Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

There are clear cases in which "understanding" literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.

We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a scientific world and a world of common sense. Rather, there is just one world; it is the world we all live in, and we need to account for how we exist as part of it.

My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

Well, what does "good" mean anyway? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."