This dissertation contains four essays addressing a cluster of related topics in the metaphysics of mind and the nature of representation, particularly conceptual representation. Officially, the essays are independent from each other. Each can be read and evaluated on its own merits. However, the essays complement each other and together form a coherent picture, but not a sequential narrative. The dissertation takes as its starting impetus a particular problem in the metaphysics of mind. This problem stems from the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness, and was forcefully brought into the contemporary philosophical discussion by David Chalmers' seminal work The Conscious Mind [1996].1 The problem stems from a triad of claims that are in tension. (The presentation is mine, not Chalmers').