Tag Archives: rationality

Intuition, Rationality and Chess Expertise

From Chapter 11 of my forthcoming book, The Myth of ‘Just do it’: Thought and Effort in Expert Action:

Hubert Dreyfus argues that although analysis and deliberation play a role in chess in sub-optimal situations, the best moves made by chess players at the international master level or grandmaster level involve neither analysis nor deliberation nor even conceptualizing the board. Rather, Dreyfus tells us that “after much experience, the chess master is directly drawn by the forces on the board to make a masterful move.” High-level chess, on Dreyfus’s view,is bred neither in the heart nor in the head, but out there on the sixty-four squares. Is this right?

chess