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What is Communicative Success?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Pagin
Peter Pagin*
Affiliation:
Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
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Extract

In most of our communicative transactions we are confident of success. We read the newspaper and are normally pretty sure that we have understood the text. We usually think we understand what is said in the TV broadcast and in casual conversation, and only rarely do subsequent events make us revise our judgment that we did. But that we are confident of success, even if we are right, and even if we are both right and justified, does not mean that we have a clear idea of what success consists in.

Ideas about successful communication have had a prominent place in the philosophy of language in recent decades, mostly as a step on the way to meaning theoretical claims. This has been the case with philosophers like Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Dummett, and Evans. Mostly, the discussion of communicative success has been of limited extent, serving as a subordinate part of some longer argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 85 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

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