THE EVOLUTIONARY TURN OF MEANING CONSTRUCTION AND ITS DEFENSE——FROM GEORGE LAKOFF TO RUTH MILLIKAN

Abstract

With the development of the naturalization movement of meaning research and the emergence of the evolutionary turn, the "new" meaning theory, under the basic framework of evolution, has made a new exploration and interpretation of the construction process, evolutionary mechanism and role of the meaning generation and understanding of natural language. Meaning is shaped by natural selection, with the objective purpose of maintaining and replicating itself. The new meaning interpretation schema reconstructs meaning according to scientific terms such as cognitive science and evolutionary biology, rejects the dualistic basic philosophical hypothesis of traditional meaning theory, which is dis-embodied realism and transcendental rationalism, and explores multiple ways to make the boundary between mind, language and world more flexible.