Practical competence and fluent agency*

My first attempts to drive a car were torture – for myself, my older brother (who unwisely had agreed to help teach me), and the family car. The car had a manual transmission and clutch, and we bucked and lurched around town. Each intersection, even each gear shift, posed a challenge that demanded my full attention – if only I could have given it. Instead, my mind was churning with embarrassment at my incompetence, driven to fever pitch by the chorus of horns that greeted me each time I stalled in traffic. I could barely follow the simplest directions from my brother, and his occasional attempts to calm things down with conversation fell on deaf ears. Despite himself, he groaned quietly as I ground the gears and lugged the engine. Like everyone, I eventually I got the hang of driving – the way we eventually get the hang of talking, eating without a bib, telling a joke without ruining it, finding our way in a strange city, or politely discouraging an over-eager salesman. What had changed about me as a driver? Not my rationality. It was not irrational of me to drive when I was so annoyingly clumsy at it – I had to learn, and there was no other way. My driving was incompetent, but not really dangerous. True, I was responding badly to the available reasons. So I was not a good detector of or responder to reasons. But not out of irrationality. Believe me, I was squeezing whatever I could out of reason alone. What changed was my competence or fluency as a driver. As I gradually acquired the component skills and gained confidence in my ability,