Mental Action
Antonia Peacocke
July 13, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/9780191946448.003.0008 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that mental action can be intentional in the same sense as bodily action, contra Strawson's ballistic view, and proposes that a single mental action can belong to two content-attitude types at once, which helps solve puzzles about agency, duality, and composition in thought. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter argues that mental action can be intentional in precisely the same sense as bodily and worldly action. It provides various examples, including examples of cognitive actions—actions whose performance constitutively involves having a thought of a certain content-attitude type. A brief history of the philosophy of mental action is given. The chapter objects to Galen Strawson's view that all mental action is ballistic in nature. The fuller picture of mental action presented here motivates a substantive claim that drives the remainder of the book: a mental action can belong to two content-attitude types at once, even when neither is a subtype of the other. You can perform one type of cognitive action as a mental means to another in such a way that the single thought that executes both intentions belongs to more than one content-attitude type. This picture of non-basic mental action will help solve three types of puzzles in philosophy of mind and epistemology: action puzzles about how we exercise any agency at all in certain forms of thought; duality puzzles about thoughts that have the features of two distinct content-attitude types; and process puzzles about the way individual thoughts compose ongoing processes like inference or inquiry.