A.N. Prior
contemporaryAnalytic Philosophy1914 – 1969
Arthur Norman Prior (1914–1969) was a New Zealand-born philosopher and logician who founded tense logic, providing the first rigorous formal framework for reasoning about time. He made major contributions to modal logic, ethics, and the philosophy of language, and is widely regarded as one of the most original logicians of the twentieth century.
Notable Achievements
1
Founded tense logic (temporal logic), introducing operators P and F for past and future
2
Developed the logic of modal and intensional contexts in 'Formal Logic' (1955) and 'Past, Present and Future' (1967)
3
Argued for the autonomy of ethics against naturalistic reductions of moral language
4
Anticipated concepts later central to possible-worlds semantics
5
Contributed to the debate on the open question argument and the logic of normative discourse