ABSTRACT
The puzzle of skilled action is that of explaining how it is that it displays robust intelligence despite being largely governed by motor control processes that are often characterized as brute, reflex-like, and paradigmatically unintelligent. In this chapter, I argue that a solution to this puzzle takes the form of an extension to existing hybrid views of skilled action, according to which its intelligence is to be accounted for in terms of the combined contributions of intentions and other propositional attitude states, as well as the representations and processes involved in motor control. I further argue that, though such views are on the right track, they sometimes take an overly narrow view of the motor system’s intelligence, such that it must be derived from intention, rather than inherent in its own operations. I make the case that in order to properly understand the intelligence of the motor system, we must recognize the complexity of the representational structures it utilizes in the control of skilled behaviour, and that this complexity forms the basis for the difference in intelligence between expert and novice performance, and points us toward a solution to the puzzle of skilled action.
