Contentful skills: Procedural memory and the representational challenge to non‐representational cognition
Abstract
Procedural memory—the system underlying skills and habits—is inherently contentful. We argue, drawing on standard accounts of intentionality, that it exhibits a world‐to‐mind direction of fit and is governed by satisfaction conditions that normatively guide skilled action. Four convergent arguments support this: the conceptual structure of procedural memory's directive function; the phenomenon of misrepresentation in apraxia; the constitutive role of contentful goal states in motor control models; and the semantic interface between verbal instruction and action. This challenges anti‐representationalist accounts in embodied cognition and philosophy of memory—including radical enactivism and the skilled intentionality framework—and supports a unified representationalist framework for embodied agency.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Embodied and Extended Cognition
Action Observation and Synchronization
Child and Animal Learning Development
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Mind & Language
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Publication date
- 28 July 2026
- Language
- EN