Re: SUO: Re: Montologies
On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:30:21PM -0400, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> Chris Partridge wrote:
> >
> > John,
> >
> > I am aware that logic does not directly treat tense.
> > There was no need for that when it was designed for
> > mathematics.
>
> For those who did not get the memo, our best current models of change,
> process, physical objects, and physical transformation are
> mathematical and statistical models.
Perhaps true, but irrelevant to the issue at hand, it seems to me.
Chris and John are discussing only the treatment of *tense* in logic,
not models of change, process, etc. That issue has to do with such
things as whether to use temporal operators or to quantify over times
(or intervals or the like) directly, appropriate axioms for tense logic,
etc. Where Chris seems to me to go wrong is in his apparent association
of logic with the logic of Frege and Russell -- who did largely ignore
issues of tense (though not indexicality). Logic, the discipline, has
been concerned with tense since Aristotle (cf. his discussion of such
future contingents as "There will be a sea battle tomorrow").
Chris Menzel