Intentions and Representations

Kathy Wilkes’s essays on explanations and representations, and especially her interaction with Daniel Dennett, raise questions about whether some notion of representation can explain action intention. Wilkes is not sure whether subpersonal representations are real, but she thinks that the most pragmatic strategy is to take the intentional stance and accept the usefulness of personal level intentions, even if we have to worry that this does not give us a scientific explanation. Wilkes’s skepticism about subpersonal representations, and even about the appropriateness of the notion of subpersonal levels of explanation, seems to fit with more recent embodied-enactive approaches to cognition. Considerations about the nature of cognitive mechanisms and animal intelligence prevent her from moving in that direction, however. These insights suggest that Wilkes’ analysis continues to be directly relevant to contemporary discussions.