• How do you recognize that something is a symbol?
• Not everything that looks like a symbol is one. (Putnam’s sky writing)
• How do you tell what the symbol means/stands for?

• How is it possible for one thing to represent something else?
• Why apparently obvious solutions do not work.

• Words
• Pictures
• Mental states
• Signs
• Art works
• Actions

• Concrete things (tables, chairs, etc.)
• Abstract things (justice, numbers, centers of gravity)
• Situations/states of affairs
• Events
• Properties
• Nonexistent things (unicorns, round squares)

• Some intrinsic property of an object?
• Something about how the object is used?
• Something about how the object is caused?
• Something about how the object is related to other objects?

• Some specific relation: resemblance for pictures, for example. This is a representation of a horse because it resembles a horse.
• A convention governing its use: let this stand for that.

• Is this a relative distinction (Dennett)
• Is this an absolute distinction (Searle)

• Crane answers that mental representation is fundamental (and he seems to think the distinction is absolute)

• Resemblance is vague: Everything tastes more or less like chicken.
• X may resemble Y without X being a representation of Y.
• Resemblance is symmetrical, representation is not.
• Resemblance is reflexive, representation is not.

• How much resemblance is necessary: abstract art?
• What needs to be added to resemblance in order to get representation? This additional feature seems to be the crucial part, since everything resembles everything.

• What a picture resembles turns on how the picture is interpreted. So resemblance is not basic.

• No, again because of the point about interpretation.
• Resemblance cannot account for the logical relations in compound sentences: and, or, if then, just in case, not.

• But how are the conventions formulated? Presuppose what is to be explained.

• Same as above
• What are ideas? Mental images? What can there be mental images of–abstract ideas, logical connections?

• Ideas are themselves representations. So this is circular (if taken as a general theory).
• The idea theory of word meaning presupposes an account of mental representation.
• The resemblance theory of picture meaning also presupposes an account of mental representation (because of the interpretation issue).
• So we need to focus on mental representation.

• Representational states (thoughts)
• Propositional attitudes
• Attitude (believing, hoping, etc.)
• Proposition, situation, content (that snow is white)
• Attitudes that take nonpropositional objects
• loving, simple seeing
• Nonrepresentational states

• Consciousness
• Awareness
• Inner illumination (Einstein)

• Mentality/thought ‚ consciousness
• Unconscious thought: thought you are not aware of
• Thought can be treated independently of consciousness

• Unconscious thoughts
• Postulated by cognitive science
• Postulated by Freud
• Suggested by question: Do alligators wear pajamas?
• Suggested by Meno

• Unconscious thought, or Disposition to form new thought?

• representational nature of a mental state
• directedness of a mental state upon an object
• aboutness
• ‚ intention to do x

Intensionality

• A property of sentences and linguistic items

• Cannot exchange terms with the same reference
• Cannot infer the existence of the object

• Shows up in context expressing propositional attitudes

Intentionality/representation represents and object in a certain way. The fact that the same thing can be represented in different ways is reflected by the intensionality of the sentences describing intentional states: failure of substitution of co-referring terms.

Intentionality/representation may represent an object that does not exist. This fact is reflected by the intensionality of the sentences describing intentional states: failure of existential generalization.

• But intensionality and intentionality can come apart.
• Itensionality without intentionality (Intensionality insufficient for intentionality)
• Modal contexts (the number of planets)
• Intentionality without intensionality (Intensionality not necessary for intentionality)
• Simple seeing
• So intensionality is not the mark of intentionality.

Is intentionality necessary (all mental states have it) and sufficient (only mental states have it) for mentality?

• Intentionality not necessary for mentality (?)
• Pains
• But the location information contained in the pain my be intentional/representational after a fashion.
• Moods
• Depression

This suggests to recast the distinction between intentional and nonintentional mental states. It is the distinction between:

• Mental states whose essence is exhausted by their intentionality
• Mental states whose essence is not exhausted by their intentionality (there is also the felt component)

• Intentionality not sufficient for mentality
• Books
• Computers
• Simple organisms

• Perhaps one needs to ask where there are non-minds that have original (rather than derived) intentionality
• Computers?
• But perhaps computers would have minds if they had original intentionality. Having a mind may seem to be no more than having original intentionality.
• Perhaps the mind/nonmind distinction turns on nonintentional mental features: feeling/consciousness.

• Pictorial representation and linguistic representation presuppose interpretation.
• Interpretation relies on mental representation.
• Therefore mental representation is the most basic form of representation.

Question: To think is to run through a series of thoughts. What governs this dynamic process? It Cannot be an intelligent homunculus that understands and interprets these thoughts and arranges them in the right way. For that would presuppose that we already know how the homunculus managed to think his/her thoughts. But that is exactly what we do not understand. So this "solution" is question begging. Suggested solution: thoughts are manipulated in a purely computational manner. They follow each other in the same fashion in which the contentbearing/representational states of a computer follow each other.