Ruth Millikan

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

Life

Millikan studied at Oberlin College and Yale University Philosophy and earned her PhD in 1969. Since 1983 she is a professor at the University of Connecticut, interrupted only by a research professorship at the University of Stockholm. In 2002, she received the Jean Nicod Prize awarded for their achievements in the field of philosophy of mind. Millikan is married to psychologist Donald Shankweiler.

Work

Became known Ruth Millikan in particular by their attempts to explain the phenomenon of intentionality in a naturalistic context (see Teleosemantik ). Under intentionality refers to the feature of mental states, to refer to something in the world, and therefore to be true or false. Thus, referring about the idea that Napoleon was in Russia, on the fact that Napoleon was in Russia, and is therefore true.

The Intentionalitätsproblem now is to clarify how physical states - such as neural states - can have the status of intentional content. For this purpose, among others, solutions for been developed by Jerry Fodor and Fred Dretske. Millikan is now together with David Papineau the best known representative of an evolutionary approach. Their basic thesis is that a state X then Y refers to a fact when it is the evolutionary task of X, show the presence of Y.