Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency

Jacob, Pierre

doi:10.15502/9783958570160

Bibliographical data for

Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency

Author

Pierre Jacob

Title of Edited Collection

Open MIND

Editors

Thomas K. Metzinger
Jennifer M. Windt

Publication Date

January 2015

Publication Place

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

ISBN

9783958570160

Abstract

Millikan ’s teleosemantic approach constitutes a powerful framework for explaining the continued reproduction and proliferation of intentional conventional linguistic signs, and thereby the stability of human verbal intentional communication. While this approach needs to be complemented by particular proximate psychological mechanisms, Millikan rejects the mentalistic psychological mechanisms, which are part of the Gricean tradition in pragmatics. The goal of this paper is to assess the balance between Millikan ’s teleosemantic framework and the particular proximate psychological mechanisms that she favors.

Keywords

Acceptance (compliance)/understanding, Communicative/informative intention, Conventions, Coordination, Direct/derived proper function, Etiological theory of functions, Imitative learning, Mindreading, Natural signs, Perception theory of verbal understanding