We turn now to the second claim, which says that many instances of human agency can and should be explained without the ascription of representational mental states. This view is usually based on and motivated by embodied and enactive approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Some versions of this approach are inspired by the works Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (Dreyfus 1991, 2002), others are based on more recent developments in robotics and dynamical systems theory (Brooks 1991; Beer 1995). Common to such views is the focus on skillful and “online” engagement with the world: the ability to engage with others and with one’s circumstances by responding to the demands of the situation in a skillful and often effortless manner, without conscious deliberation, reasoning, or planning (often called “skilled coping”). Examples of human agency include instances of habitual action, such as the actions that one performs while driving a car, and cases where the agent is engaged in a responsive flow of interaction, such as in jazz improvisation or in verbal exchanges. Examples from robotics include skills like the coordination of limb movements and the ability to navigate through novel environments. The challenge to the standard theory often involves the following three points. First, it is argued that the explanation of such skills and abilities in terms of mental representations is both costly and clumsy: it imposes very high demands on the agent’s information-processing resources and it leads to an inelegant and implausible overpopulation of highly specific mental representations. Second, it is pointed out that current accounts of mental representation are untenable or, at least, controversial and that there is no obvious reason to think that there will ever be a generally accepted account of mental representation. Third, it is argued that the explanation of skilled coping does not require the ascription of representational mental states, because it can be explained in terms of behavioral dispositions and direct guidance by the relevant features of the situation. The proposed conclusion is that we should, therefore, explain instances of skilled coping without reference to representational mental states and events.