Intuitions without concepts lose the game: mindedness in the art of chess (original) (raw)

Intuition, Rationality, and Chess Expertise

Thought in Action, 2016

Rough draft of chapter 11 of my forthcoming book, The Myth of 'Just do it": Thought and Effort in Expert Action. Please do not cite without permission. 11. Intuition, Rationality and CHESS EXPERTISE The opposite of moves that have proven to be successful coming to mind automatically, almost randomly, are moves that come to mind much less easily, though they may be the strongest in the given situation. International Master, Willy Hendricks In Sense and Nonsense in Improving your Chess p. 42 4 Many of us, but not all of us. Dreyfus lives in the California Bay area. People are familiar with driving there (I grew up around there; I know). In Manhattan, we're more familiar with chess. The East Coast/ West Coast dichotomy is revealed in another of Dreyfus's comments, for as an example of something you can perform mindlessly is crossing a street (anthology). This is generally true in Berkeley where cars stop for pedestrians. In midtown Manhattan, where I currently live, you're likely to get killed by adopting a Dreyfusian stance. 5 (2007a, p. 355). 6 [Save for later chapter: he takes his understand of everyday expertise to generalize to professional-level expertise, such as grand master-level chess playing and professional baseball. Indeed, in work with his brother, Stuart Dreyfus, and funded by the United States Air Force, he generalizes from driving a car to piloting an airplane. As he puts it-though no doubt exaggerating for effect-"once Stuart had worked out the five stages [of expertise] uses his driving skills as his example, we just changed car to plane and driver to pilot and wrote a report of the airforce" (p. 32). However, I] Dreyfus also defines expert action as effortless, unreflective action..obviously, this is not how I'm using the term. 7 Gobet () points out that since the word "arational" combines a prefix from ancient Gree, and a root from Latin, a better term might be agnomic (since the perhaps preferable term "alogic" already has a technical meaning). Perhaps this is so, but for consistency sake I stick with Dreyfus's terminology here. Gobet does as well.

Concepts without intuition lose the game: commentary on Montero and Evans (2011)

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2011

In several papers, Hubert Dreyfus has used chess as a paradigmatic example of how experts act intuitively, rarely using deliberation when selecting actions, while individuals that are only competent rely on analytic and deliberative thought. By contrast, Montero and Evans (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10:175-194, 2011) argue that intuitive aspects of chess are actually rational, in the sense that actions can be justified. In this paper, I show that both Dreyfus's and Montero and Evans's views are too extreme, and that expertise in chess, and presumably in other domains, depends on a combination of intuitive thinking and deliberative search, both mediated by perceptual processes. There is more to expertise than just rational thought. I further contend that both sides ignore emotions, which are important in acquiring and maintaining expertise. Finally, I argue that experimental data and first-person data, which are sometimes presented as irreconcilable in the phenomenology literature, actually lead to similar conclusions.

Chess players' thinking revisited

1998

The main result of De Groot's ([1946] 1978) classical study of chessplayers' thinking was that players of various levels of skill do not differ in the macrostructure of their thought process (in particular with respect to the depth of search and to the number of nodes investigated). Recently, Holding (1985, 1992) challenged these results and proposed that there are skill differences in the way players explore the problem space. The present study replicates De Groot's (1978) problem solving experiment. Results show that Masters differ from weak players in more ways than found in the original study. Some of the differences support search models of chess thinking, and others pattern recognition models. The theoretical discussion suggests that the usual distinction between search and pattern recognition models of chess thinking is unwarranted, and proposes a way of reconciling the two approaches.

The Cognitive Science of Chess: Insights into the Theory of Expertise and Human vs Machine learning

2023

This paper reviews the many cognitive processes involved with the game of chess. These processes vary from novice players to grandmasters. Chess is often used as a marker for intelligence in humans and thus it is a baseline for AI research and the use of ML models (Ensmenger, 2011). This paper focuses on two key aspects of chess: the cognitive processes involved in gaining chess expertise and the use of computers in the chess world. Analysis of cognitive processes in chess includes topics such as pattern recognition, chunking in memory, and problem-solving. The paper will further analyze how machines learn to play chess and the differences between machine and human players. With proper understanding of chess and the cognitive processes involved with playing, chess can be used as a tool to facilitate the gaining of expertise in other domains.

Chess Imagination and Perceptual Understanding - Preprint (2013)

'Chess, Imagination and Perceptual Understanding' Paul Coates [Forthcoming in Philosophy and Sport, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 73, ed. A. O'Hear, Cambridge University Press, 2013.] ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of the imagination in the way that human chess players (as contrasted with computers) exercise their understanding of both tactics and strategy. A phenomenological investigation of the way that chess players think reveals important parallels between our grasp of the possibilities latent in a chess position, and our perceptual understanding of the essentially spatial nature of physical objects, a connection that has implications for philosophical theories of perception. Our implicit grasp of the relational structure of the physical world is compatible with the fact that we experience the physical world as comprising a wide range of different kinds of objects, instantiating rich and varied high-level properties, and permeated by value. These findings support a qualified form of structural realism. KEYWORDS Chess, Imagination, Causal theory of perception, Structural realism, Intrinsic properties, Grover Maxwell, Phenomenology, Perceptual experience, Spatial representation, Adriaan de Groot.

Perception in chess and beyond: Commentary on Linhares and Freitas (2010)

New Ideas in Psychology, 2011

Linhares and Freitas (2010; LF) argue that experts use analogical or semantic similarity, similarities that are not available from direct surface representations. LF make their case using a critique of Chase and Simon (1973b) and the presentation of a few chess positions and examples from other domains. Their conclusion is that models such as CHREST (Gobet et al., 2001) and theories such as the chunking theory (Chase & Simon, 1973b) and the template theory (Gobet & Simon, 1996) are inadequate for dealing with these issues. They propose an alternative paradigm, which they call "experience recognition." Although we find this issue an interesting one, the separation between pattern recognition and problem solving is a lot more complex than LF portray. We instead suggest that a "revolution" in our to date successful modelling is not necessary. Especially in the chess domain, LF's examples do not make the point they claim. Furthermore, their criticisms of CS are incorrect, and they have failed to mention a large number of experimental results that have supported the hypothesis of location-specific encodings. Although we agree that experts use semantic information and similarities, these ideas already possess analogues in CHREST, which can form the basis of further evolution of the theory.

Chess Capyblanca Linhares and Freitas 2010 New Ideas in Psychology

Pattern recognition lies at the heart of the cognitive science endeavor. In this paper, we provide some criticism of this notion, using studies of chess as an example. The game of chess is, as significant evidence shows, a game of abstractions: pressures; force; open files and ranks; time; tightness of defense; old strategies rapidly adapted to new situations. These ideas do not arise on current computational models, which apply brute force by rote-memorization. In this paper we assess the computational models of CHREST and CHUMP, and argue that chess chunks must contain semantic information. This argument leads to a new and contrasting claim, as we propose that key conclusions of Chase and Simon's (1973) influential study stemmed from a non-sequitur. In the concluding section, we propose a shift in philosophy, from ''pattern recognition'' to a framework of ''experience recognition''.

Predictive Mind, Cognition, and Chess

Analysis, 2014

According to the ambitious Predictive Theory of the Mind the brain generates models that it tests against experience and corrects to makes them evermore probably accurate of encountered experience. It neatly explains why we cannot tickle ourselves. The convincingness of that example is compromised by its essentially non-cognitive nature whereby an explanation not involving predictive models might do just as well. More telling confirmation of the theory is the essentially cognitive phenomenon of our inability to play chess against ourselves. This may stand as a paradigm of the power of the theory in explaining the central mental phenomenon of abstract cognition.

An Active Symbols Theory of Chess Intuition

The well-known game of chess has traditionally been modeled in artificial intelligence studies by search engines with advanced pruning techniques. The models were thus centered on an inference engine manipulating passive symbols in the form of tokens. It is beyond doubt, however, that human players do not carry out such processes. Instead, chess masters instead carry out perceptual processes, carefully categorizing the chunks perceived in a position and gradually building complex dynamic structures to represent the subtle pressures embedded in the positions. In this paper we will consider two hypotheses concerning the underlying subcognitive processes and architecture. In the first hypothesis, a multiple-leveled chess representational structure is presented, which includes distance graphs (with varying levels of quality) between pieces, piece mobilities, and abstract roles. These representational schemes seem to account for numerous characteristics of human player's psychology. The second hypothesis concerns the extension of the architecture proposed in the Copycat project as central for modeling the emergent intuitive perception of a chess position. We provide a synthesis on how the postulated architecture models chess intuition as an emergent mixture of simultaneous distance estimations, chunk perceptions, abstract role awareness, and intention activations. This is an alternative model to the traditional AI approaches, focusing on the philosophy of active symbols.