Barlassina, L. and Del Prete, F. (2014) The puzzle of the changing past. Analysis. First published online: November 27, 2014. ISSN 1467-8284
Abstract
If you utter sentence (1) ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that (1) could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like (1), but which was true when uttered a few years ago and is no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Authors 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. |
Keywords: | Time; Tense; Past; Truth in context |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Dec 2014 09:39 |
Last Modified: | 01 Dec 2014 09:39 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/analys/anu105 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/analys/anu105 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:82254 |