Thomas Kuhn and the Causal Theory of Reference

An intuitive view of language is frequently assumed: words are related by competent speakers to descriptions that determine reference. Such a view is generally understood as convention-based in the sense that it emphasises the existence of conventions that determine what descriptions are relevant. However, this descriptivist approach has been shown to be problematic in reconstructing our linguistic practices. In contrast, the Causal Theory of Reference (CTR) provides a plausible account of our use of words. CTR has been understood to be a theory that provides a non-conventionalist approach to language and one that is committed to an implausible version of essentialism. In this chapter, Ramirez-Ludena presents a version of CTR that addresses the criticisms it has normally received. She also shows the advantages of this version of CTR when compared to the traditional descriptivist model. In the legal field, CTR has been associated with non-positivistic conceptions about law. However, since CTR is not committed to essentialism but rather takes account of the way in which the community uses words, Ramirez-Ludena also shows how the proposed model is compatible with conceptions in legal philosophy such as that of Hart, which emphasises the conventional character of law.

The causal theory of reference (CTR) provides a well-articulated and widely-accepted account of the reference relation. On CTR the reference of a term is fixed by whatever property causally regulates the competent use of that term. CTR poses a metaethical challenge to realists by demanding an account of the properties that regulate the competent use of normative predicates. CTR might pose a challenge to ethical theorists as well. Long (2012) argues that CTR entails the falsity of any normative ethical theory. First-order theory attempts to specify what purely descriptive property is a fundamental right-making property (FRM). Long contends that the notion that the FRM causally regulates competent use of the predicate ‘right’ leads to a reductio. The failure of this argument is nevertheless instructive concerning a point at which ethics and metaethics overlap.

Symbol Grounding Problem and causal theory of reference

The causal theory of reference is often taken to provide a solution to the problems, such as incomparability and referential discontinuity, that the meaning-change thesis raised. I show that Kuhn successfully questioned the causal theory and Putnam's idea that reference is determined via the sameness relation of essences that holds between a sample and other members of a kind in all possible worlds. Putnam's single ‘essential’ properties may be necessary but not sufficient to determine membership in a kind category. Kuhn argued that extension is fixed by similarity-dissimilarity relations that are liable to change in taxonomic reorganizations of science.

The cognitive linguist John R. Taylor has been a source of my inspiration, although my graduate training was mainly in the areas of sociolin-guistics and linguistic anthropology (e.g., Blount, 1995[1974]; Gumperz and Hymes, 1986[1972]; Wortham and Rymes, 2003). Taylor's oeuvre (e.g., 2002, 2003[1989], 2012) has made me seriously think about meaningful connections among cognitive linguistics (CL), linguistic anthropology (LA), and cognitive anthropology (CA).1 In particular, Taylor's highly acclaimed Linguistic Categorization (2003[1989]) has influenced my thinking and subsequently changed my assumptions of language, culture and cognition. This chapter is an attempt to externalize the positive changes that have been occurring in my assumptions and thoughts. In relation to the broader academic contexts, Taylor's work has been widely read by both linguists and anthropologists. For instance, Michael Silverstein, the eminent linguistic anthropologist, refers to Taylor (2003) as a useful source of information in discussing the 'causal theory of reference', developed by Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975) (Silverstein, 2005: 10–12; also see Kockelman, 2005: 247–249).

In his recent book, entitled Reason, Truth, and History, (Cambridge University Press, 1981) Professor Putnam has announced a startling discovery. I am claiming he says that there is an argument we can give that shows that we are not brains in a vat (p. 8). The supposition that we are actually brains in a vat, although it violates no physical law, and is perfectly consistent with everything we have experienced, cannot possibly be true. It cannot possibly be true because it is, in a certain way, self-refuting (p. 7). This brains-in-a-vat thesis is startling because if it is right, it refutes the widespread belief that epistemological scepticism, however intuitively implausible, is an internally consistent philosophical position. Putnam's argument is an application of what is known as the causal theory of reference. According to this theory, the meaning of a term is not determined by anything that goes on in the minds of the speakers (or thinkers) when they employ the term. Rather, it depends on 'the actual nature of certain 'paradigms" and on 'one's direct or indirect causal relations to those paradigms' (p. 42). A term such as 'tree', for example, refers to whatever objects happen to initiate the causal chains eventuating in our tree-experiences; it is quite possible that we entertain completely erroneous ideas as to what sort of objects those are. Although I do not subscribe to this theory of reference, it is not my intention to question it in this paper. My aim is to examine Putnam's argument to see whether it validly derives the brains-in-a-vat thesis from the theory. What I want to show is that Putnam's argument is a non-sequitur and that the causal theory of reference is powerless to rule out the possibility that we are brains in a vat. The task of showing this is unfortunately somewhat

THE REPRESENTATION OF ABSTRACT ENTITIES IN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

An argument that a pragmatist approach to reference offers a corrective to the prevailing analytic views on the topic. Despite a recent revival of interest in pragmatist philosophy, most work in the analytic philosophy of language ignores insights offered by classical pragmatists and contemporary neopragmatists. In Pragmatism and Reference, David Boersema argues that a pragmatist perspective on reference presents a distinct alternative—and corrective—to the prevailing analytic views on the topic. Boersema finds that the pragmatist approach to reference, with alternative understandings of the nature of language, the nature of conceptualization and categorization, and the nature of inquiry, is suggested in the work of Wittgenstein and more thoroughly developed in the works of such classical and contemporary pragmatists as Charles Peirce and Hilary Putnam. Boersema first discusses the descriptivist and causal theories of reference—the received views on the topic in analytic philosophy. Then, after considering Wittgenstein's approach to reference, Boersema details the pragmatist approach to reference by nine philosophers: the “Big Three,” of classical pragmatism, Peirce, William James, and John Dewey; three contemporary American philosophers, Putnam, Catherine Elgin, and Richard Rorty; and three important continental philosophers, Umberto Eco, Karl-Otto Apel, and Jürgen Habermas. Finally, Boersema shows explicitly how pragmatism offers a genuinely alternative account of reference, presenting several case studies on the nature and function of names. Here, he focuses on conceptions of individuation, similarity, essences, and sociality of language. Pragmatism and Reference will serve as a bridge between analytic and pragmatist approaches to such topics of shared concern as the nature and function of language.

Abstract: Hilary Putnam has reformulated his model‐theoretic argument as an argument against indirect realism in the philosophy of perception. This new argument is reviewed and defended. Putnam's new focus on philosophical theories of perception (instead of metaphysical realism) makes better sense of his previous responses to the objection from the causal theory of reference. It is argued that the model‐theoretic argument can also be construed as an argument that holders of a causal theory of reference should adopt direct realism in the philosophy of perception.

Biological taxonomists rely on the so-called ‘type method’ to regulate taxonomic nomenclature. For each newfound taxon, they lay down a ‘type specimen’ that carries with it the name of the taxon it belongs to. Even if a taxon’s circumscription is unknown and/or subject to change, it remains a necessary truth that the taxon’s type specimen falls within its boundaries. Philosophers have noted some time ago that this naming practice is in line with the causal theory of reference and its central notion of rigid designation: a type specimen fixes the reference of a taxon name without defining it. Recently, however, this consensus has come under pressure in the pages of this journal. In a series of articles by Alex Levine, Joseph LaPorte, and Matthew Haber, it has been argued that type specimens belong only contingently to their species, and that this may bode problems for the relation between type method and causal theory. I will argue that this ‘contingency debate’ is a debate gone wrong, and that none of the arguments in defense of contingency withstand scrutiny. Taxonomic naming is not out of step with the causal theory, but conforms to it. However, I will also argue that this obser- vation is itself in need of further explanation, since application of the type method in taxonomic practice is plagued by errors and ambiguities that threaten it with breaking down. Thus, the real question becomes why taxonomic naming conforms to the causal theory in the first place. I will show that the answer lies in the embedding of the type method into elaborate codes of nomenclature.

While purely causal theories of reference have provided a plausible account of the meanings of names and natural kind terms, they cannot handle vacuous theoretical terms. The causal homeostasis theory can but incurs other difficulties. Theories of reference that are intensional and not purely causal tend to be molecularist or holist. Holist theories threaten transtheoretic reference, whereas molecularist theories must supply a principled basis for selecting privileged meaning-determining relations between terms. The causal homeostasis theory is a two-factor (causal and intensional) molecularist theory, but it fails to provide such a principled basis and collapses into holism. A naturalistic, non-foundationalist holism that deploys strategies of intertheoretic reduction and co-evolutionary pluralism can, however, yield a credible version of transtheoretic reference.

I propose to support these replies with actual episodes in late nineteenth and twentieth century physics. The historical record reveals that meaning does change but not in the Kuhnian manner which is tied to descriptive theories of meaning. A necessary part of this discussion is commentary on realist versus antirealist conceptions of science.

This paper offers a simple response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) objection to naturalist moral realism (NMR). NMR typically relies on an externalist metasemantics such as a causal theory of reference. The MTE objection is that such a theory predicts that terms like ‘good’ and ‘right’ have a different reference in certain twin communities where it’s intuitively clear that the twins are talking about the same thing when using ‘good’. I argue that Boyd’s causal regulation theory, the original target of the MTE objection, was never vulnerable to this objection. The theory contains an epistemic constraint on reference which implies that either the property that causally regulates uses of ‘good’ isn’t different for the twin communities or, in scenarios where the reference is different, the communities diverge in ways where it’s not intuitively clear that ‘good’ has the same reference for them.

Depending on the realist or instrumentalist twist that is given to positivism, interesting arguments can be made for both causal and classical theories of reference with regard to the use of scientific terms in the language of theory. But my claim is that the rigid foundationalism that supports the theoretical terms via the correspondence rules of the Received View undercuts the notion that it is possible to argue coherently for a causal theory of reference as allied to a positivistic view.

According to a classical view in the philosophy of language, the reference of a term is determined by a property of the term which supervenes on the history of its use. A contrasting view is that a term's reference is determined by how it is properly interpreted, in accordance with certain constraints or conditions of adequacy on interpretations. Causal theories of reference of the sort associated with Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke and Michael Devitt are versions of the first view, while defenders of determination by interpretation theories include Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett and John Haugeland. I use a variant of Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment to argue against the first view generally, and causal theories of reference in particular, then go on to argue that a properly-formulated version of the principle of charity can account for the intuitions that seem to support causal theories. Finally, I apply my version of interpretationism to the problem of reference to abstract objects and compare it with some of Wittgenstein's and Quine's views about language.