If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself

An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.

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

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.

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."

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

Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

Where consciousness is concerned, the appearance is the reality.

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

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.

Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking

You must have courage and confidence to pursue the visions.

And I'm not sure if it's G-d, or fate, or just air masses colliding over water, but I will say this: It feels, finally, like flying.

I think the key to getting rid of illegal immigration, no matter where its coming from, is that you need to have a good legal apparatus for immigration.

I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours so it doesn't take as long.

The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.

The real fountain of youth is to have a dirty mind.

Law is experience developed by reason and applied continually to further experience.

Telling someone who’s crying not to cry is the same as telling someone who’s falling not to fall.

As I see it, Being, the Cosmos, whatever you want to call it, is a struggle between two implacable forces: Novelty on the one side and habit on the other side.