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Finally, communication as jointly beneficial signalling (e.g., Maynard Smith &
Harper 2003).
Probably, the strongest objection against the use of ‘Communication’ as a
theoretical construct is that it, as opposed to gravity, is claimed to be a socially
constructed notion rather than an objective reality and, therefore, any attempt to
provide an objective account of it is doomed to failure. Interestingly, this is the view
of both those postulating the existence of characteristically social ‘facts’ (à la
Durkheim) and those postulating ‘meanings’ as the key methodological approach of
sociology (à la Weber). This debate in sociology is reflected in the systems and
interpretive perspectives in communication studies (Monge 1977; Putnam 1983). The
objection sounds powerful but misses an important point. Both ‘gravity’ and
‘communication’ are humanly constructed concepts and both refer to some external
phenomena. Their only difference is that ‘gravity’ has a generally accepted meaning
within the Earth-based physicists, whereas ‘communication’ does not have one within
the community of scientists using this notion. It is high time for a conception of
communication that could be used as an explanatory tool across the disciplines
studying it.
2.1.2.1 A hybrid theory of communication: Sociology and Biology bridged
So far, each disciplinary theory of communication has been built on the basis of
a single significant feature of it. Some have chosen the notion of sharing; some the
notion of understanding; some the notion of meaning. In addition, no theory has
explicitly and consistently taken into account the fact that communication involves
persons or other respectable animals and takes time to be completed. The following
system of three definitions combines all five fundamental features of
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communication.
Definition-12: A human H 1 has communicated with H 2 on a topic T if, and only if:
a) H 1 has understood T -symbol: U (H 1, T);
b) H 2 has understood T -symbol: U (H 2, T);
c) U (H 1, T) is presentable to and understood by H 2; and
d) U (H 2, T) is presentable to and understood by H 1.
Definition-13: A human H has understood something, S, if and only if, H can think
of S in terms of a system of human primitives (symbol ΠH).
Definition-14. π is a primitive of/for H if and only if the meaning of π is immediate
for H.
The rest of this section justifies the proposed system of definitions by providing
a full account of the nature of its key notion of understanding in accordance with both
the literature and common sense usage.
The philosophical underpinnings of human 'understanding' can be traced back at
least as far as the times of Plato and Aristotle and their attempts to provide an account
for the human mind. More recently, Locke (1690) and Hume (1758) have written
treatises on "human understanding". For both of them, 'human understanding' was
essentially taken to be coextensive with the functioning of the human mind. A
conception that is more in tune with that of Plato’s and Aristotle’s rather than any of