Title
No Future (Tense Logic, Diagonalization)
Abstract
The difficulties with formalizing the intensional notions necessity, knowability and omniscience, and rational belief are well-known. If these notions are formalized as predicates applying to (codes of) sentences, then from apparently weak and uncontroversial logical principles governing these notions, outright contradictions can be derived. Tense logic is one of the best understood and most extensively developed branches of intensional logic. In tense logic, the temporal notions future and past are formalized as sentential operators rather than as predicates. The question therefore arises whether the notions that are investigated in tense logic can be consistently formalized as predicates. In this paper it is shown that the answer to this question is negative. The logical treatment of the notions of future and past as predicates gives rise to paradoxes due the specific interplay between both notions. For this reason, the tense paradoxes that will be represented are not identical to the paradoxes referred to above.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1023/A:1017569601150
JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC
Keywords
DocType
Volume
tense logic, tense predicates, diagonalization, paradox
Journal
30
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
3
0022-3611
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Leon Horsten17215.44
Hannes Leitgeb211519.26