 The main tenet of the use theory, as we will understand it, is that an utterance of a name is constrained in its reference by a set of prior applications. Assuming, for the moment, that the applications in that set were all to one individual (the same one was independently identified in each case), then the utterance is simply constrained to refer to that individual (in order, as we might put it, to be consistent with those past applications). The use theory in outline is almost the same as Strawson’s view that the reference of a name is determined by the identifying descriptions associated with it in the minds of its users, except that it replaces users’ dispositions to identify the referent of a name in a certain way with their public acts of committing to particular identifications.