Ruth Garrett Millikan
Biographic Data
| ID | 747390 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Garrett Millikan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth Garrett |
| FAMILY NAME | Millikan |
| SIGNATURE | MILLIKAN R G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Connecticut |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1513-1049 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Teleosemantics and the frogs
Some have thought that the plausibility of teleosemantics requires that it yield a determinate answer to the question of what the semantic “content” is of the “representation” triggered in the optic nerve of a frog that spots a fly. An outsize literature has resulted in which, unfortunately, a number of serious confusions and omissions that concern the way teleosemantics would have to work have appeared and been passed on uncorrected leaving a di…
Self‐signs and intensional contexts
Paradigm intensional contexts result from the unmarked use of referential expressions as “self‐signs”, signs that refer to themselves as tokens, types, or members of Sellarsian “dot‐quoted” kinds. Self‐signing (but unquoted) linguistic expressions are more difficult to recognize than non‐linguistic self‐signs such as the color of a felt pen's casing that represents the color of ink inside. I will discuss non‐linguistic self‐signing, then examine …
Neuroscience and teleosemantics
Biosemantics and Words that Don't Represent
One of the virtues of the biosemantic view of language is the clarity and simplicity of its description of the general nature of nonrepresentational linguistic constructions. It doesn't follow, however, that it is obvious on this view how these functions should be described individually. After an explanation of the biosemantic approach, initial suggestions are made for analyses of a variety of nonrepresentational constructions that have tradition…
Beyond Concepts
This book weaves together themes from natural ontology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and information, areas of inquiry that have not recently been treated together. The sprawling topic is Kant’s how is knowledge possible? but viewed from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. The assumption is that we are evolved creatures that use cognition as a guide in dealing with the natural world, and that the natural world is roughly as natura…
Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information
Are There Mental Indexicals and Demonstratives
Troubles with Plantinga’s Reading of Millikan
Précis of Varieties of Meaning
An Input Condition for Teleosemantics? Reply to Shea (and Godfrey‐Smith) 1
Reply to Taylor
Reply to Bermúdez
I have some disagreements with Bermúdez position, but I think what he takes to be the main difference between our positions on the uses of contrariety may be a simple misunderstanding that we can just clear up. I welcome this opportunity to say, and think, a bit more about contrariety than I did in Varieties. First, however, the disagreements. I attempted, in Varieties, to base my discussion of the development of representational systems in anima…
Reply to Rosenberg
Reply to Recanati
Language: A Biological Model
Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by rules. This volume presents a different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, the way they express norms and conventions. It argues that the central norms applying to language are non-evaluative; they are more like those norms of function and behavior that account for the survival and proliferation of biol…
The father, the son, and the daughter: Sellars, Brandom, and Millikan
The positions of Brandom and Millikan are compared with respect to their common origins in the works of Wilfrid Sellars and Wittgenstein. Millikan takes more seriously the “picturing” themes from Sellars and Wittgenstein. Brandom follows Sellars more closely in deriving the normativity of language from social practice, although there are also hints of a possible derivation from evolutionary theory in Sellars. An important claim common to Brandom …
Varieties of Meaning: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures
Many different things are said to have meaning: people mean to do various things; tools and other artifacts are meant for various things; people mean various things by using words and sentences; natural signs mean things; representations in people's minds also presumably mean things. In Varieties of Meaning, Ruth Garrett Millikan argues that these different kinds of meaning can be understood only in relation to each other. What does meaning in th…
The language-thought partnership
On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts
Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the …
Representations, Targets and Attitudes
Cummins offers us a theory of mental representations, intentionality and propositional attitudes designed to answer the question what cognitive error is and why reference to mental representations can help to explain behavior. A large portion of Targets also deals with familiar positions on the naturalization of representation, such as conceptual role and other theories of mental content, and causal\indicator theories, in an effort to show the ne…
On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the …
Historical Kinds and the “Special Sciences”
White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice
Pushmi-Pullyu Representations
A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to
On Unclear and Indistinct Ideas
Evans believed that there should be a way of explaining Russell's Principle means that makes it come out true. To this end, he vigorously reinterpreted the notion acquaintance, but his analysis of the varieties of this relation bears scant resemblance to anything in Russell. I will argue that under a very plausible interpretation which, I fancy, is considerably closer in one way to Russell and in another way to Evans than either is to the other, …
In Defense of Proper Functions
I defend the historical definition of “function” originally given in my Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (1984a). The definition was not offered in the spirit of conceptual analysis but is more akin to a theoretical definition of “function”. A major theme is that nonhistorical analyses of “function” fail to deal adequately with items that are not capable of performing their functions
Pushmi-Pullyu Representations
A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to
Thoughts Without Laws; Cognitive Science with Content
formal likeness-likeness in logical form. Roughly, the idea was that something like mathematical mapping relations correlated the domain of thought with the world. But unfortunately (for example, Wittgenstein 1953; Quine 1960; Putnam 1977), mathematical mapping relations are embrassingly legion. An indefinite number of them can be defined that will correlate, in one way or another, any two domains of entities having much size or complexity. Which…
Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox
The challenge is a welcome one. Although I will argue that the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox is not a problem for naturalists only, I will propose a naturalist solution to it. (Should the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox prove to be soluble from a naturalist standpoint but intractable from other standpoints, that would, I suppose, constitute an argument for naturalism.) Then I will show that the paradox and its solution have an important consequence for…
Neuroscience and teleosemantics
The language-thought partnership
"Seismograph Readings for "Explaining Behavior
Explaining Behavior contains a bold theory, written with Dretske's familiar clarity and honesty, a rich mine, too, of amusing and instructive biological examples. But early on I began to feel symptoms of motion sickness: shifting ground. Ground shifts where there are fault lines. I will discuss two of these that, I believe, pass near the center of Dretske's book. The core of Dretske's program is to understand how making reference to what our beli…
Are There Mental Indexicals and Demonstratives
An Input Condition for Teleosemantics? Reply to Shea (and Godfrey‐Smith) 1
On Unclear and Indistinct Ideas
Evans believed that there should be a way of explaining Russell's Principle means that makes it come out true. To this end, he vigorously reinterpreted the notion acquaintance, but his analysis of the varieties of this relation bears scant resemblance to anything in Russell. I will argue that under a very plausible interpretation which, I fancy, is considerably closer in one way to Russell and in another way to Evans than either is to the other, …
Representations, Targets and Attitudes
Cummins offers us a theory of mental representations, intentionality and propositional attitudes designed to answer the question what cognitive error is and why reference to mental representations can help to explain behavior. A large portion of Targets also deals with familiar positions on the naturalization of representation, such as conceptual role and other theories of mental content, and causal\indicator theories, in an effort to show the ne…
White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism
A Bradford Book
Thoughts Without Laws; Cognitive Science with Content
formal likeness-likeness in logical form. Roughly, the idea was that something like mathematical mapping relations correlated the domain of thought with the world. But unfortunately (for example, Wittgenstein 1953; Quine 1960; Putnam 1977), mathematical mapping relations are embrassingly legion. An indefinite number of them can be defined that will correlate, in one way or another, any two domains of entities having much size or complexity. Which…
What Peter thinks when he hears Mary speak
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism
Biosemantics
In Defense of Proper Functions
I defend the historical definition of “function” originally given in my Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (1984a). The definition was not offered in the spirit of conceptual analysis but is more akin to a theoretical definition of “function”. A major theme is that nonhistorical analyses of “function” fail to deal adequately with items that are not capable of performing their functions
Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox
The challenge is a welcome one. Although I will argue that the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox is not a problem for naturalists only, I will propose a naturalist solution to it. (Should the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox prove to be soluble from a naturalist standpoint but intractable from other standpoints, that would, I suppose, constitute an argument for naturalism.) Then I will show that the paradox and its solution have an important consequence for…
"Seismograph Readings for "Explaining Behavior
Explaining Behavior contains a bold theory, written with Dretske's familiar clarity and honesty, a rich mine, too, of amusing and instructive biological examples. But early on I began to feel symptoms of motion sickness: shifting ground. Ground shifts where there are fault lines. I will discuss two of these that, I believe, pass near the center of Dretske's book. The core of Dretske's program is to understand how making reference to what our beli…
A Theory of Content and Other Essays
Meaning and Mental Representation
White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice
This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to Ruth Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories and as an extension and application of Millikan's central and controversial themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology. Ruth Millikan's extended argument for a biological view of the study of cognition in Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories caught the attention of the philosophical community. Univer…
On Unclear and Indistinct Ideas
Evans believed that there should be a way of explaining Russell's Principle means that makes it come out true. To this end, he vigorously reinterpreted the notion acquaintance, but his analysis of the varieties of this relation bears scant resemblance to anything in Russell. I will argue that under a very plausible interpretation which, I fancy, is considerably closer in one way to Russell and in another way to Evans than either is to the other, …
Pushmi-Pullyu Representations
A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to
White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice
Historical Kinds and the “Special Sciences”
On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts
Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the …
Representations, Targets and Attitudes
Cummins offers us a theory of mental representations, intentionality and propositional attitudes designed to answer the question what cognitive error is and why reference to mental representations can help to explain behavior. A large portion of Targets also deals with familiar positions on the naturalization of representation, such as conceptual role and other theories of mental content, and causal\indicator theories, in an effort to show the ne…
On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the …
The language-thought partnership
Varieties of Meaning: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures
Many different things are said to have meaning: people mean to do various things; tools and other artifacts are meant for various things; people mean various things by using words and sentences; natural signs mean things; representations in people's minds also presumably mean things. In Varieties of Meaning, Ruth Garrett Millikan argues that these different kinds of meaning can be understood only in relation to each other. What does meaning in th…
Language: A Biological Model
Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by rules. This volume presents a different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, the way they express norms and conventions. It argues that the central norms applying to language are non-evaluative; they are more like those norms of function and behavior that account for the survival and proliferation of biol…
The father, the son, and the daughter: Sellars, Brandom, and Millikan
The positions of Brandom and Millikan are compared with respect to their common origins in the works of Wilfrid Sellars and Wittgenstein. Millikan takes more seriously the “picturing” themes from Sellars and Wittgenstein. Brandom follows Sellars more closely in deriving the normativity of language from social practice, although there are also hints of a possible derivation from evolutionary theory in Sellars. An important claim common to Brandom …
Précis of Varieties of Meaning
An Input Condition for Teleosemantics? Reply to Shea (and Godfrey‐Smith) 1
Reply to Taylor
Philosophy (31 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Cognitive science (6 works) · History (6 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (6 works)