I take it that computational processes are both symbolic and formal. They are symbolic because they are defined over representations, and they are formal because they apply to representations, in virtue of (roughly) the syntax of the representations.

On my bad days, I sometimes wonder what philosophers are for.

There are lots of cases where we know more about how the world works than we do about how we know how it works. That's no paradox. Understanding the structure of galaxies is one thing, understanding how we understand the structure of galaxies is quite another. There isn't the slightest reason why the first should wait on the second and, in point of historical fact, it didn't. This bears a lot of emphasis; it turns up in philosophy practically everywhere you look.

If, in short, there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.

...there are special sciences not because of the nature of our epistemic relation to the world, but because of the way the world is put together: not all natural kinds (not all the classes of things and events about which there are important, counterfactual supporting generalizations to make) are, or correspond to, physical natural kinds.

No doubt, intuitions deserve respect. ...[but] I think that it is always up for grabs what an intuition is an intuition of. At a minimum, it is surely sometimes up for grabs.

...monetary exchanges have interesting things in common; Gresham's law, if true, says what one of these interesting things is. But what is interesting about monetary exchanges is surely not their commonalities under physical description. A natural kind like a monetary exchange could turn out to be co-extensive with a physical natural kind; but if it did, that would be an accident on a cosmic scale.