Abstract
I identify and characterize the kind of personal-level control-structure that is most relevant for skilled action control, namely, what I call, “practical intention”. I differentiate between practical intentions and general intentions not in terms of their function or timing but in terms of their content. I also highlight a distinction between practical intentions and other control mechanisms that are required to explain skilled action. I’ll maintain that all intentions, general and practical, have the function specifying (and thus guiding according to those specifications), sustaining, and structuring action but that several functions that have been attributed to proximal intentions are actually implemented by other control mechanisms that are not themselves best identified as intentions. Specifically, I will claim that practical intentions do not initiate, monitor, specify or guide the fine-grained, online, kinematic aspects of action. Finally, I suggest that the way in which practical and general intentions should be differentiated is in terms of their content, where general intentions specify the overall goal, outcome, or end of an action as it is conceived of by the agent at a time, and practical intentions determine the means to that end. I conclude by providing empirical evidence to support this way of characterizing the intentions that “interface” with the mechanisms of motor control. Though this discussion has repercussions for action in general, I will limit my discussion to cases of skill.
Highlights
I identify and characterize the kind of personal-level control-structure that is most relevant for skilled action control, namely, what I call, “practical intention”
The interface problem concerns the implementation of intentional action, which purportedly requires coordination between states coded in different formats
Though I disagree that there is an interface problem so characterized, I do think that it is imperative to specify exactly what it is that different kinds of representational states coded in different formats contribute to purposive action, to skilled action control
Summary
In discussions of know how or skill, one paradigmatic feature of skilled actions that most philosophers agree is characteristic of skill is their intentionality or goaldirectedness (Ryle 1949; Stanley and Williamson 2001; Noë 2005; Bengson and Moffett 2011; Stanley and Krakauer 2013; Fridland 2014; Pavese 2018). Part of the agent’s skill is constituted by her ability to choose to do the best thing, given the circumstances in which she finds herself Making this kind of decision need not be like deciding on a career or a life partner—but it is still something that the agent does. The agent has many options that she could pursue, and part of her skill is constituted by her ability to “see” exactly which one of those options is best This seeing isn’t determined for her, rather, it is something she determines by engaging, attending, searching, and playing. Returning to the interface problem, we should try to characterize the nature of the intention that is involved in interfacing with the motor representations involved in implementing skilled action
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