The charge is often made that a physicalist cannot make sense of meaning. This chapter argues that the supposed mysteries of meaning and intentionality are a product of Cartesian assumptions regarding the inwardness of mental acts and the passivity of the knower. If instead we consider the mental in terms of emulations of embodied action in the social world, there is no more mystery as to how the word ‘chair’ (for example) hooks onto the world than there is in how one learns to sit in one. Consideration is given to the neural capacities needed for increasingly complex use of symbols, and to the embodied nature of meaning in language. Symbolic language — in fact, quite sophisticated symbolic language — is a prerequisite for both reasoning and morally responsible action.
Keywords: meaning, intentionality, emulations, symbols, language, reasoning, moral responsibility