Span operators
Berit “Brit” Brogaard · Analysis · 2007
Presentists typically assent to a range of tensed statements, for instance, that there were dinosaurs, that there was a president named Lincoln, and that my future grandchildren will be on their way to school.1 Past- and future-tensed claims are dealt with by introducing intensional tense operators, for instance, it has been 12 years ago that, it was the case when I was born that, and it will be the case that (Prior 1968). For example, ‘there were dinosaurs’, upon analysis, cashes out to: where it was the case thatis a past tense operator. Quantifiers within the scope of past and future tense operators are not existentially committing. So, (1) does not commit us to the existence of dinosaurs. But tensed plural quantifiers present a problem for presentism. Consider, for instance: As David Lewis (2004: 5) points out, the presentist cannot simply treat past- and future-tensed plural quantifiers as quantifiers within the scope of a slice tense operator. For (2) then comes out as: