


However, this newer theory of reference is shown to be equally subject to fatal internal difficulties, and to be incompatible with actual science as well. This theory has been advanced as an alternative to traditional views of "meaning", on which a number of philosophical accounts of science have relied, and which have been criticized earlier by the present author.

This paper examines the "causal theory of reference", according to which science aims at the discovery of "essences" which are the objects of reference of natural kind terms (among others).
