Millikans Biosemantic Account

Millikan's Biosemantic Account of Intentionality

Many philoophers appeal to teleology in attempting to naturalise intentionality.

The role of Teleology: Consumers and Producers

Millikan agrees that teleology and function crucial for naturalising content.

Also agrees that what makes a thing into an inner representation is its function to represent.

But, we should shift the focus onto representation consumption. Devices that use representations are what determine them to be representations and determine their content.

If a function of inner representation is to indicate its represented content, then, it must be one that functions as a sign/representation for the system itself.

Proper function: determined by the histories of the items possessing them. Functions selected for are paradigm cases... But don't exclusively refer to origin: natural selection actively preserves structures by acting against the later emergence of less fit structures...  preservation by performance of new functions 'performed in accordance with design'.

Normal: normatively, historically, relative to a specific function. 'Normal explanation': explains the performance of a particular function, how it was typically historically performed, on those occasions where properly performed... Normal condition for performance of a function: a condition the presence of which must be mentioned in giving full normal explanation for performance of that function.

However, normal conditions not nec to do with common/typical: many functions performed only rarely, and many need only be performed rarely.

Functional system has a consumer and a producer of representations.

Consumer: the consumer is the system(s) that have historically used the mapping between representations and contents to perform their proper functions. Either two different creatures, or, if internal representations, something like different subsystem.

Must be something about the consumer that constitutes its taking the signs to indicate P rather than Q.If we know what constitutes the consumers taking a sign to indicate this, then, if ithis 'interpretation' is systematically derived from the structure of the signs, we can construct a semantics fro the consumer's language. The sign producer's function will thus be to produce signs that are true as the consumer reads the language.

To find out the content of a representation: look at consumer functions, coadapted with the producing systems, and what mapping between rep and world was required.

Frog example: frog's visual representation represents food, as only when there was food that…