Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers over representation producers in her account of content determination. However, Millikan herself rejects this interpretation and claims to give producers and consumers equal weight in her theory. In this paper, I propose to resolve this issue by arguing that there are actually two Millikanian theories of content, a consumer theory that is explicitly formulated in her earlier work and a significantly different, “hybrid” theory that is implicitly presupposed in much of her later work. This result is not only of exegetical value, but also of great systematic interest, since both theories turn out to be interesting proposals in their own right that face significantly different tasks and challenges.
Source: Synthese
Author: Peter Schulte
Institution: Umeå University
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,190
Funder: University of Connecticut
OpenAlex ID: W4413832145