Papers on Time and Tense

8vo (22 cm), X, 166, [2] pp. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (dj sunned and clipped, top edge slightly stained). A collection of thirteen papers by one of the founders of tense logic, gathering Prior's most important essays on the philosophy of time and temporal reference. The first eight papers are discursive and philosophical in character, approaching time from a variety of angles: the nature of change in events and things, the problem of spurious egocentricity in temporal indexicals, the formalities of omniscience, the consequences of actions, limited indeterminism, and the metaphysics of identifiable individuals. These are complemented by five more formal and technical papers in which the philosophical positions are given precise logical expression--developing and refining the tense logic Prior had pioneered in his books Time and Modality and Past, Present, and Future, including treatments of stratified metric tense logic, the logic of ending time, quasi-propositions, and tense logic for non-permanent existents. Together the papers illuminate Prior's distinctive view that tense is irreducible and that the logical structure of temporal language reveals deep truths about the nature of time, existence, and identity. Dedicated to the memory of E. J. Lemmon, the collection remains a foundational text in the logic of time.…