Abstract

C. I. Lewis' action-oriented notion of cognition is consistent with a minimally representational picture of mind. I aim to show why. Toward this end, I explore some of the tensions between Lewis' theory of knowledge and his theory of mind. At face value, the former renders the latter implausible. Among other problems, no agent could act if she were required to entertain the myriad beliefs that Lewis claims figures in the guidance of action. But rather than abandon Lewis' story, I attempt to rehabilitate it. Rehabilitation is possible, I argue, because Lewis isn't claiming that his epistemology describes actual justificatory practices, but rather what an agent could do; the social character of concepts [and meaning] considerably reduces the need for appealing to internal concepts when explaining why an agent does what she does; and among his paradigm cases of cognitive behavior are paradigm cases of nonreflective action. Here's the rub: not only do such actions account for most of our behavior [as Lewis himself notes], nonreflective actions, though cognitive, don't require conceptualization