The question of how language relates to the world is one of the most important problems of philosophy. What the word God refers to and the question Does God exist? are clearly linked. The existence or non-existence of God (or electrons or unicorns) is directly related to the issue of what and how a name names.

This book presents a mechanist philosophy of mind. I hold that the human mind is a system of computational or recursive rules that are embodied in the nervous system; that the material presence of these rules accounts for perception, conception, speech, belief, desire, intentional acts, and other forms of intelligence. In this edition I have retained the whole of the fIrst edition except for discussion of issues which no longer are relevant in philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology. Earlier reference to disputes of the 1960's and 70's between hard-line empiricists and neorationalists...

This book presents a mechanist philosophy of mind. I hold that the human mind is a system of computational or recursive rules that are embodied in the nervous system; that the material presence of these rules accounts for perception, conception, speech, belief, desire, intentional acts, and other forms of intelligence. In this edition I have retained the whole of the fIrst edition except for discussion of issues which no longer are relevant in philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology. Earlier reference to disputes of the 1960's and 70's between hard-line empiricists and neorationalists...

In 1987, the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the law--he had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixties--but nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss.

Director of Harbors and Marine Services was a position so mired in corruption that its previous four directors ended up in federal prison. Nelson inherited angry constituents, prying journalists, shell-shocked...