Prior's thank-goodness argument reconsidered

Matt La Vine

pp. 3591-3606

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

Abstract

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:

Cited authors

Prior Arthur N