Abstract: What is the aim of semantic theorizing? What form should a semantic theory take? What constraints must a semantic theory meet? What sort of phenomena must such a theory explain? These are questions that philosophers struggled with at the time of the early development of natural language semantics in the late 1960's and 1970's. Today natural language semantics is a mature and thriving subfield of linguistics, so it seems there should be some agreement on the above questions. I will argue that there is indeed wide-spread agreement and I will rehearse the motivations for the orthodox picture. With this framework spelled out I will address some further questions that arise. What exactly are truth conditions? Where do propositions fit into the story? Are the truth conditions of sentences the same as the propositions expressed by sentences? What is the relationship between truth conditions and the things we say? I will argue that the philosophical notion of a "proposition" does not fall within the purview of natural language semantics. I will also explicate a picture of how natural language semantics properly construed relates to a general theory of communication and conversational dynamics.