Thoughts, like utterances, are a kind of thing that means or represents something else. If you ask how that is possible you have to reject the idea that the meaning is curled up inside the thought like a snail in its shell. But if that's true then where is the meaning and how does it relate to the thing, the particular fluctuation in mind-stuff, that is the thought? Again, as with utterances, the answer seems to be holistic, that it is the entire context that determines the meaning effect. It is the effect, the sum total of what the meaning does or can do, that is important and not some free-standing vision belonging to the thought. This seems neat enough, and it dissolves the distinction between the thought as pure event whose chief attribute is simply that it is, and that other matter, the meaning or ideal of the thought. It's a bit too neat, though. There is either only one thought (as thing) repeated endlessly with different inflections - in which case it is the inflections that have meaning and are the real thought, or there are many different kinds or shapes and figures of thought, intrinsically meaningless, but fitting together like a complicated puzzle (or program) to produce the effects in question - but then thought amounts to the discrimination of these shapes, which is rich enough that you might as well call that thought.