Practical knowledge first

This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions is one's practical knowledge in it-i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it-famously traces back to Anscombe ([1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe's notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya, 2008; Thompson et al., 2011; Schwenkler, 2019; O'Brien, 2007), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand it. This paper investigates how best to understand practical knowledge for it to play the desired explanatory role in a reductive theory of intentional action, of intention-in-action, and of control-in-action. I argue that practical knowledge ought to be construed as a dynamic knowledge state and that structured practical senses are needed to model it.