John Protevi's Blog

Notes on Stanley and Krakauer 2013

Jason Stanley and John Krakauer, "Motor skill depends on knowledge of facts," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (Article 503), 29 August 2013. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00503 

MY TAKE-AWAY POINTS

The authors affirm that skill requires both acuity and knowledge. Via philosophical analysis, and via analysis of HM case, the authors undermine folk distinction between practical and theoretical activity. Paper emphasizes that despite common belief, cognitive neuroscience findings do not support that distinction.

Cognitive neuroscience distinguishes declarative and procedural knowledge. While declarative knowledge is verbally articulable knowledge, "procedural knowledge" is a misnomer; it is not really knowledge, but is better termed "motor acuity" (= decrease in variability and increase in smoothness of movements). 

Many problems happen when equating these cognitive neuroscience terms with philosophical terms. It is very misleading to equate "declarative knowledge" with the philosophical term "propositional knowledge." Propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts, but that knowledge need not be verbally articulable. Furthermore, one should not equate "procedural knowledge" with "motor skill" for that leaves out the contribution of propositional knowledge to motor skill.

Propositional knowledge provides a scaffold for development of motor skills in three areas: 1) acuity of selected action components; 2) new actions (e.g., new techniques of running, jumping, etc); 3) ability to select the right action from a repertoire.

GOING THROUGH THE PAPER, SECTION BY SECTION 

INTRODUCTION

Initial dialectic. Platonism about skill: you must be able to explain principles guiding action; otherwise it is just a habit. Against this extreme position, many now think skill does not involve knowledge of rules. 

Cognitive neuroscience seems to mirror these philosophical assumptions in their concentration on experiments that show that active reflection on principles impedes performance and that retention of knowledge of facts not needed for skill (HM case). 

There are some questionable assumptions at work here involving hasty or indeed wrong identification of neuroscience categories (declarative and procedural knowledge) and mental kinds (propositional knowledge; theoretical vs practical ability). Cognitive neuroscience should not equate procedural "knowledge" (a misnomer; should be "motor acuity" or decrease in error and increase in smoothness of movement) with "motor skill" tout court. And it should not oppose procedural knowledge to declarative knowledge (= verbal articulation) The problem is that "procedural knowledge" has been applied to non-knowledge aspects of skill (motor acuity). But it doesn't follow that skills do not require knowledge of facts. Thus we have made an attribute of a component of skill (that motor acuity is non-knowledge based) into an attribute of the whole of skill.

Note that intellectual ability may involve implicit (non-intentional) abilities.

MOTOR SKILL, PERCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION AND INTENTION

There are two necessary conditions for belonging to functional category of "skill": 1) Practice-related improvement in goal-directed action and 2) knowing what to do to initiate action manifesting the skill. To have a skill one must know what to do to initiate the action that displays the skill; this is propositional knowledge. S and K do NOT say skills ONLY require know-what to do to initiate actions. But knowledge like that of initiating an action can be injected into course of activity. So they are claiming that skills require SOME knowledge. 

PROPOSITIONAL vs DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE

For S and K, propositional knowledge includes the possession of know-what to do to initiate action displaying skill. However, this form of propositional knowledge does not require the ability to verbally articulate that knowledge (even though possession of other forms of propositional knowledge can and often are shown by verbalizing their contents). On the other hand, the cognitive neuroscience category of declarative knowledge does require ability to verbally articulate that knowledge. So the problem is the false identification of declarative knowledge and propositional knowledge.

THE LESSONS OF HM: MOTOR ACUITY, ACTION SELECTION AND KNOWLEDGE

The HM case shows multiple memory systems in brain. This is very important, but has been harmful in that it allowed false mapping of true cog NS distinction of declarative vs procedural "knowledge" onto bad folk distinctions of knowledge vs skill and theory vs practice. 

HM cases show dissociation btw improved motor performance and ability to recall task aspect. However, HM required explicit instruction each day, so the idea that HM had an entirely procedural motor skill is undermined. If you really have a skill, you don't need instruction to start over every day. What is being learned each day is not skill but only a part of skill, motor acuity.

Displaying both propositional knowledge and motor skill involves both propositional knowledge and perceptual / motor acuity, so there is no good distinction between theoretical and practical activity.

CONCLUSIONS

For Dreyfus, skill moves you from guidance by knowledge-based decisions to perception of right action, so that expert performance is a species of perceptual acuity. Further, for Dreyfus, expertise is automatic or habitual and knowledge drops away. But for S and K, the expert uses knowledge of activity to dictate to non-knowledge components, so it is combination of knowledge and acuity that leads to skilled performance. Thus even if initial scaffolding for basic components drops away that doesn't mean you don't need new knowledge to continue refinement of skill and to add new non-knowledge components.

Dave Zirin on leaked documents on losing but profitable baseball teams which still demand public subsidies for stadiums

Read it here

Also, check out Field of Schemes.com for continuing coverage.

You stay classy, Dan Gilbert, billionaire owner of Quicken Loans, and Cleveland's vox populi

Dan Gilbert is trying to moralize a business decision, that is, capitalize on the desperation of the Cleveland community via their emotional commitment to a sports figure. That's bad for Cleveland and it's bad for sports, though I didn't see him complaining when that love for James increased the value of the franchise that Saint Dan Gilbert bought (after James was on board mind you) by hundreds of millions of dollars. He can cry me a river. You stay classy, Dan Gilbert.

What this comes down to is a billionaire financial whiz posing as the vox populi. A break, please give me. What do the people of Cleveland deserve? Relief from decades of de-industrialization in the form of good schools, good health care, good housing, good libraries, good parks, good jobs, etc. They also deserve people to see through Dan Gilbert's trying to speak for "the community" and to examine closely the role that the financialization of the US economy played in the destruction of Cleveland. Owner of Quicken Loans cares about the Cleveland community? He's made billions on refinancing of mortgages which was a major means by which the vast majority of people whose wages stagnated over the last thirty years (see "de-industrializaton" above) have cashed out the equity in their houses. I say Dan Gilbert and his financializing vampire industry can KMRIA, and he can do it twice for trying to speak for "the community" from whose wage stagnation he's benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sports as culture

A number of years ago I had a blog discussion with someone (read the linked thread if you want the name) whom I took to be claiming that a deep knowledge of classical European music was a necessary condition of being in his terms "reasonably cultured." I disagreed, saying that while it may be a sufficient condition, claiming it was necessary was sheer chauvinism. I then claimed that you could take a deep knowledge of sports as "cultural literacy" and thus as a sufficient condition for being "reasonably cultured." To counter his boast that he could propose a quiz about classical music that would stump us philistines, I proposed a quiz about sports: 

1. Who was better, John Smith or Dan Gable? Why? (Bonus points, who was the only man to defeat Gable in NCAA competiton, and what style did he use?)

2. What was “total football”? What part did the training style of Ajax play in its development? [2010 addition: was it really that revolutionary, compared to the Hungary teams of the 1950s?]

3. Who developed the “triangle offense”? What was its original name? Which one is more descriptive?

4. Said Aouita, Noureddine Morceli or Hicham El Guerrouj? Henry Rono or Haile Gebrselassie? Why?

5. What was the great tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career?

My interlocutor claimed I was asking about sports trivia. But I wasn't, I was asking about sports as culture. The key part of the argument went like this: 

I don’t know much of anything about classical music. I would explain this by saying there is only so much time in one’s life, and that I concentrated on sports / physical activity: doing it, watching it, reading about it, and thinking about it. And it rankles me to have someone say that a lifelong involvement with sports is not a “reasonably cultured” thing to do, and I think many of the “reasonably cultured” among the ancient Greeks would agree with me. So all I’m saying is that while a knowledge of classical music is a sufficient condition of reasonable culture, it is not a necessary condition. There are many areas of human endeavor worth thinking about, and since we’re finite, we can’t all learn about all of them in depth. The point is that it’s not so much the traditional prestige of the area that counts, but the quality of the engagement with it that counts. 

So, for instance, if we really wanted to discuss the tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career, it would take us to the probable use of steroids in 1988 by Florence Griffith-Joyner, a use that robbed EA of a second gold at 100m. But that takes us to the Cold War, the East Germans, images of femininity among Af-Am women athletes (images that are deeply intertwined with many strands in American history), and a whole bunch of other stuff that is not trivial in the least. If I asked you what was EA’s time in Seoul, that would be trivia. But that’s not what I asked for.

Unfortunately, my interlocutor quit the thread, never responding to this. In any case, any suggestions for items that might go to a quiz on baseline sports culture knowledge? Here's a World Cup proposal: 

Discuss the 1974 WC final match: Dutch hubris, German grit, or both? 

"You ain't got it like I got it"

Probably my favorite commercial of the past few years:

I have seen a lot of basketball in my time

but this Boston - Chicago series is quite possibly the best, most competitive, craziest one I've ever seen. One last second regulation game, two single overtime games, a double overtime game, and then tonight's triple overtime game was just silly it was so good. Clutch shot after clutch shot. Joachim Noah stealing the ball and driving the length of the court for the dunk! Crazy good!

OK, maybe not as crazy as this sequence to send an NBA Finals (!) game into triple-overtime, but still!

 

Great Basketball Announcing, Part II: Michael Jordan, "a spectacular move!"

This is a very well-known call, of one of the most famous moves in NBA history.

Great Basketball Announcing, Part I: "LeBron James, with no regard for human life!"

Basketball has been the occasion for some great calls too. I love the call on this LeBron James dunk.

Great race announcing, Part III: Secretariat 1973 Belmont. "He is moving like a tremendous machine!"

This is almost cheating, as it's probably the most famous racing call of all time. I don't know why, but it's very emotional for me when he says "He is moving like a tremendous machine!" Maybe it's the strange mixing of categories as we tend to anthropomorphize race horses, and then the "machine" remark pops up. Anyway, here's the call:

Great race announcing, Part II: Steve Prefontaine, 1972 Olympics 5000

I'm not sure whether it's the greatness of the race, but it's a good call in its own right: "Gahmoudi is bankrupt, and so is Prefontaine!" and "Prefontaine dies in the last strides" are both great.

Great race announcing, Part I: Alberto Juantorena, el Caballo

I'm a sucker for great race announcing. Here's a nice understated call, in French, of the great Alberto Juantorena winning the 400 and 800 at the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976.

The 400 / 800 double is much more impressive than the 200 / 400 double, which has been done three times in the past 25 years: Valerie Briscoe-Hooks in 1984 (albeit a boycotted Games), Michael Johnson in 1996, and Marie-José Pérec, la Gazelle, also in 1996.

Here's a much more excited call, in English, more like a horse race, of the Montreal 800. "The big Cuban goes through, the little American second, the giant Belgian third!"

Dave Zirin Takes on the Sports-Industrial Complex

If you're like me and love both sports and progressive politics, you really should check out Dave Zirin, who brings the two together with wit and insight. He can be found on the web at Edge of Sports, where you can find the archives of his weekly column.  You can check him out on You Tube as well, talking with Chuck D. about his new book, the excellent take on current events (Zidane / Matterazzi in the 2006 World Cup, the NBA's turning against hip-hop, the Barry Bonds frenzy) entitled Welcome to the Terrordome (Amazon link here). You should also check out his other books, the social history What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and Muhammad Ali Handbook.

Zirin targets racism, sexism, and homophobia; he skewers the corporate media; he lambastes the selling of war through sports; he scourges the complacency of some athletes and lauds the courage of others; and he truly loves the beauty and promise of sports. He treats his subjects with historical depth, expert knowledge, and a commitment to social justice. Plus he can be really funny. So buy his books, visit his website, and lobby ESPN to give him a show!

Selling Out

No, I don't mean giving up your principles for cash. I mean giving everything you have, until there's nothing left: "selling out" the store, in other words: nothing left on the shelves.* A great example in yesterday's Women's 800 meter final at the US Nationals meet. (NBC-TV video here.) This race is part of why I love track so much.

First, we have the young phenom pushing the pace, trying to see if the big stars have gotten fat and happy and won't take her seriously. In this case, high school junior and 16-year old Channelle Price, of Easton PA. She pulled the pack through an honest 57.9 split at 400 meters. With a year left in school, it will be interesting to see if she can challenge the American high school record of 2:00.07 set in 1982 by the great Kim Gallagher. Price finished 7th in 2:02.38,  which looks to me like the 3rd best time ever run by a high school athlete, and the fastest since Gallagher's 1982 mark.  Great stuff, but not nearly the best thing about this race.

Back on Track

Spent a nice couple of hours Saturday watching the NCAA track and field championships. Refreshingly clean of the "up close and personal" mini-bios that have ruined the American TV coverage of the Olympics ("after her parents' divorce, little Sally has been running ever since -- will her dream of Olympic gold be enough to bring her family back together again?") since Dick Ebersol at NBC has gotten a hold of it. (The systematic corruption of the IOC, chronicled ably by Andrew Jennings in The New Lords of the Rings and The Great Olympic Swindle, is a whole 'nother thing!)

Track & field has been a big part of my life. I ran cross-country and track in high school, and recreationally for ten years or so after that. For a long time, I read Track & Field News regularly, and could cite world records in many events. But I also loved basketball, and so I switched and made it my main sport for about 20 years. A series of knee sprains has driven me off the court, but I can run okay, so I've recently decided to get back into competition, aiming to run some Masters meets, probably at 800 meters. 

As I wrote in the previous post, avoiding injury is a big part of running Masters track. I have a modest schedule worked out for myself, which I hope will help keep me running and improving, but avoiding the layoffs caused by injury.   

My Achilles Heel

The past two years, I've suffered from Achilles tendinitis, now and again. At first, I did what everyone says, stretching my calf muscle, because that's what causes the pain, tight calves, right? Well, that didn't work, and the reason is that the problem isn't tight calf muscles, but weak calf muscles (which may become tight from overwork and trying to protect themselves). If you follow this link, you'll see  the biomechanics behind this claim. Or, you could follow this link and find out everything about the Achilles tendon.

Briefly put, the calf muscle's function (actually there are two muscles here, the gastrocnemius and the soleus) is to stabilize the foot during the foot strike. During this time, the muscles produce an eccentric contraction, meaning that they contract while lengthening (think of lowering a weight in a reverse curl: your bicep is undergoing an eccentric contraction then). If the calf muscles aren't strong enough, the foot wiggles about, irritating the tendon in its sheath. (There are more complications here, as the entire kinetic chain from hips to foot is involved, but the calf is often -- but not always -- the culprit.)

So what should you do if you're hit by Achilles tendinitis?

Panicking, Choking, and Just Plain Losing

The Warriors / Mavericks was a great NBA game last night. I've seen a few games in the last 35 years (since Al Meltzer on Channel 17 in Philadelphia with the Sixers and the Big Five), and this was excellent basketball. The Warriors were leading 112-103 with 3 minutes left and lost as the Mavs scored 15 points in a row, 12 by Dirk Nowitzki. So did the Warriors panic, choke, or just plain lose?