ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the approach to content comparison based on appeal to reference. It discusses problems with the descriptive determination of reference which motivate the causal theory of reference. The main tenet of the approach is that theories are comparable if they share reference. Similarly, on Thomas Kuhn's original account conceptual difference between paradigms leads to wholesale change of reference from the "world" of one paradigm to the "world" of another. Tokens of different term-types employed by rival theories may refer to the same things, permitting theory comparison to be made on the basis of such tokens. The danger is that the causal theory may be too insensitive. It seems to rule out the possibility of reference change altogether. Moreover, causal mechanism captures the key elements of a theoretical entity's explanatory role which are constitutive of the commitment on the part of a theory to an entity like phlogiston.
