Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2026
Two main lines of argument have shaped the overall structure of the book.
According to the first, skills’ distinctive learnability, control, and flexibility accord them a central status in theory of intentional action, of intelligence, and of talents; such central status is evidence that skill is a natural kind. For social beings like us, skills’ distinctive flexibility makes for the possibility of cumulative culture, thereby accounting also for the collective dimension of our intelligence. All in all, skills afford us a unique perspective on both intelligence and intentional agency.
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