7.15—
Summary

CTM claims that the mind is a computer that operates upon mental representations that are symbols having semantic properties. But we have seen that the expression 'semantic properties' is ambiguous. In order to see just what CTM might be claiming, and how this might or might not support the claims to explaining intentionality and to vindicating intentionality psychology, it was necessary to substitute different senses of 'semantics' into CTM's account. Here we have seen that neither the account

of intentionality nor the vindication of intentional psychology can proceed upon the assumptions that the "semantic properties" ascribed to mental representations are mental-semantic or semiotic-semantic properties. (That is, they cannot proceed upon the assumption that they are the kinds of semantic properties ascribed to mental states or to symbols, respectively.) In the following chapter we shall examine whether substituting some other sense of the expression 'semantic property' might produce more hopeful results.