Successful literal communication has a standard explanation in analytic philosophy, which requires some determinate proposition expressed by the speaker to be taken up by the audience. In this paper, I extend the standard explanation of communication to account for cases of indeterminacy. Unlike other proposals, the extension does not give up that a unique proposition is communicated. What the audience takes up is a coarse-grained proposition—a “good enough” answer to the question under discussi…
Read moreSuccessful literal communication has a standard explanation in analytic philosophy, which requires some determinate proposition expressed by the speaker to be taken up by the audience. In this paper, I extend the standard explanation of communication to account for cases of indeterminacy. Unlike other proposals, the extension does not give up that a unique proposition is communicated. What the audience takes up is a coarse-grained proposition—a “good enough” answer to the question under discussion. I motivate this Coarse-Grained Model of communication from the central Gricean maxims.
