Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

234812

Prior's thank-goodness argument reconsidered

Matt La Vine

pp. 3591-3606

Résumé

Arthur Prior’s argument for the A-theory of time in “Thank Goodness That’s Over” is perhaps his most famous and well-known non-logical work. Still, I think that this paper is one of his most misunderstood works. Because of this, much of its brilliance has yet to be properly appreciated. In this paper, I suggest that the explanation of this is that it has been treated as though it were following (what has been mythologized as) the standard model for a piece of Analytic philosophy. That is, it has been assumed that what Prior was doing was deductively demonstrating the truth of a proposition which can be discussed via any sentences with the same semantic content. Here, I argue that this assumption is wrong on two fronts:

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

Albretsen Jørgen, Hasle Per F. V., Øhrstrøm Peter (2016) The logic and philosophy of A. N. Prior. Synthese 193 (11).

Pages: 3591-3606

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-015-0904-0

Citation complète:

La Vine Matt, 2016, Prior's thank-goodness argument reconsidered. Synthese 193 (11), The logic and philosophy of A. N. Prior, 3591-3606. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0904-0.