that when they use the name 'Jane', they are referring to Jane? The answer provided by causal theories is that there is a causal chain that passes from the original observers of Jane's naming to everyone else who uses her name. For example, maybe Jill was not at the naming, but Jill learns about Jane, and learns that her name is 'Jane', from Jane's mother, who was there. She then uses the name 'Jane' with the intention of referring to the child Jane's mother referred to. Jill can now use the name, and her use of it can in turn transmit the ability to refer to Jane to other speakers. Philosophers such as Gareth Evans have insisted that the theory's account of the dubbing process needs to be broadened to include what are called 'multiple groundings'. After her initial baptism, uses of 'Jane' in the presence of Jane may, under the right circumstances, be considered to further ground the name ('Jane') in its referent (Jane). That is, if I am in direct contact with Jane, the reference for my utterance of the name 'Jane' may be fixed not simply by a causal chain through people who had encountered her earlier (when she was first named); it may also be indexically fixed to Jane at the moment of my utterance. Thus our modern day use of a name such as 'Christopher Columbus' can be thought of as referring to Columbus through a causal chain that terminates not simply in one instance of his naming, but rather in a series of grounding uses of the name that occurred throughout his life. Under certain circumstances of confusion, this can lead to the alteration of a name's referent (for one example of how this might happen, see Twin Earth thought experiment). Motivation Causal theories of reference were born partially in response to the widespread acceptance of Russellian descriptive theories. Russell found that certain logical contradictions could be avoided if names were considered disguised definite descriptions (a similar view is often attributed to Gottlob Frege, mostly on the strength of a footnoted comment in "On Sense and Reference", although many Frege scholars consider this attribution misguided). On such an account, the name 'Aristotle' might be seen as meaning 'the student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great'. Later description theorists expanded upon this by suggesting that a name expressed not one particular description, but