Abstract

This thesis asks a simple question. Why is it that communication between two people succeeds? In other words, what makes it so that one person can signify whatever thought they are entertaining to another person, and that person will understand what the first wanted to say? Consequently, what are the conditions for success, and when does communication fail? This thesis takes a stance on these questions, and develops a framework for systematically explaining communicative success. I discuss relevant accounts of communication in the history of philosophy and contemporary accounts, and their contribution to what amounts to the Classical Model. The Classical Model answers the central questions of the thesis convincingly for many cases. But it faces serious challenges from a range of cases in which it seems difficult to impossible to determine a single proposition communicated. I look at, and critically discuss, a variety of current accounts intended to determine the content of such utterances, all of which give up some aspect of the Classical Model. This discussion calls for a solution, and I develop such a solution in detail. The model developed extends the Classical Model and makes it possible to determine a single proposition for the utterance's content in all problematic cases. The thesis is maximally conservative w.r.t. the Classical Model. It explains communication with an explicit articulation of the Classical Model extended with a pragmatic way of determining truth conditions for utterances.