
Unconscious Intelligence in the Skilled Control of Expert Action
What occurs in the mind of an expert who is performing at their very best? In this paper, I survey the history of debate concerning this question. I suggest that expertise is neither solely a mastery of the automatic nor solely a mastery of intelligence in skilled action control. Experts
are also capable of performing automatic actions intelligently. Following this, I argue that unconscious-thought theory (UTT) is a powerful tool in coming to understand the role of executive, intelligent action control in the fluidly automatic performance of expertise. Relying on a body of
empirical evidence concerning the cognitive structures and perceptual strategies employed by experts, I show that the realm of skilled action is an ideal environment within which the powers of unconscious cognitive processing can have positive effects on action. I conclude that experts rely
upon unconscious thinking in the production of intelligently automatic skilled actions.
Keywords: ATTENTION; AUTOMATICITY; EXPERTISE; SKILL; UNCONSCIOUS THINKING
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Publication date: January 1, 2023
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