Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.

The assertion fallacy is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others.

The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content.

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

How do we get from electrons to elections and from protons to presidents?