Critical Note

I offer some critical thoughts on some philosophical issues touched upon in the four papers in the section on Cognition, Action, and Perception. I highlight these issues because, apart from revealing some problematic aspects of the arguments presented therein, they illustrate a general concern about some prominent debates in the context of 4E approaches to cognition: that at some times we are so excited that we can bring philosophy in close touch with empirical results that we forget our core business as philosophers—the argument—while at other times we can’t stop overdoing it with our philosophical concept-mongery and thereby fail to see important lessons empirical results have to teach us. In addition, I want to draw attention to a topic that one might have expected to be covered in a handbook on 4E cognition, in particular in the section on Cognition, Action, and Perception, but that isn’t addressed: the topic of self-control.