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

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

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.

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.

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

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard...Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill...At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.