On Scott-Phillips' General Account of Communication

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to critically engage with a recent attempt by Thom Scott-Phillips to offer a general account of communication. As a general account, it is intended toa pply equally well to both non-human and human interactions which are prima facie communicative in character. however, so far, Scott-Phillips has provided little detail regarding how his account is supposed to apply to the latter set of cases. After presenting what I take to be the most plausible way of filling in those details, I argue that his account would appear to be too narrow: it (minimally) fails to capture a range of human interactions which strike us as instances of communication.