Contentful skills: Procedural memory and the representational challenge to non‐representational cognition

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.

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Publication Details

Journal
Mind & Language
Published
2026-07-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.70057
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Embodied and Extended Cognition
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
8.63
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article

Contentful skills: Procedural memory and the representational challenge to non‐representational cognition

Marcin Miłkowski, Krystyna Bielecka
1 citations
Mind & Language
Embodied and Extended Cognition
8.63
article

Contentful skills: Procedural memory and the representational challenge to non‐representational cognition

Marcin Miłkowski, Krystyna Bielecka
article en
1 citations

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.

Mind & Language
Institute of Philosophy (HU), Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (PL), Polish Academy of Sciences (PL)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 2%
Embodied and Extended Cognition
8.63
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