My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business

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.

Some people do polarizing the religion against science. I use both to solve a problem with two different kind of approach.

On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.

True wealth is contentment, and happiness is forgetting to worry how you are and how much you have.

All you can do is all you can do, but all you can do is enough.

Instead of giving in to cynicism and division, let's move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that define us as a people.

I don't want to say Gray Davis is on the run, but today he released an audiotape on the Al Jazeera network from his underground bunker somewhere in the Sacramento area.

I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.

Practice at hunger makes the fast easier.

I work in a creative industry. My work isn't terribly hard, it's artistically explorative, so I have no complaints.

Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.