I want to block some common misunderstandings about "understanding": In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word "understanding."

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.

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.

Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.

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 can't *discover* that the brain is a digital computer. You can only *interpret* the brain as a digital computer.

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