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

• Main Author: Slipetz, Lindley
• Other Authors: Philosophy
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2013
• Subjects: Ruth Millikan; game theory; meaning; teleosemantics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/20377

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. === Master of Arts