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In lectures later published as ''[[Naming and Necessity]]'', Kripke provided a rough outline of his causal theory of reference for names. Although he refused to explicitly endorse such a theory, he indicated that such an approach was far more promising than the then-popular [[descriptive theory of names]] introduced by [[Bertrand Russell|Russell]], according to which names are in fact disguised [[definite descriptions]]. Kripke argued that in order to use a name successfully to refer to something, you do not have to be acquainted with a uniquely identifying description of that thing. Rather, your use of the name need only be caused (in an appropriate way) by the naming of that thing.
Such a causal process might proceed as follows: the parents of a newborn baby name it, pointing to the child and saying "we'll call her 'Jane'."
However, not everyone who knows Jane and uses the name 'Jane' to refer to her was present at this naming.
Philosophers such as [[Gareth Evans (philosopher)|Gareth Evans]] have insisted that the theory's account of the dubbing process needs to be broadened to include what are called 'multiple groundings'. After her initial baptism, uses of 'Jane' in the presence of Jane may, under the right circumstances, be considered to further ground the name ('Jane') in its referent (Jane). That is, if I am in direct contact with Jane, the reference for my utterance of the name 'Jane' may be fixed not simply by a causal chain through people who had encountered her earlier (when she was first named); it may also be indexically fixed to Jane at the moment of my utterance. Thus our modern day use of a name such as 'Christopher Columbus' can be thought of as referring to Columbus through a causal chain that terminates not simply in one instance of his naming, but rather in a series of grounding uses of the name that occurred throughout his life. Under certain circumstances of confusion, this can lead to the alteration of a name's referent (for one example of how this might happen, see [[Twin Earth thought experiment]]).
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* We can successfully refer to individuals for whom we have ''no'' uniquely identifying description. (For example, a speaker can talk about Phillie Sophik even if one only knows him as 'some poet'.)
* We can successfully refer to individuals for whom the only identifying descriptions we have fail to refer as we believe them to. (Many speakers have no identifying beliefs about [[Christopher Columbus]] other than 'the first European in North America' or 'the first person to believe that the earth was round'. Both of these beliefs are incorrect.
* We use names to speak hypothetically about what ''could'' have happened to a person. A name functions as a [[rigid designator]], while a definite description does not. (One could say 'If Aristotle had died young, he would never have taught Alexander the Great.' But if 'the teacher of Alexander the Great' were a component of the ''meaning'' of 'Aristotle' then this would be nonsense.)
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The same motivations apply to causal theories in regard to other sorts of terms. Putnam, for instance, attempted to establish that 'water' refers rigidly to the stuff that we do in fact call 'water', to the exclusion of any possible identical water-like substance for which we have no causal connection. These considerations motivate [[semantic externalism]]. Because speakers interact with a natural kind such as water regularly, and because there is generally no naming ceremony through which their names are formalized, the multiple groundings described above are even more essential to a causal account of such terms. A speaker whose environment changes may thus observe that the referents of his terms shift, as described in the [[Twin Earth thought experiment|Twin Earth]] and [[Swamp man]] [[thought experiment]]s.
== Variations<!--'Causal-historical theory of reference', 'Causal-descriptive theory of reference', and 'Descriptive-causal theory of reference' redirect here--> ==
Variations of the causal theory include:
* The '''causal-historical theory of reference'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> is the original version of the causal theory. It was put forward by [[Keith Donnellan]] in 1972<ref>Donnellan, Keith. (1972). "Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions."</ref> and [[Saul Kripke]] in 1980.<ref>Kripke, S. "A Puzzle about Belief", 1979, in Martinich (ed) 1996, pp 382–409.</ref><ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/ Names (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]</ref>
* The '''descriptive-causal theory of reference'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> ('''causal-descriptive theory of reference'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--><ref>[[Stathis Psillos]], ''Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth'', Routledge, 1999, p. 279.</ref> put forward by [[David Lewis (philosopher)|David Lewis]].<ref>Stefano Gattei, ''Thomas Kuhn's 'Linguistic Turn' and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism: Incommensurability, Rationality and the Search for Truth'', Ashgate Publishing, 2012, p. 122 n. 232.</ref>
== Criticisms of the theory ==
* [[Gareth Evans (philosopher)|Gareth Evans]] argued that the causal theory, or at least certain common and over-simple variants of it, have the consequence that, however remote or obscure the causal connection between someone's use of a proper name and the object it originally referred to, they still refer to that object when they use the name.
* The links between different users of the name are particularly obscure. Each user must somehow pass the name on to the next, and must somehow "mean" the right individual as they do so (suppose "Socrates" is the name of a pet [[aardvark]]). Kripke himself notes the difficulty, [[John Searle]] makes much of it.{{Citation needed|reason=Reliable source needed for the whole sentence|date=September 2015}}
* [[Mark Sainsbury (philosopher)|Mark Sainsbury]] argued<ref>[http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23599/?id=1343 ''Departing from Frege''] Essay XII</ref> for a causal theory similar to Kripke's, except that the baptised object is eliminated. A "baptism" may be a baptism of nothing, he argues: a name can be intelligibly introduced even if it names nothing.<ref>{{
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== References ==
* [[Gareth Evans (philosopher)|Evans, G.]] (1985). "The Causal Theory of Names". in [[Aloysius Martinich|Martinich, A. P.]] ed. ''The Philosophy of Language''. Oxford University Press.▼
▲* [[Gareth Evans (philosopher)|Evans, G.]] (1985) "The Causal Theory of Names". in [[Aloysius Martinich|Martinich, A. P.]] ed. ''The Philosophy of Language''. Oxford University Press.
▲* Evans, G. ''The Varieties of Reference'', Oxford 1982
* [[Saul Kripke|Kripke, Saul.]] 1980. ''Naming and Necessity''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
* [[John McDowell|McDowell, John.]] (1977) "On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name."
* [[
* {{cite journal |last1=Machery |first1=E. |last2=Mallon |first2=R. |last3=Nichols |first3=S. |last4=Stich |first4=S. P. |year=2004 |title=Semantics, Cross-cultural Style |journal=Cognition
▲* {{cite journal |last1=Machery |first1=E. |last2=Mallon |first2=R. |last3=Nichols |first3=S. |last4=Stich |first4=S. P. |year=2004 |title=Semantics, Cross-cultural Style |journal=Cognition |volume=92 |issue=3 |pages=B1-B12 |ref=harv |doi=10.1016/j.cognition.2003.10.003}}
* {{cite book |last=Sainsbury |first=R.M. |chapter=Sense without Reference |title=Building on Frege |editor1-last=Newen |editor1-first=A. |editor2-last=Nortmann |editor2-first=U.| editor3-last=Stuhlmann Laisz |editor3-first=R. |___location=Stanford |date=2001 |ref=harv}}
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