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| Article |
| The Necessity of the Past and Modal-Tense Logic Incompleteness |
| Michael White |
| 25 Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 59 (1984) |
| Library Access |
|
Abstract: The idea that there is a variety of necessity, i.e., the necessity of unpreventability,unalterability, or irrevocability, for which it is true to say that the past is necessary is a notion of great antiquity which still possesses considerable intuitive appeal. However, this idea proves difficult to express adequately in a modal propositional logic that possesses both tense and alethic modal operators. The obvious candidate for a thesis expressing the necessity of the past, and the one normally so employed is Al:Pp D LPp. In this paper I explore several problems connected with the use of Thesis Al to express the concept of the necessity of the past in a mixed modal-tense logic. Section 1 consists of a brief rehearsal of a "philosophical" difficulty encountered in employing Al to express the necessity of the past: it proves difficult to isolate this necessity from the remainder of time, i.e., to avoid a form of fatalism. This problem with Al has been previously recognized. In Sections 2 and 3, I discuss several more strictly logical problems with Al. Necessity, Logic, Philosophy |
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