A Philosophy of Skill
The body and the mind are a sort of reservoir. They come preloaded with unique “containers” that can take on content. There’s the thought container; the perception container; the feeling container, and the “skills” or “actions” container. Each thought we have differs in content, but not in kind or attribute. A thought of ’London’ is experienced in roughly the same way as a thought of ‘Paris’. Thoughts share the attribute thought-ness. Feelings like happiness or sadness share the attribute feeling-ness.
Likewise, red and green look different, yet they share the attribute of coloured-ness. A red tomato and a red book share the property of redness, with red appearing in two distinctly located objects. Philosophers call these properties that appear in multiple locations “universals”. Universals are numerous, and everywhere.
The idea of universals can approximately carry over to skills and actions. For instance, in a library, one might see two people writing at the same time. The skill and action of writing manifests in two different people at once. Or a shot in tennis being replicated by a player and an opponent.
So the body and mind are, in a way, a reservoir of mental and bodily universals. One minor upshot of thinking of the body and mind in this way is that it offers the freedom to say “I want x thought for my mind” or “I want x skill for my body”.
A major upshot is linking thought and body together in learning a skill through knowledge by description in thought and language, and knowledge by acquaintance in feeling and action. “What exactly do I want to practice today?”; “How exactly did my practice go to today?” and “How exactly does my practice feel right now?”. Answers to questions of that sort can feedback into the practice. Knowledge improves know-how, which improves skill. It allows one to rapidly move through the four stages of skill acquisition:
- Unconscious incompetence - not knowing that you can’t even do a skill.
- Conscious incompetence - knowing that you are not good at a skill.
- Conscious competence - knowing you can do the skill but you have to focus.
- Unconscious competence - doing the skill without thinking about it.
Through focus of the senses and feedback through thinking, refinement and precision of skills is made possible.