Behavioral and Brain Sciences



Continuing Commentary

Identifying, reidentifying, and misidentifying


Eric Saidel a1
a1 Philosophy Department, The University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504-3770 saidel@usl.edu

Abstract

Millikan (1998a) relies on the ability an organism may have to reidentify external objects. It is difficult to develop an account of how this might occur because the organism could make a mistake in the tokening of a concept; it could misidentify the external object. To sustain her nondescriptivism, Millikan's account of reidentification must make the link between concept and object arbitrary. However, to make mistakes possible, there must be a norm for the production of concepts. These two requirements seem to leave no room for a middle ground.