Abstract
A.N. Prior’s work with Peirce’s philosophy and investigations into the formalisation of temporal ontology give rise to some important questions regarding time and existence. Some answers to these questions are considered in this paper, which deals mainly with A.N. Prior’s ideas on time and existence. The focus is on Prior’s analysis of problems concerning the ontology of objects which exist for a limited time only. This work led him to some interesting ideas concerning tensed ontology. In particular, the paper discusses Prior’s own contribution to tensed ontology, which may be seen as a further development of Leśniewski’s ontology. Finally, the paper presents some challenges regarding the significance of tensed ontology in philosophy and information architecture.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, J.F., Hayes, P.: A Common-Sense Theory of Time. In: Proc. of the Ninth Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 528–531 (1985)
Grenon, P.: Spatio-temporality in Basic Formal Ontology SNAP and SPAN, Upper-Level Ontology, and Framework for Formalization, PART I, Final Version, November 2003, Universität Leipzig, Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS), (May 2003) ISSN: 1611-4019
Jensen, C.S., Snodgrass, R.T. (eds.): Temporal Database Entries for the Springer Encyclopedia of Database Systems: A TIMECENTER Technical Report, Aalborg University & University of Arizona, USA (2008), http://timecenter.cs.aau.dk/TimeCenterPublications/TR-90.pdf
Kachi, D.: Tensed Ontology Based on Simple Partial Logic. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2002), pp. 141–145 (2002)
McArthur, R.P.: Tense Logic. Reidel, Dordrecht (1976)
OWL Time, http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-time
Peirce, C.S.: Collected Papers. In: Weiss, P., Burks, A., Hartshorne, C. (eds.), vol. 8. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1931-1958)
Prior, A.N.: Time and Modality, Oxford (1957)
Prior, A.N.: Past, Present and Future. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1967)
Prior, A.N.: The Notion of the Present. In: Prior, M. (ed.) Studium Generale, vol. 23, pp. 245–248 (1970)
Prior, A.N.: Objects of Thoughts, Oxford (1971)
Prior, A.N.: On Some Proofs of the Existence of God. In: Geach, P.T., Kenny, A.J.P. (eds.) Papers in Logic and Ethics. University of Massachusetts Press (1976)
Prior, A.N.: Papers on Time and Tense. In: Hasle, P., et al. (eds.) Oxford University Press, Oxford (2003)
Plantinga, A.: On Existentialism. Philosophical Studies 44, 1–20 (1983)
Smart, J.J.C.: Letter to A.N. Prior. The Prior Collection, Bodleian Library, box 3, Oxford (September 3, 1958)
Smart, J.J.C.: The river of time. Mind 58(232), 483–494 (1949)
Von Wright, G.H.: Letter to A.N. Prior. The Prior Collection, Bodleian Library box 3, Oxford (September 3, 1958)
Øhrstrøm, P., Hasle, P.: Temporal Logic - From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1995)
Øhrstrøm, P., Schärfe, H.: A Priorean Approach to Time Ontologies. In: Wolff, K.E., Pfeiffer, H.D., Delugach, H.S. (eds.) ICCS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3127, pp. 388–401. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Øhrstrøm, P., Andersen, J., Schärfe, H.: What Has Happened to Ontology. In: Dau, F., Mugnier, M.-L., Stumme, G. (eds.) ICCS 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3596, pp. 425–438. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Øhrstrøm, P., Uckelman, S.L., Schärfe, H.: Historical and Conceptual Foundation of Diagrammatical Ontology. In: Priss, U., Polovina, S., Hill, R. (eds.) ICCS 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4604, pp. 374–386. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Øhrstrøm, P., Schärfe, H., Uckelman, S.L.: Jacob Lorhard’s Ontology: A 17th Century Hypertext on the Reality and Temporality of the World of Intelligibles. In: Eklund, P., Haemmerlé, O. (eds.) ICCS 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5113, pp. 74–87. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Jakobsen, D., Øhrstrøm, P., Schärfe, H. (2011). A.N. Prior’s Ideas on Tensed Ontology. In: Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., Akhgar, B. (eds) Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge. ICCS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6828. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22688-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22688-5_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22687-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22688-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)