To distinguish between ordinary biological functions and representational functions, Nicholas Shea draws upon the more elaborate machinery of Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic theory. For Millikan, any object that has semantic properties plays a role that involves a kind of mediation between two “cooperating devices”, a producer and a consumer device. In the case of an indicative signal or representation, the representation is supposed to affect the activities of the consumer in a way that will only further the performance of the consumer’s biological functions if some state of affairs obtains. In the case of an imperative representation, the representation is supposed to affect the activities of the consumer by inducing them to bring some state of affairs about. Shea treats genetic messages as having both indicative and imperative content, and depending on both producers and consumers (Shea 2007b, 2011, 2013). Where Shea follows Millikan in emphasizing the roles of both producers and consumers, Jablonka (2002) tries to achieve as much as possible with an emphasis on consumer mechanisms alone. It seems clear that the attention to producer and consumer mechanisms is a step forward in this discussion, but we will see in section 5 that it also poses problems. In thinking about both inheritance and development, it turns out to be unclear whether there are independently identifiable mechanisms which count as senders and receivers, producers and consumers.