Many different things are said to have meaning: people mean to do various                  things; tools and other artifacts are meant for various things; people mean various                  things by using words and sentences; natural signs mean things; representations in                  people's minds also presumably mean things. In Varieties of Meaning, Ruth Garrett                  Millikan argues that these different kinds of meaning can be understood only in                  relation to each other.What does meaning in the sense of purpose (when something is                  said to be meant for something) have to do with meaning in the sense of representing                  or signifying? Millikan argues that the explicit human purposes, explicit human                  intentions, are represented purposes. They do not merely represent purposes; they                  possess the purposes that they represent. She argues further that things that                  signify, intentional signs such as sentences, are distinguished from natural signs                  by having purpose essentially; therefore, unlike natural signs, intentional signs                  can misrepresent or be false.Part I discusses "Purposes and Cross-Purposes" -- what                  purposes are, the purposes of people, of their behaviors, of their body parts, of                  their artifacts, and of the signs they use. Part II then describes a previously                  unrecognized kind of natural sign, "locally recurrent" natural signs, and several                  varieties of intentional signs, and discusses the ways in which representations                  themselves are represented. Part III offers a novel interpretation of the way                  language is understood and of the relation between semantics and pragmatics. Part IV                  discusses perception and thought, exploring stages in the development of inner                  representations, from the simplest organisms whose behavior is governed by                  perception-action cycles to the perceptions and intentional attitudes of                  humans.

Varieties of Meaning: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures PDF

The list of books you might like