ABSTRACT
Reference is the relation between a word—proper name, common noun or description—and the item in the world people use it to talk about. Both reference change—the same word being used by later users to whom it has been passed on to refer to something different—and reference preservation—the word retaining its reference when transmitted to other users—are possibilities which philosophers of language must accommodate. Already in ‘Naming and Necessity’, Kripke acknowledged that two uses of the same word can, in some sense, be part of the same chain without preserving reference, if only because a user of the name might not intend to use it in the way, he believes, it was used by the person from whom he acquired it. The causal theory Evans targets is what one would extract from Kripke if one were to set aside his modestly cautious remark that he is only providing a picture.
