In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication

PART I: GETTING ACQUAINTED.- Chapter 1: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going to?.- Chapter 2: Who are you? What are you here for? And can I help you achieve your goals?.- Chapter 3: Appendix from the classroom: towards a useful introduction to communication.- Chapter 4: 'What is' questions in general, and 'What is communication?' in particular.- PART II: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION.- Chapter 5: Emergence and reduction.- Chapter 6: The central problem of communication studies.- Chapter 7: Can there be a consistent reductive account of communication?.- Chapter 8: Descartes' slip: a short appendix on the infinite theoretical complexity of simple objects.- Chapter 9: Meaning, context, and the limits of the reductive theory of meaning (extensionalism).- Chapter 10: Meaning and context again: on what students of communication can learn from Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of communication.- Chapter 11: On the study of goals: Cybernetics vs. Reductionism.- PART III: HOW TO STUDY COMMUNICATION.- Chapter 12: The central problem of Communication again: why a complete theory of communication is impossible, and what can we do instead.- Chapter 13: Communication and Biology.- Chapter 14: Communication and Linguistics.- Chapter 15: Communication and the Social Sciences.- Chapter 16: Communication and Technology.- Chapter 17: Questions regarding our future.