{"id":{"repo_id":"vt","oai_identifier":"oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/20377"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/vt/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/20377","repository":{"repo_id":"vt","name":"Virginia Tech","base_url":"https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"On Distinguishing the Meaningless from the Meaningful: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Approach to Ruth Millikan\\'s Teleosemantics","abstract":"What distinguishes a meaningless utterance from a meaningful term? While one might say that, within the context of Ruth Millikan\\'s teleosemantics, it is a term\\'s having a proper function that distinguishes it from a meaningless utterance, I propose that the distinction can be made with reference to the history of the term. Using evolutionary game theory, I offer a way to clarify the distinction between the meaningless and the meaningful. I reject the possibility of correlating meaning with an evolutionarily stable strategy as this does not seem to be consistent with how communication works or with Millikan\\'s theory. Instead, when a term has meaning, the function category of that term corresponds to an evolutionarily stable state composed of both speaker and hearer strategies.","abstract_html":"What distinguishes a meaningless utterance from a meaningful term? While one might say that, within the context of Ruth Millikan\\'s teleosemantics, it is a term\\'s having a proper function that distinguishes it from a meaningless utterance, I propose that the distinction can be made with reference to the history of the term. Using evolutionary game theory, I offer a way to clarify the distinction between the meaningless and the meaningful. I reject the possibility of correlating meaning with an evolutionarily stable strategy as this does not seem to be consistent with how communication works or with Millikan\\'s theory. 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While one might say that, within the context of Ruth Millikan\\'s teleosemantics, it is a term\\'s having a proper function that distinguishes it from a meaningless utterance, I propose that the distinction can be made with reference to the history of the term. Using evolutionary game theory, I offer a way to clarify the distinction between the meaningless and the meaningful. I reject the possibility of correlating meaning with an evolutionarily stable strategy as this does not seem to be consistent with how communication works or with Millikan\\'s theory. 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