 If one wanted to trace a simple historical arc for recent causal theories, one would have to begin with the seminal 1977 paper by Dennis Stampe, “Toward a Causal Theory of Linguistic Representation.” Among the many important features of this paper is its having set much of the conceptual and theoretical stage to be described in greater detail below. It drew a contrast between causal theories and “picture theories” that try to explain representational content by appeal to some form of similarity between a representation and the thing represented. It also drew attention to the problem of distinguishing the content determining causes of a representation from adventitious non-content determining causes. So, for example, one will want “X” to mean dogs because dogs causes dogs, but one does not want “X” to mean blow-to-the-head, even though blows to the head might cause the occurrence of an “X”. (Much more of this will be described below.) Finally, it also provided some attempts to address this problem, such as an appeal to the function a thing might have.