It is necessary to use variables ranging over times explicitly in the object language in the logical analysis of temporal reference in English.
However, the point of maintaining such a thesis may seem far from clear. It will become clearer, I hope, after a brief exposition of the views of Arthur Prior which are in direct opposition to those encompassed in m y thesis. There will emerge a principle -that the point of view of the speaker dominates all subordinate clauses -which I maintain and Prior rejects. This leads me to oppose the Priorean approach of considering tenses along the lines of propositional modal operators and in particular to criticise the notion of a proposition with variable truth value.
It will be important to appreciate that my discussion concerns not only tenses, but also dates. M y object is to provide an account of tenses and dates together in a unified framework.
II Prior explains his analysis of tenses as follows:
In a rationalised language with uniform constructions for similar functions we could form the past tense by prefixing to a given sentence the phrase 'It was the case that'... and the future tense by prefixing 'It will be the case that'. For example, instead of 'I will be eating my breakfast' we could say 'It will be the case that I am eating my breakfast', and instead of 'I was eating my breakfast' we could say 'It was the case that I am eating my breakfast'. 1
Prior makes it quite clear the 'I am eating m y breakfast', as it occurs in a sentence of the kind 'It was the case that I am eating my breakfast',