How do our thoughts represent the world around us? And how can we explain this as a natural phenomenon? Ruth Millikan’s classic Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories presents a unified account of the semantic properties of language and thought in terms of their biological functions. Besides its immediate application to the theory of content (meaning, reference, etc), the work has implications for our understanding of action, of knowledge and rationality, of natural kinds, and of social phenomena, and it is rightly viewed as a landmark in naturalistic philosophy.

Naturalized Philosophy of Mind and Language marks the impending 25th anniversary of the publication of this groundbreaking book by focusing on the philosophical problems to which Millikan has dedicated her long and distinguished career.

Specific topics to be addressed include: teleosemantics, perception, theory and science and the phenomenology of content.

Major funding for this conference comes from an anonymous gift to the Philosophy Department, with additional support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, the Cognitive Science Program, and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.