Ruth Millikan
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Ruth Garrett Millikan (born 1933) is a well-known
American philosopher of
biology,
psychology, and
language. She was awarded the
Jean Nicod Prize and gave the
Jean Nicod Lectures in
Paris in 2002.Millikan earned her PhD from
Yale University where she studied under
Wilfrid Sellars. She and
Paul Churchland are often considered leading proponents of "right wing" (i.e., individualistic) Sellarsianism.Millikan taught at the
University of Michigan and for many years at the
University of Connecticut, where she is now
professor emeritus.
Views
Millikan is most famous for the view which, in her 1989 paper of the same name, she refers to as "Biosemantics".
Biosemantics is a theory about something philosophers often refer to as "
intentionality". Intentionality is the phenomenon of things being such that they are 'about' other things, paradigm cases being thoughts and sentences. A belief of mine that you will do my chores for me, for example, is about you and about my chores. The same is true of a corresponding desire, intention or spoken or written command.In general the goal of a theory of intentionality is to explain the phenomenon - things being such that they are 'about' other things - in other, more informative, terms. Such a theory aims to give an account of what this "aboutness" consists in. Just as chemistry offers the claim that "water is H2O" as a theory of what water consists in, so biosemantics aims for a constitutive account of intentionality.As the name hints, Millikan's theory explains intentionality in terms that are broadly 'biological'. Specifically, she explains it in terms of ways that things have been selected to be, in particular in terms of a normal kind of explanation of a thing.In her article, "Naturalist Reflections on Knowledge", Millikan defends the position that the justification of true beliefs through an explanation in accordance with evolution constitutes knowledge.
Bibliography
Millikan has published five books,
- (1984) Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (ISBN-13: 978-0262631150)
- (1993) White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice (ISBN-13: 978-0262631624)
- (2000) On Clear and Confused Ideas pdf (ISBN-13: 978-0521625531)
- (2004) The Varieties of Meaning: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures pdf (ISBN-13: 978-0262633420)
- (2005) Language: A Biological Model pdf (ISBN-13: 978-0199284771)
The 1993 and 2005 books are collections of papers.Millikan has also published many articles, many of which are listed
here and available (in draft form)
here.
See also
External links
Ruth MillikanRuth Millikanルース・ミリカン
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