The formalities of temporaryism without presentness (Q778721)

The authors put forward precise characterizations of (versions of) presentism and expansionism involving neither the notion of presentness nor the conceptual tools of the unfamiliar kinds just mentioned. Besides standard Priorian temporal operators, truth-functional connectives, first-order quantifiers, and an identity predicate, only two further pieces of vocabulary are invoked -- a predicate for times and a predicate for temporal location. The characterizations does not consist in mere lists of principles, but rather take the form of full-blown logics, each logic comprising an axiomatic proof system and a corresponding semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete. The semantics is fairly simple and intuitive, and substantially add to the appeal that the corresponding system may independently have. Also, there will not be two characterizations, one for presentism and one for expansionism, but rather a set of characterizations for each view, each set corresponding to a number of natural variants of the relevant view.