Thinker · TH-0068
Arthur Prior
Arthur Prior was a New Zealand logician and philosopher who taught at Canterbury University College in Christchurch, then at Manchester and Oxford. He founded…
Also known as Arthur Norman Prior, A. N. Prior
1914 – 1969 · Masterton, Christchurch, Manchester, Oxford
Traditions: Analytic
Arthur Prior was a New Zealand logician and philosopher who taught at Canterbury University College in Christchurch, then at Manchester and Oxford. He founded modern tense logic, introducing operators for 'it will be the case that' and 'it was the case that' and treating tense as part of logic rather than something to be analysed away. Drawing on ancient and medieval logic, he used these tools to explore determinism, the reality of the present and the passage of time.
Key ideas
- Tensed statements can be formalised with operators for past and future.
- Tense is a genuine logical feature of propositions, not reducible to dated, tenseless statements.
- Tense logic can clarify ancient debates about future contingents and fatalism.
- The present has a special reality, which supports a presentist view of time.
Major works
- Formal Logic (1955)
- Time and Modality (1957)
- Past, Present and Future (1967)
- Papers on Time and Tense (1968)
In the conversation
- Discussion Found the Master Argument in Epictetus, between two bus stops
- Reading group Reading group: Epictetus, Discourses II.19, where the Master Argument meets a bus driver
- Question What do Prior’s four tense operators actually say, in plain words?
- Debate Special relativity has refuted presentism, whatever presentists say
- Reading group Reading group: McTaggart’s ‘The Unreality of Time’ and Prior’s ‘Thank Goodness That’s Over’
- Discussion I use modal logic at work every day, and the engineers around me have no idea it was philosophy