ABSTRACT
Descriptivism is a theory which attempts to explain why proper names designate objects and why people can refer to objects, using names. Its roots lie in classical Fregean understanding of what constitutes the meaning of a proper name. According to Frege, every proper name is associated with the way in which it presents the object it designates and this way of presentation is a way how the object can be determined. One of the important conclusions that could be drawn from Kripke’s Naming and Necessity is the opportunity to change our understanding of the notion of meaning and separate a condition of a reference identification from a speaker’s knowledge. The causal descriptivism is a version of non-classical descriptive theory of reference-fixing in which the descriptive condition only secures the name’s referent—there is no requirement that this condition should be known by speakers.
