to say about this.
Nicomachean Ethics, book 7, chapter 11:
οἷον τῇ τῶν ἀφροδισίων· οὐδένα γὰρ ἂν
δύνασθαι νοῆσαί τι ἐν αὐτῇ.
(1152b17–18)
As with the pleasure of sex: no one could have any thoughts when enjoying that. (trans. C.
Rowe.)
What is my view?

Dewey, John. (1997) How We Think. Mineola, NY: Dover. (Originally published 1910)
Dreyfus, Hubert L. (2013) “The Myth of the Pervasiveness of the Mental.” In J.K. Schear (ed.), Mind, Reason, and Being-
in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate (New York: Routledge): 15-40.
Gladwell, Malcolm. (2000, August 21/28) The Art of Failure [Article]. The New Yorker, 84-92.
Heidegger, Martin. (1988/1927 The Basic Problems of Phenomenology) The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. A.
Hofstadter. Revised ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Melcher, J.M., & Schooler, J.W. (2004) Perceptual and conceptual training mediate the verbal overshadowing effect in an unfamiliar domain. Memory & Cognition 32(4): 618-31.
Wilson, T.D., & Schooler, J.W. (1991) Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 60(2): 181-92.