Language, Action and Thought

Arthur Prior argued that differences in the utterances used to express emotions such as relief were key for an account of those emotional responses to events. He did so, most famously, in his paper "Thank goodness that's over" (1959). In my opinion, Prior anticipated there many of the central claims John Perry made almost twenty years later (1977, 1979). Perry famously claimed that there are some deep and important roles indexicals play in thought and action, and to do so, he made use of well-known examples. I focus on the "tardy professor" case and compare it with Prior's scenario. I argue that both Prior and Perry are presenting problems generated by cases of substitution raising a difference in cognitive significance, and I show how Prior's scenario can easily be accounted for within a Perry-inspired framework, with no commitment to any essentially indexical thought. To do this, I briefly consider the influence of Castañeda in the two authors, and I conclude my presentation with a short discussion of the ontological implications of Prior's scenario.