Blogging’s been light because I’ve been tied up for most of this month with several projects that are at crunch time. One of those projects is a substantial revision of my paper “A Defense of Prior’s ‘Peircean’ Tense Logic” that I presented at a conference in April 2006. As with most issues, I’ve found that the more I delve into it, the more complicated it gets. Below are a few of my preliminary conclusions.
First, let me define a couple terms. By ‘Peircean’ tense logic I mean one that construes the future tense operator WILL() in such a way that it carries maximal determinative force. In other words, the Peircean holds that when we are speaking strictly “It will rain tomorrow” means “It is now inevitable that it should rain tomorrow”. In contrast, by ‘Ockhamist’ tense logic I mean one that construes the future tense operator WILL() in such a way that it carries no determinative force whatsoever. Thus, for the Ockhamist “It will rain tomorrow” means merely “Rain tomorrow”, with no implication that it is now inevitable or even probable or anything more than possible.
At face value, these two systems seem diametrically opposed. And they are as long as we’re talking about minimalistic versions of the two views. If, for example, the Ockhamist were to deny that the future tense ever carries determinative force, that would make his position quite implausible and put him in direct conflict with the Peircean. But if the Ockhamist is willing to admit that some future tense statements can carry determinative force, then Ockhamism can embrace the Peircean position as a special case.
But it seems that the Ockhamist