Collection
Temporal Reasoning and Tensed Truths
- Submission status
- Closed
This topical collection is dedicated to the formal representation of arguments involving temporal reasoning and tensed truths; in particular, arguments with a clear significance to everyday life. In a broad perspective, temporal reasoning can be rigorously encoded via intensional logic, treating tenses as modalities, or via extensional logic, quantifying over domains of temporal objects (e.g., instants, intervals, etc.). Nowadays there are several formal devices (languages, systems, semantics, etc.) able to deal with time in many regards. Each of these devices is characterized by peculiar features, such as a certain choice of primitive notions and, arguably, a certain kind of ontological commitment (see, e.g., the surveys of approaches offered by Prior 1967, van Benthem 1983, Gabbay, Hodkinson & Reynolds 1994 and Øhrstrøm & Hasle 1995). The truth-conditions of (the propositions expressed by) statements involving tenses can be explained either in terms of the “past-present-future” opposition (McTaggart’s A-theory) or in terms of the “earlier-later” opposition (McTaggart’s B-theory). Moreover, taking into account the difference between chronologically definite propositions and chronologically indefinite propositions (Rescher 1966), it is possible to distinguish between atemporal and temporal (or tensed) notions of truth. This topical collection will primarily focus on the latter.
It is often argued that tensed truths do not float free, but are grounded in reality. Accordingly, the present truth of (the proposition expressed by) a statement such as ‘Napoleon lost at Waterloo’, requires it to be grounded in what there is and how it is. However, this view has undesirable consequences. First, it seems to force one to adopt an eternalist ontology: assuming that past- and future-tensed statements are not exceptions to the principle of bivalence (which states that all declarative sentences express propositions that are either true or false), there must be things located in the past and the future of the moment of evaluation that provide grounds for their classical truth-values. Secondly, it seems to threaten the openness of the future: assuming that the truth-value of a future-tensed statement, such as ‘The first human on Mars will be a woman’, is grounded in what there is and how it is, it seems that everything regarding the exploration of Mars is already settled.
Many options have been envisaged to avoid these undesirable consequences. One option is denying that future-tensed statements are bivalent (Broad 1923, Markosian 1995). However, this view is subject to criticism too since (i) it conflicts with retrospective evaluations of future-tensed statements (Besson & Hattiangadi 2013, MacFarlane 2003, 2008), and (ii) it is not clear what semantics one ought to assume when modeling truth-value gaps. A second option is to argue that the bivalence of past- and future-tensed statements is compatible with non-eternalist ontologies and/or with an open future. This option comes in various flavors: Todd (2016) argues that future-tensed statements are all false; Barnes & Cameron (2009, 2011) say that although future-tensed statements are bivalent, the truth-value of some of these is unsettled; Correia & Rosenkranz (2018) assert that the grounding requirement on tensed truths must be weakened, so that it allows the present truth-values of some future-tensed statements to be grounded in how, at some future time, things will be; etc. Thus, the problem of finding an appropriate way of formally representing arguments involving tensed truths is still a source of intense debate.
E. Barnes and R. Cameron, 2009. ‘The Open Future: Bivalence, Determinism and Ontology’, in Philosophical Studies. Vol. 146, pp. 291-309.
E. Barnes and R. Cameron, 2011. ‘Back to the Open Future’, in Philosophical Perspectives. Vol. 25, pp. 1-26.
C. Besson and A. Hattiangadi, 2013. ‘The Open Future, Bivalence and Assertion’, in Philosophical Studies. Vol. 167, pp. 251-271.
R. Cameron, 2015. The Moving Spotlight. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
F. Correia and A. Iacona (eds.), 2013. Around the Tree: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues Concerning Branching and the Open Future. Dordrecht: Springer.
F. Correia and S. Rosenkranz, 2018. Nothing to Come: A Defense of the Growing Block Theory of Time. Berlin: Springer.
D.M. Gabbay, I. Hodkinson and M. Reynolds, 1994. Temporal Logic: Mathematical Foundations and Computational Aspects (Volume 1), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
J. MacFarlane, 2003. ‘Future Contingents and Relative Truth’, in The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 53, pp. 322-336.
J. MacFarlane, 2008. ‘Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths’, in Relative Truth. M. Garcia-Carpintero and M. Koglbel (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 81-102.
P. Øhrstrøm, 2019, ‘A critical discussion of Prior’s philosophical and tense-logical analysis of the ideas of indeterminism and human freedom’, in Synthese. Vol. 196, pp. 69-85
P. Øhrstrøm and P. Hasle, 1995, Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
P. Øhrstrøm and P. Hasle, 2020, ‘Future Contingents’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. Zalta (ed.), URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/future-contingents/.
A.N. Prior, 1967. Past, Present and Future. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
N. Rescher, 1966. ‘On the Logic of Chronological Propositions’, in Mind Vol. 75, pp. 75–96.
P. Todd, 2016. ‘Future Contingents are all False! On Behalf of a Russellian Open Future’, in Mind. Vol. 125, pp. 775-798.
J. van Benthem, 1983. The Logic of Time, Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Second edition: 1991.]
Appropriate Topics for Submission include, among others:
Formal accounts of tensed truths
Grounds for tensed truths
Logics for chronologically definite and indefinite propositions
Reasoning problems involving time
Temporal vs atemporal notions of truth
Truth-value of tensed statements
The unrestricted application of bivalence
The absoluteness of utterance-truth
The problem of future contingents Truthmakers for tensed truths
Editors
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Vincent Grandjean
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, with a SNSF Postdoc. Mobility Fellowship.
Additionally, I am a regular lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Neuchâtel, where I have taught a wide range of subjects such as logic, philosophy of time, paradoxes, personal identity, and ethics.
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Matteo Pascucci
Matteo Pascucci is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. His research areas include modal logic, deontic logic and normative reasoning, ethics for artificial intelligence, temporal logic and formal analysis of indeterminism.
Articles (13 in this collection)
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If presentism is false, then I don’t exist. On common-sense presentism
Authors
- Jean-Baptiste Guillon
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 12 May 2024
- Article: 168
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The once and always possible
Authors
- Kory Matteoli
- Content type: Original Research
- Published: 08 January 2024
- Article: 28
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Tensed truth, temporal particularity, and the fixity of the past
Authors
- Julian Bacharach
- Content type: Original Paper
- Published: 04 January 2024
- Article: 21
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The operator argument and the case of timestamp semantics
Authors
- Jakub Węgrecki
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 02 December 2023
- Article: 198
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Processes and events as rigid embodiments
Authors
- Riccardo Baratella
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 23 November 2023
- Article: 181
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Meta-fictionalism about the non-present
Authors
- Patrick Dawson
- Content type: Original Research
- Published: 14 November 2023
- Article: 166
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The true futures
Authors
- Torben Braüner
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 04 November 2023
- Article: 162
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A problem with the fixed past fixed
Authors
- Jacek Wawer
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 02 November 2023
- Article: 154
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By(e) enduring? An answer to Wasserman
Authors
- Maria Scarpati
- Claudio Calosi
- Content type: Original Research
- Published: 13 October 2023
- Article: 125
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Definite descriptions and hybrid tense logic
Authors
- Andrzej Indrzejczak
- Michał Zawidzki
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 12 September 2023
- Article: 98
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Perspectivalism about temporal reality
Authors
- Bahadir Eker
- Content type: Original Research
- Open Access
- Published: 24 July 2023
- Article: 42
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Specification of time in Tichý’s transparent intensional logic and Prior’s temporal logic
Authors
- Zuzana Rybaříková
- Content type: Original Research
- Published: 29 April 2023
- Article: 164