Abstract
The logic and philosophy of William of Ockham (ca. 1285–1347) was a very important inspiration to the founding father of modern tense-logic, A. N. Prior (1914–69). This paper offers a discussion of four aspects of the Ockhamistic inspiration in modern tense-logic: (1) the criticism of the analysis of future contingents in terms of three-valued logic, (2) the discussion of Ockham’s rejection of the classical argument from divine foreknowledge to determinism, that is, from the truth of a statement regarding the future to the necessity (unpreventability) of the statement, (3) Ockham’s understanding of time, including his notion of true future and (4) the use of Ockham’s ideas in modern tense-logic.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Prof. M. J. Cresswell, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, for a number of very useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Øhrstrøm, P., Jakobsen, D. (2022). Ockhamistic Inspiration in Modern Tense-Logic. In: Santelli, A. (eds) Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time. Synthese Library, vol 452. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90359-6_3
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