Alison Springle, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma

— Philosophers and cognitive scientists have posited practical mental representations (henceforth, “practical representations”) to account for a variety of cognitive phenomena. But what exactly are practical representations? “Conservative views” claim that they are types of propositional representations while more popular “modest views” claim that they are non-propositional, though not radically non-propositional, representations. I argue that conservative views incur a heavy explanatory loss and that, perhaps surprisingly, modest views don’t fare much better. The latter also inherit an explanatory burden that conservative views and "radical views" of practical representation could avoid. But few have been brave enough to pursue a view on which practical representations are radically non-propositional. Millikan's theory of pushmi-pullyu representations (PPRs) is unusually courageous in this respect, but in other crucial respects it remains modest, which, in this context, is not a virtue. To the contrary, the cost of Millikan's modesty includes the conceptual coherence and explanatory power of her theory of PPRs. I introduce the de agendo theory of practical representation as an unabashedly radical view of practical representation. I argue that de agendo representations are both coherent and explanatorily powerful. I conclude that this radical view of practical representation is worthy of valiant pursuit as it is a plausible and promising alternative to problematic conservative and modest views