Talk:Causal theory of reference

message: : Causal theories of names becamse popular during and after the 1970s as a result largely of work by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnelan, and were eventually expanded to other parts of language, such as natural kind terms by Hilary Putnam.
: The theory is usually advocated by philosophers who deny (1) that most proper names are disguised descriptions (as Russell held), and (2) that there is anything like a Fregean sense attached to a proper name (for example, Saul Kripke, the originator of the theory)
Two problems with these passages.
1. Saul Kripke does *not* endorse a "causal theory of names." The development of the causal theory clearly owes a tremendous amount to Kripke's arguments in Naming and Necessity, but in N&N Kripke explicitly denies that he is offering any comprehensive theory of naming whatsoever--let alone a causal one. This may be a minor point for the purposes of this article; but it is a major one for Kripke's own philosophical method.
2. Putnam's "Meaning of Meaning" was clearly important in making the case for a causal theory of (at least some) natural kind terms. But this was not an "extension" of Kripke's work into areas that Kripke had not already touched on: a very substantial part of the lectures that became Naming and Necessity were already devoted to applying something like his account of proper names to natural kind terms such as "gold" and "water" (and fictional natural kind terms such as "unicorn").
I've edited the first sentence a bit to reflect Kripke's work. I don't know entirely what to do about the first point, though, so I wanted to throw the question out for further discussion. What do y'all think we should do to account for Kripke's reticence about theorizing?
Radgeek 03:49, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exegetical points 

message: I heard no objections to the move proposed above, and looking around the Wikipedia, it seemed that the redirect at 'causal theory of reference' was more widely linked to already. As the article contains information on reference for more than simply names, this seemed the more appropriate title. Ncsaint 20:03, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name Change 

message: Nice lead section ya' got there!! Well done. No hassles at all. Just delete the old boy completely. I'm puttin'  this one up for FA candidate!!--Lacatosias 15:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead 

message: As I distantly recall (from a PhD I abandoned on the subject), Donald Davidson had interesting objections to the causal theory, somewhat similar to Evans. Perhaps someone should add them. Ben Finn 16:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Davidson

message: In discussing the work of Stitch et al., it is written that "This, of course, assumes that administering surveys is doing philosophy." 
I find this comment not only unnecessary but irregular. It could be re-written as a legitimate counter-criticism but comes off more as a petulant graduate student's sniffing at genuine methodological disagreements. I'd get rid of it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.249.245.15 (talk) 03:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inflammatory comment in criticism section? 

message: She, and her direct reference theory, needs a mention in this article.  Maybe I'll get around to it...  --- Charles Stewart(talk) 09:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ruth Barcan Marcus]] 

message: Link...-->      --Faustnh (talk) 19:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A convenient distinction of two kinds of meaning 

message: User:KYPark --125.128.159.55 (talk) 15:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Triangle of reference]] 

message: I think it's a bit premature to cite Machery et. al. (2004) as evidence against the Causal Theory of Reference. There's been several articles criticizing or outright refuting the results of that paper (such as Lam 2010 and Izumi et. al. 2017). Can we remove this criticism, or at least add the criticisms of Machery et. al. (2004) underneath the notation for it? 2600:6C50:487F:FBA0:DC77:ACEE:F6CF:9BC (talk) 02:42, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Machery et. al. reference in criticisms