“Alan's bouquet” in Millikan’s Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories has no verbal meaning since it is not linguistic. It is an example of all ubiquitous phenomena all around us that give us riddles of meanings to solve. These phenomena are without semantics and syntax--language has semantics and syntax. To be able to solve these riddles, one must know of do-intention, awareness-intention, and thus meaning-intention. These riddles contain both natural and non-natural meanings. Non-natural i.e. Alan’s beliefs and desires. Natural i.e. facts about trees and buttons. Once solved, things will be simpler the second time around. The riddle gets easier to solve. Eventually the whole bouquet (phenomenon) will grow into (a part of) natural language.

posted by Graciana@Home at 4:52 pm