Interactive and face-to-face communication: a perspective from philosophy of mind and language

Abstract

The aim of this article is to derive fundamental communication conditions from central assumptions in recent philosophy of mind and language, and then use these conditions to clarify essential similarities and differences between face-to-face and interactive communication. The analyses are to a large extent made on the basis of participant observations and dialogues with students in a further education course for medical paramedics, but the conclusions should be of interest to anyone who has a pedagogical interest in understanding the nature of the two forms of communication. The arguments set out in the article have both a descriptive and a normative dimension. They are descriptive in the sense that they aim to give a philosophical analysis of successful communication; they are normative in the sense that they seek to understand how communication can be improved. The article concludes that the philosophical analysis presented constitutes a plausible conceptual framework for analyzing empirical phenomena related to face-toface and interactive communication.