If two notions do not line up, after all, as I believe these do not, you might expect their conflation to be sustainable in introductory or summary prose, but to disintegrate under pressure of details. Perhaps it will. Remarkably, however, we are given no details. This is especially curious, given Simon's own protestations. Now precision is not rigour-as AI should have taught us by now.
Space permits consideration of only a single example.
Either way, however, the internal question is an instance of a general issue about how symbols or intentional states can carry or convey meaning-how they signify or represent, or in virtue of what they are intentional. That there are internal symbols, that there are external symbols, and that the two relate is good to know, if it was not already obvious-but that fact alone does not answer the fundamental intentional mysteries. And sure enough, they do. It is impossible to ignore the sheer peculiarity of the fact that these and other similar passages systematically blur the very semantic distinction that differentiates the view Simon is advocating from elementary observations of commonsense. One simply has to wonder whether this ambiguity does not, as one suspects on first reading, merely reflect a lack of intellectual care, but rather, as one becomes convinced on second reading, may be something that is structurally, even if unintentionally, necessary.