Ruth Garrett Millikan (born 1933) is a well-known American philosopher of biology, psychology, and language. She was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and gave the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in 2002.
Millikan earned her PhD from Yale University where she studied under Wilfrid Sellars. She and Paul Churchland are often considered leading proponents of "right wing" (i.e., individualistic) Sellarsianism.
Millikan taught at the University of Michigan and for many years at the University of Connecticut, where she is now professor emeritus.
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Millikan is most famous for the view which, in her 1989 paper of the same name, she refers to as "Biosemantics".[1] Biosemantics is a theory about something philosophers often refer to as "intentionality". Intentionality is the phenomenon of things being such that they are 'about' other things, paradigm cases being thoughts and sentences. A belief of mine that you will do my chores for me, for example, is about you and about my chores. The same is true of a corresponding desire, intention or spoken or written command.
In general the goal of a theory of intentionality is to explain the phenomenon - things being such that they are 'about' other things - in other, more informative, terms. Such a theory aims to give an account of what this "aboutness" consists in. Just as chemistry offers the claim that "water is H2O" as a theory of what water consists in, so biosemantics aims for a constitutive account of intentionality.
As the name hints, Millikan's theory explains intentionality in terms that are broadly 'biological'. Specifically, she explains it in terms of ways that things have been selected to be, in particular in terms of a normal kind of explanation of a thing.
In her article, "Naturalist Reflections on Knowledge", Millikan defends the position that the justification of true beliefs through an explanation in accordance with evolution constitutes knowledge.
Millikan has published five books,
The 1993 and 2005 books are collections of papers.
Millikan has also published many articles, many of which are listed here and available (in draft form) here.