No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Prior and Particulars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Extract
Arthur Prior is perhaps best known for his contributions to the philosophy of time. I shall argue here that his views about reference are not easily reconciled with his views about time, and suggest that his views about existence and his acceptance of some dubious Cartesian epistemological principles led him to increasingly bizarre and counter-intuitive claims about the sufficient conditions for successful reference to particulars. First he seems to have claimed that we cannot refer to individuals which no longer exist; then that we can refer only to individuals which stand in a direct perceptual relationship to us; and finally that one can really only talk about oneself. In this paper I shall trace the development in Prior's thought which led him to this extraordinary conclusion.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1978
References
1 Cf. Prior, A. N., Past, Present and Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar
2 Prior, , Time and Modality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1957), 31.Google Scholar
3 Prior, , Objects of Thought, Geach, P. T. and Kenny, A. J. P. (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Geach, P. T., ‘Form and Existence’, in God and the Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), Ch. IV.Google Scholar
5 Prior, , ‘Changes in Events and Changes in Things’, in Papers on Time and Tense, 13.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Time and Modality, 36 ff.Google Scholar
7 Prior, , ‘Oratio Obliqua’, in Papers in Logic and Ethics, Geach, P. T. and Kenny, A. J. P. (eds) (London: Duckworth, 1976), Ch. 15.Google Scholar
8 Prior, , ‘I’, in Khanbhai, B. Y. et al. (eds), Jowett Papers 1968–69 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 6 f.Google Scholar
9 Prior, , ‘Oratio Obliqua’, 154.Google Scholar
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Peirce, C. S., Collected Papers, Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P. (eds) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935), 2.337.Google Scholar
13 Kripke, S., ‘Naming and Necessity’, in Davidson, D. and Karman, G. (eds) Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972), 253–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Prior, , ‘Oratio Obliqua’, 157.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., 155.
16 Russell, B. A. W., ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description’, in Mysticism and Logic (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1918), 224.Google Scholar
17 Ibid., 224, note 2.
18 Prior, , ‘I’, 6.Google Scholar
19 Prior, , Past, Present and Future, 19.Google Scholar
20 Prior, , ‘Thank Goodness That's Over’, in Papers in Logic and Ethics, 78.Google Scholar
21 Prior, , ‘Oratio Obliqua’, 156.Google Scholar
22 ‘Names, Indices, and Individuals’, Analysis 37 (10 1976), 1–10.Google Scholar