Prior’s early reflections on sense and sentences

Abstract

We present here an introduction and a discussion of A.N. Prior’s ‘Sense and Sentences’ in light of the context of publication in the journal National Education, written upon his return from Europe and while he was undergoing a crisis of faith. We argue that ‘Sense and Sentences’ is the article referred to by Kenny in his Obituary on Prior as an article written “on the relations between logic and grammar (with reference to Popper, Wisdom and Carnap)”. Furthermore, we argue that Prior was working his way into philosophy, by demonstrating his familiarity with the work of key persons within analytic philosophy such as Rudolf Carnap, John Wisdom and Karl Popper. We also argue that Findlay’s – and, thus, indirectly: Wittgenstein’s – influence is also visible in this period where Prior was transitioning from being a religious journalist to the future philosopher he would turn out to become. In particular, we argue that, while Findlay’s influence on the relationship between grammar and metaphysics would win the day with A.N. Prior, when he discovered tense-logic, it was not an evident feature of Prior’s work on the relationship between logic and grammar in sense and sentences. We argue that Sense and Sentences is interesting because it seems to have expressed a stage in Prior’s thinking on logic that he later came to modify, thereby distancing himself more from the anti-metaphysical tenets of analytic philosophy.