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| Paper IPM / Philosophy / 13123 |
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| Abstract: | |
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In his causal theory of reference, Kripke holds that for the causal chain between the name dubbing ceremony and its current use to be maintained, every name borrower should intend to use the borrowed name to refer to the same thing to which the lender used that name to refer. Evans's Madagascar objection shows that merely having such an intention does not explain cases of referent change. I think that the problem can be solved by requiring that the borrower fix her intended referent with the lender's (or with that of the linguistic community to which the lender belongs). For this requirement to be satisfied, I argue, the borrower must triangulate with the lender to determine the common referent, much in the way Davidson suggests as regards determining the common content. A similar strategy, I claim, is adopted by Kroon in his epistemic warrant theory of reference.
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