Conference: The Metaphysics of Time: Themes from Prior

Conference: The Metaphysics of Time: Themes from Prior

The conference was held at Aalborg University on March 19–21, 2019
Relevant themes
Examples of relevant themes include (but are not restricted to):
- The tensed view of time
- The tenseless view of time
- Branching time
- Time and modality
- Tense logic
- Presentism and its rivals
- The arrow of time
- Time and eternity
- Human freedom and divine foreknowledge
- A.N. Prior’s early papers
- Abstract entities and logical constructions
- Hybrid logic
- The logic of ethics
- Anselm’s ontological argument
Abstracts
All abstracts as pdf
Keynote lecture 1: Time, Tense, and Eternity
William Lane Craig
Abstract:
How does God relate to time? Theologians have differed over whether God should be thought to exist timelessly or omnitemporally throughout infinite time. A watershed question for the doctrine of divine eternity is whether one adopts a tensed or a tenseless theory of time. If a tenseless theory of time is true, then God's timeless existence is thus far forth unproblematic. But if a tensed theory of time is true, then God is most plausibly understood to exist temporally, in light of (i) His causal relation to the temporal world and (ii) His knowledge of tensed facts.
Keynote lecture 2: Legal Pardon, Tensed Time, and the Expiation of Guilt
William Lane Craig
Abstract:
Divine forgiveness is much more akin to a legal pardon by an executive authority than to the personal forgiveness characteristic of private relationships. For divine forgiveness, like a legal pardon, involves not merely the relinquishing of certain subjective feelings, but effecting an objective change in a person's legal status, making the pardonee no longer liable to punishment. But does a pardon expunge the guilt of the wrongdoer? In the Anglo-American justice system courts have differed on this question. An examination of legal opinions reveals that the answer hinges upon one's underlying theory of time. Courts which have ruled that a pardon blots out the guilt of the wrongdoer tacitly presuppose a tensed theory of time.
Programme and practical information
Conference Organization and contact
Conference Organization
Program committee: David Jakobsen, Per Hasle, Peter Øhrstrøm.
Conference manager: Fatima Sabir.
For more information contact:
Fatima Sabir, fsabir@ruc.dk or
David Jakobsen davker@hum.aau.dk.