How Do We Get From Electrons To

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.

In Many Cases It Is A Matter For Decision And Not A Simple Matter Of Fact Whether X Understands Y; And So On.

It Seems To Me Obvious That Infants And Many Animals That Do Not In Any Ordinary Sense Have A Language Or Perform Speech Acts Nonetheless Have Intentional States. Only Someone In The Grip Of A Philosophical Theory Would Deny That Small Babies Can Literally Be Said To Want Milk And That Dogs Want To Be Let Out Or Believe That Their Master Is At The Door.

The Ascription Of An Unconscious Intentional Phenomenon To A System Implies That The Phenomenon Is In Principle Accessible To Consciousness.

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.