Biosemantik

The volume gathers, for the first time in German translation, Ruth Millikan's most important essays on the philosophy of language. In these essays, Millikan presents a new conception of linguistic conventions, arguing that language use is not determined by rules and that biological functions form the true foundation of communication. She develops her own theory of the meaning of proper names and empirical expressions, reinterprets the phenomena that have prompted Fregean theories of meaning, and offers an original explanation, grounded in sensory perception, of how listeners transform linguistic information into linguistic understanding and why children effortlessly learn their mother tongue.