Causal Theory of Reference

The causal theory of reference is the view, developed by Saul Kripke (Naming and Necessity, 1972) and Hilary Putnam ('The Meaning of Meaning', 1975), that the reference of a name or natural kind term is fixed not by the description a speaker associates with it, but by a causal chain connecting current uses of the term back to an original dubbing or introduction. When you use 'water,' you refer to H₂O not because you associate that description with the term, but because your use is causally connected — through a chain of transmission — to contexts where H₂O was present and the term was introduced.

The theory was developed partly as a response to descriptivist accounts of reference, which struggled to explain why empty descriptions still seem to refer (we refer to Aristotle even if every description we associate with him is false) and why terms across possible worlds remain rigidly attached to the same object regardless of which descriptions that object satisfies.

Against ontological relativity, the causal theory might seem to provide the grounding that Quine claimed was unavailable: an external, mind-independent chain anchors reference to the world. But this rescue fails on inspection. Causal chains are individuated relative to a description of what counts as the same causal chain, and that description is theory-laden. The chain from current uses of 'water' to past occasions of H₂O is not a single natural object — it is a selection made by a theoretical interest in chemistry rather than, say, in thirst-quenching properties or social history. Different theoretical interests yield different causal chains, and hence different referents. The causal theory displaces the theory-relativity problem — it does not eliminate it.