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

We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.

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.

Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality

The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms.

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

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