On the Sea Battle Tomorrow That May Not Happen

The book examines the Master Argument (MA) of Diodorus Cronus in the context of the Sea-Battle Tomorrow of Aristotle. The author investigates problems of sentences about the future, time and determinism. He shows that certain reconstructions of the MA do not assume a linear time structure. Thus, the MA is not an argument in favour of determinism.

This book is devoted to the problem of the Master Argument a historical argument of the Greek philosopher Diodorus Cronus. Since the original argument was lost, many contemporary logicians have tried to recreate it, using modern tools of logic. The objective of Diodorus' argument was to evidence the correctness of the temporarily defined modalities: necessity and probability. They took a deterministic form and challenged the indeterministic approach of Aristotle included in the Sea-Battle Tomorrow. In this study, the author shows that some of the reconstructions of the Master Argument allowed for the branched time structures. This is the crowning argument to prove that despite the acceptance of Diodorus' notions, the Aristotelian Sea-Battle Tomorrow may still not happen, or may as well happen.

Autorentext

Tomasz Jarmüek is Professor of Logic at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torü (Poland). His research focuses on philosophical logic and its applications in philosophical problems. He is also interested in the proof theory with a special emphasis on the tableau methods.

Klappentext

This book is devoted to the problem of the Master Argument a historical argument of the Greek philosopher Diodorus Cronus. Since the original argument was lost, many contemporary logicians have tried to recreate it, using modern tools of logic. The objective of Diodorus argument was to evidence the correctness of the temporarily defined modalities: necessity and probability. They took a deterministic form and challenged the indeterministic approach of Aristotle included in the Sea-Battle Tomorrow. In this study, the author shows that some of the reconstructions of the Master Argument allowed for the branched time structures. This is the crowning argument to prove that despite the acceptance of Diodorus notions, the Aristotelian Sea-Battle Tomorrow may still not happen, or may as well happen.

Inhalt

Aristotle - Diodorus Cronus - Determinism - Future contigents - Master Argument - Sea-Battle Tomorrow - Structure of time - Temporal logic - Tense logic - Time