Ruth Millikan

Ruth Millikan (* 1933 ) is an American philosopher and professor at the University of Connecticut . Her main areas of work are philosophy of mind , philosophy of language and ontology .

Life

Millikan studied philosophy at Oberlin College and Yale University and earned her PhD in 1969 . She has been a professor at the University of Connecticut since 1983 , interrupted only by a research professorship at Stockholm University . In 2002 she was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize for her achievements in the field of philosophy of mind. In 2014 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Millikan is married to the psychologist Donald Shankweiler .

plant

Ruth Millikan is best known for her attempts to explain the phenomenon of intentionality in a naturalistic framework (see teleosemantics ). Intentionality is the characteristic of mental states to relate to something in the world and therefore to be true or false. For example, the thought that Napoleon was in Russia relates to the fact that Napoleon was in Russia and is therefore true.

The problem of intentionality now consists in clarifying how physical states - such as neuronal states - can have the property of an intentional content. For this purpose, various proposed solutions are u. a. developed by Jerry Fodor and Fred Dretske . Millikan, together with David Papineau, is the best-known representative of an evolutionary biological approach. Their basic thesis is that a state X relates to a fact Y when it is X's evolutionary task to indicate the presence of Y.

literature

• Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories. The MIT Press, 1984, ISBN 0-262-63115-6 .
• White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice. The MIT Press, 1993, ISBN 0-262-63162-8 .
• On Clear and Confused Ideas. Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-521-62553-X . (pdf)
• The Varieties of Meaning: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures. The MIT Press, 2004, ISBN 0-262-63342-6 . (pdf)
  • German: The variety of meaning. Signs, goals and their kinship. translated by Hajo Greif. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-29429-1 .
• Language: A Biological Model. Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-928477-6 . (pdf)
• Biosemantics. Philosophical essays. translated by Alex Burri. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-29579-3 .
• Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information. Oxford University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-871719-5 .

Web links

• Millikan's website (English)