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

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

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."

Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

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

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