Causal Theory of Reference

Core Idea and Historical Background

The causal theory of reference is a family of views in the philosophy of language and mind that explains how words (or mental states) come to be about objects, kinds, or properties in the world by appealing to causal relations rather than primarily to descriptive information associated with those words.

Earlier descriptivist theories (often associated with Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell) held that a name or term refers to what uniquely satisfies a cluster of descriptions in the speaker’s mind (for example, “Aristotle = the teacher of Alexander the Great, the author of the Metaphysics, etc.”). Causal theorists argued that such accounts fail to explain:

• how reference is preserved despite widespread error and ignorance;
• how we can successfully refer when we know almost nothing about the referent;
• and how reference is stable across different speakers and times.

Against this background, the causal theory proposes that reference is secured and transmitted by historical and environmental causal connections, rather than (or not only) by descriptive content in the speaker’s head.

Kripke, Putnam, and Paradigm Cases

Kripke on Proper Names

Saul Kripke’s lectures in Naming and Necessity (1970, published 1980) are the classic locus of the causal theory for proper names. According to Kripke:

• A name is initially attached to an object in a baptism or dubbing event (e.g., someone points to a baby and says “We’ll call her ‘Elizabeth’”).
• Later uses of the name refer to that same object because they are causally connected to the original baptism through a historical chain of communication (speakers inherit their use from earlier speakers who intended to refer to the same individual).

In this framework, the name “Aristotle” refers to Aristotle even if most of what people believe about him is false. What matters is that their uses of the name are causally linked to a tradition of use originating with the actual man, not that they associate the right descriptions with the name.

Kripke also defends the idea that names are rigid designators: they refer to the same individual in all possible worlds in which that individual exists. The causal story of reference undergirds this rigidity: the name’s reference is fixed by the actual individual introduced in the causal chain, regardless of which properties that individual might have had in counterfactual situations.

Putnam on Natural Kind Terms

Hilary Putnam extended the causal picture to natural kind terms such as “water,” “gold,” or “tiger.” His influential “Twin Earth” thought experiment (in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” 1975) is central:

• Imagine a planet, Twin Earth, where the stuff that behaves like water is not H₂O but a different chemical, XYZ.
• Before the discovery of chemistry, Earthlings and their molecularly identical twins on Twin Earth would have shared all the same descriptions for “water” (clear, drinkable, fills lakes, falls as rain).
• Yet, Putnam argues, Earth English “water” refers to H₂O, while Twin Earth English “water” (or “water*”) refers to XYZ.

This suggests that descriptions alone do not fix reference. Instead, the term’s reference is partly determined by a causal connection to the underlying natural kind in the environment and by social division of linguistic labor: non-experts rely on experts (chemists, botanists, etc.) whose practices causally track the nature of the kind.

For Putnam, “meanings just ain’t in the head”: reference and thus meaning depend on the world and the linguistic community, not only on the individual’s mental contents.

Variations and Criticisms

Different Causal Models

Within the broad causal tradition, several more refined accounts have emerged:

• Simple causal-historical chains: Emphasizing unbroken chains of communication from initial baptism to current use (often connected with Kripke-style views).
• Causal-descriptivist hybrids: Recognizing a privileged causal relation to the referent but allowing descriptive information to help fix or stabilize reference, especially when causal chains are complex or messy.
• Social and teleological approaches: Highlighting intentions, conventions, and the functional roles of words in communication as part of the causal network that grounds reference.

Causal theories have also been adapted to mental content (how thoughts refer), leading to externalist accounts (e.g., Tyler Burge, Ruth Millikan, Fred Dretske) in which mental representation depends on causal interaction with the environment.

Major Objections

Critics have raised several challenges:

1. The qua-problem:
   In an initial baptism, how is it determined as what the object is named (e.g., as a person, statue, or lump of clay)? Pure causal contact may not specify the relevant aspect under which the object is picked out.

2. Deviant or multiple causal chains:
   A word might be causally connected to more than one candidate referent, or connected in strange ways (e.g., via misinformation). Critics argue that causal chains alone do not explain how the “right” referent is chosen.

3. Reference change and error:
   Over time, usage and beliefs about a term may shift. Some argue that causal theories struggle to explain reference drift, when a community seems to switch targets (for example, in scientific terms that are substantially re-theorized).

4. Intensional phenomena:
   Descriptivists point out that causal theories face difficulties with Fregean puzzles, such as how “Hesperus is Phosphorus” can be informative if both names have the same referent, or how to model belief contexts where substitution of co-referring terms fails.

In response, causal theorists and their allies have often augmented the theory, adding:

• Speaker intentions (to refer to the same thing others refer to by this term);
• Community norms and deference to experts;
• or partial descriptive constraints that shape how causal links are interpreted.

These enriched accounts aim to retain the causal insights while addressing descriptive and normative dimensions of reference.

Contemporary Significance

The causal theory of reference now functions less as a single, rigid doctrine and more as a cluster of related insights:

• That historical and environmental facts substantially determine reference;
• That social practices and division of epistemic labor are central to how language hooks onto the world;
• And that reference is not fully fixed by a speaker’s internal descriptive beliefs.

These ideas continue to influence:

• Metasemantics: theories about what ultimately grounds meaning and reference.
• Philosophy of mind and content externalism: accounts of how mental states represent the world.
• Philosophy of science: analyses of theoretical terms and scientific realism.
• Linguistics and cognitive science: models of lexical meaning acquisition and concept formation.

While no fully unified causal theory commands universal acceptance, causal elements are now standard components of sophisticated, hybrid accounts of reference. The ongoing debate concerns how best to integrate causal, descriptive, intentional, and social factors into a comprehensive account of how language and thought latch onto reality.