Ruth Garrett Millikan

Pushmi-Pullyu Representations

One of the main tenets of current teleosemantic theories is that simple representations are PushmiPullyu states, i.e. they carry descriptive and imperative content at the same time. In the paper I present an argument that shows that if we add this claim to the core tenets of teleosemantics, then (1) it entails that, necessarily, all representations are Pushmi-Pullyu states and (2) it undermines one of the main motivations for the Pushmi-Pullyu account.

Minds, Machines and Evolution.

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The language-thought partnership

I sketch in miniature the whole of my work on the relation between language and thought. Previously I have offered closeups of this terrain in various papers and books, and I reference them freely. But my main purpose here is to explain the relations among the parts, hoping this can serve as a short introduction to my work on language and thought for some, and for others as a clarification of the larger plan. In this paper I will try to sketch in miniature the whole of my work on the relations between language and thought. I have offered closeups of this terrain in various papers and books which I will reference freely. Here I will focus on the relations among the parts, hoping to provide a short introduction to my work on language and thought for some, and for others a clarification of the larger plan. I take language and thought to stand largely parallel to one another. For example, the intentionality of each is defined independently of that of the other: thought is possible without language, and language is possible that does not convey thought. On the other hand, public language is not merely a stimulus to the development of

An Epistemology for Phenomenology

There is a tendency to assimilate so called “consciousness studies” to studies of the phenomenology of experience, and it seems to me that this is a shame. It is a shame, I think, because there is no such thing as a legitimate phenomenology of experience whereas there certainly is such a thing as consciousness. So long as people assimilate studies of consciousness to studies of phenomenal experience, they are side stepping the real issues – the ones for another lifetime.

Deflating Socially Constructed Objects: What Thoughts Do to the World

Intentions and conventions can “make a thing be what it is” in two different ways. Taken separately, neither has any magic in it at all. Neither produces objects of a kind that is in any way remarkable or that requires any special mode of understanding. Only by running these two ways together in our minds do we imagine “socially constructed” or “socially constituted” objects to be other than wholly mundane.

Natural signs

A description of natural signs and natural information is proposed that interprets the presence of natural information as an affordance for the particular animal or species that would interpret it. This solves the reference class problem that undercuts earlier correlational accounts. It explains how there can be natural signs of individuals and also various non-correlational signs. The effect of superimposition of natural signs is then described.

WHY (MOST) CONCEPTS AREN'T CATEGORIES

In the last century, hundreds of experiments were conducted by psychologists trying to discover how people “classify” or “categorize” items under kind (category) words such as dog, chair , and fruit. The position I have taken about such words is that they do not designate classes but rather units of an entirely different kind. A very few, uncompounded nouns that designate classes do exist, but words like dog, chair , and fruit are not among them. In this chapter I introduce this contrary viewpoint. I cannot attempt to defend it at any length in this short essay, but I will present a portion of this view, using the most intuitively understandable terms I can muster. The details are spelled out in On Clear and Confused Ideas ( Millikan, 2000 ), which I will refer to as OCCI.

It is likely misbelief never has a function

I highlight and amplify three central points that McKay & Dennett (M&D) make about the origin of failures to perform biologically proper functions. I question whether even positive illusions meet criteria for evolved misbelief.

White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice.

Ruth Millikans 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. Universally regarded as an important, even brilliant, work, its complexity and dense presentation made it difficult to plumb. This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to that much discussed volume and as an extension and application of Millikans central and controversial themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology. The title essay, referring to the White Queens practice of exercising her mind by believing impossible things, discusses meaning rationalism and argues that rationality is not in the head, indeed, that there is no legitimate interpretation under which logical possibility and necessity are known a priori. Nor are there any laws of rational psychology. Rationality is not a lawful occurrence but a biological norm that is effected in an integrated head-world system under biologically ideal conditions. In other essays, Millikan clarifies her views on the nature of mental representation, explores whether human thought is a product of natural selection, examines the nature of behavior as studied by the behavioral sciences, and discusses the issues of individualism in psychology, psychological explanation, indexicality in thought, what knowledge is, and the realism/antirealism debate.