Excerpt:
Thomas Kuhn has been criticized for espousing a theory of scientific development inconsistent with the "natural" view that successive scientific theories draw closer and closer to the truth. The alleged problem with Kuhn's account is that it depends on an incorrect account of scientific language. Further, some critics have claimed that the natural view of scientific progress can be vindicated if scientific language is understood in terms of the causal theory of reference.
In this paper, I argue that such efforts to uphold the natural view of progress fail. The problem with current versions of the causal theory is that they leave us with no way of classifying episodes in the history of science as progressive. Advocates of the causal theory have tried enriching the basic account with maxims like the principle of charity or the principle of humanity. However, I show that these principles are unsuited to the tasks for which they were intended. Finally, I show that accounts of scientific language like those built on the causal theory of reference need to be informed by empirical psychology in order to serve in our classification of historical episodes as progressive or not. But to strengthen an account of language in this way is, in a sense, to abandon the program of antipsychologism prevalent in the philosophy of language since Frege.