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MisterCake (talk | contribs) →top: Kripke doesn't like the term causal theory |
Torpeniczel (talk | contribs) Added "where the bearer exists", because the statement about "all possible worlds" is meaningless without it. It is now in accordance with Kripke's definition. |
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* 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.)
A causal theory avoids these difficulties. A name refers rigidly to the bearer to which it is causally connected, regardless of any particular facts about the bearer, and in all [[possible worlds]] where the bearer exists.
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 [[Swampman]] [[thought experiment]]s.
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