On Distinguishing the Meaningless from the Meaningful: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Approach to Ruth Millikan\'s Teleosemantics

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Department dc:contributor.department

Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Slipetz, Lindley

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Patton, Lydia K.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Jantzen, Benjamin C.
• Pitt, Joseph C.

• Ruth Millikan
• game theory
• meaning
• teleosemantics

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:580

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/20377