Language: A Biological Model

by Ruth Garrett Millikan

Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing them to biological norms that emerge from natural selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Language, Biology

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

Reviews

[Zo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deceptively challenging book due to the speed and directness with which Millikan moves across topics. The more I wrap my head around it, the more I think I understand that Millikan is here presenting a radically different view of language than is typical in phil of lang. Yet she presents all her building blocks in such matter of the fact fashion that it was often hard for me to realize how much Millikan was departing from the norm and making bold claims. One of the flaws of this book is that if Millikan is going to make so many departures, it would be nice if she did more to explain what is going on, the concepts she is using, and the stakes of the debate with other parties. That being said it is my own fault that I don't have more familiarity with her past work on proper function, semantic-mapping diagrams, etc.. Anyway, there is a lot to go into and evaluate here, since I think Millikan manages to make substantive, defensible, but at the same time uncertain claims in pretty much every essay. The topics I felt most able to grasp onto were her presentation of her theory of meaning, the relationship she tries to draw between language/thought, the essay on kinds not being classes, the ideas about Pushmi-Pullyu representations, and the final essay on semantics/pragmatics. I'm not going to do proper justice to any of these issues here, but I'll start by saying I find her general deflationist attitude towards many phil of lang questions compelling, and like her attempt to ground her talk of language in a naturalistic/descriptive theory. That being said, the remarks she does make about normativity, rule following, and how semantic notions are built up of proper functions are enough to entice, but not enough to convince. I'm sure I would benefit from going back through the essays more carefully, but I think Millikan needs to do more to make the case for her version of things. I'm really not sure how to think about pluralism in the philosophy of language, and to what degree her version of things is actively at odds with something like Brandom versus just using its own vocabulary/picture. What is the desiderata? The idea of hers I had the most fun thinking about was that perception of language is immediate to content in the same way other sensory modalities perception is. I think the idea is in need of much clarification about the distinction between perception/cognition, and when concepts are in play, resulting in Millikan grouping together far too many cases that may or may not truly fit. Yet, I think she is onto something potentially very important, that kind of matches McDowell's usage of that Wittgenstein quote about language reaching up to the world, and also maybe matches some of Carruthers' work about inner speech. I think the key distinctions to unpack are when perception of language is perception versus perceptual judgment (on the Block model), and at what point does perception of language involve something conceptual that goes beyond perception. Lots of other ideas worth exploring here. The four star rating is in large part because I just didn't have enough background to get a lot of this. The stuff I felt like I did "get" to greater degrees was all really thought-provoking and worthwhile.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for On Meaning, Meaning, and Meaning and Semantics/Pragmatics.