The Significance of the Prior-Smart Correspondence for the Rise of Tense-Logic

The correspondence between Arthur Norman Prior and J.J.C. Smart was significant for Prior’s development of tense-logic. Prior was influential in making Smart sceptical about Wittgenstein’s view on pseudo-relations. Prior appears to have convinced Smart of the superiority of subsuming logical relations under the scope of operators. When Prior, however, disclosed the invention of tense-logic to Smart, it is clear from the correspondence that Smart did not find Prior’s tensed operators convincing. Indeed, it turns out that Smart warned Prior against presenting tense-logic at the John Locke Lectures. Two questions are raised with regard to Smart’s warning: Why did Smart warn Prior against presenting tense-logic at the John Locke Lectures, and why was Prior’s tense-logic so well received? An argument is tentatively given based on the novelty of Prior’s tense-logical operators to account for what Van Cleve(2016)[21]calls objectivity without objects.