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.

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

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness.

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

"Akrasia" [weakness of will] in rational beings is as common as wine in France.

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."