Description
Prior claimed that sentences never name, that what sentences say cannot be otherwise signified, that a sentence says what it says whatever the type of its occurrence, and that quantifications binding sentential variables are neither eliminable, substitutional, nor referential.
The text develops the first three of these views so as to bring out their strengths, clarify their consequences for intensionality and truth, and contrast them with related views of such philosophers as Frege, Geach, and Davidson. The text also seeks to defend the fourth of these views against the sorts of strictures on quantification familiar from the work of such philosophers as Quine and Davidson.
More particularly, the text argues that Prior was right in viewing Quine's 'commitment to entities' conception of quantification as an undefended dogma, and seeks to meet Davidson's main 'coherence condition' for quantification by providing a recursive definition of truth for sentential quantifications which accords with the fourth of the claims listed above.