Foundations of Understanding

How can symbols have meaning for a subject? This work argues that this is the key question to ask about intentionality, or meaningful thought. It suggests that that the goal should be to explain not how symbols, mental or otherwise, can refer to or "mean" states of affairs in the external world, but how they can mean something to us, the users. The essence of intentionality, it argues, is conscious understanding, the roots of which lie in experiences of embodiment and goal-directed action. A developmental path is traced from a foundation of conscious understanding of the concept of an objective, external world, to the understanding of language and abstract symbols. The work is interdisciplinary, incorporating data from the neurosciences and cognitive psychology, the perspectives of phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, and traditional philosophical analysis. The book includes a chapter on conscious qualitative experience and its neural correlates.