Markos Valaris
I am an Associate Prophesor in Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. I work in the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind. In recent years my focus has been in the nature of reasoning and of intentional action. My current project is looking at the prospects of building a theory of action that is centred around knowledge, rather than (as is more common) desires, belief or intentions.Prior to coming to UNSW in 2009, I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Before turning to philosophy, I studied computer science at the National Technical University of Athens, in Greece.
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Much work in the philosophy of action seems to presuppose a particular conception of how the mind or intelligence is involved in physical action. According to that conception, the mind gets involved in physical action by controlling movements of the body from the outside — schematically, by providing blueprints for those movements, which are then carried out by sub-personal mechanisms. This paper argues that reflection on the nature of skills and knowledge how undermines this picture. My argument proceeds in two stages. First, I give an argument in favor of intellectualism, that is, the view that knowledge how consist in states with propositional content. In the second stage, I argue that if intellectualism is to be developed into an acceptable account of skilled agency, it will have to reject this picture of the mind's involvement in physical action.