Intentional action, knowledge, and cognitive extension

Abstract

Intentional actions exhibit control in a way that mere lucky successes do not. A longstanding tradition in action theory characterizes actional control in terms of the knowledge with which one acts when acting intentionally. Given that action theorists, no less than epistemologists, typically take for granted the orthodox thesis that knowledge is in the head (viz., realized exclusively by brainbound cognition), the idea that intentional action is controlled in virtue of knowledge is tantamount to the idea that the knowledge by which intentional actions exhibit control supervenes intracranially. We raise some challenges for this idea, and in doing show, we show how epistemic theories of actional control are naturally aligned moreso than has been appreciated with cognitive extension in the theory of mind.