Logic and Reality

B. J. Copeland

A. N. Prior has a special place in recent philosophy for his highly original work at the intersection of logic and metaphysics. His logical innovations have found many applications in the areas of philosophical logic, mathematics, linguistics, and, increasingly, computer science. In addition, he made seminal contributions to debates in metaphysics, particularly on modality and the nature of time. This volume presents new contemporary research in the areas that were of most interest to Prior: temporal and tense logic, modal logic, proof theory, quantification and individuation, and the logic of agency. Both title and contents reflect Prior's view that logic is 'about the real world', and the orientation of the volume is towards the application of logic, in philosophy, computer science, and elsewhere. Following Prior, modal syntax is now widely applied to the formalization of a variety of subject matters, and tense logic has found numerous applications in computing, for example in natural language processing, logical deduction involving time-dependent data, program-verification, and VLSI.