Report on Tense Logic

Abstract

Tense logic is a very young subject; in its current form it began with Prior’s book Time and Modality (1957). An excellent chronological bibliography can be found in Rescher and Urquhart Temporal Logic (1971). I shall here survey important recent developments with special attention to two problems: how can tense be combined with modal operators and conditionals, and, can the past and future operators be eliminated in favour of operators which ‘pay no attention’ to the direction of time? As final preliminary, we must distinguish between temporal logic and tense logic. In this report I am concerned with the latter. By ‘a tensed proposition’ I mean whatever is expressed by such sentences as ‘Professor Cohen has been happy’, ‘I am happy’, and ‘The translator will always be happy’.

Most of the topics covered in this paper are treated more fully in my other papers listed in the bibliography.

The author gratefully acknowledges support of the Canada Council. Since the presentation of this report I have published the theory described in Section 3; see van Fraassen (1980).