Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 135 of 138
Conscious thought makes content easy to explain
If you ask, How can a state of my brain have the content that Caesar crossed the Rubicon? it seems an impossibly difficult question. But if you ask, How can my conscious thought “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” have the content that Caesar crossed the Rubicon? Then it is no longer impossible to answer. I know the meanings of the words, I know how they relate to objects and states of affairs in the world and in thinking the whole thought I am aware that it has precisely this condition of satisfaction: Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Once we reject the metaphysical sense of the third question we demystify it by assimilating it to a general account of how intentionality actually functions. And that is all that needs to be said about the constitution of intentional content in general. Beyond that, of course, we need to say a great deal, much of which I have already said, about the network and the background, about the direction of fit and causal self-referentiality, psychological mode, and all the rest of it.