Box 4

Mainly correspondence

Last updated: 2018-07-09 12:54:26

The material in this box is organised into 8 folders, and will be described "by folder".

First folder

Course handouts.

Some of these seem to date from ANP's time as a student at the University of Otago (1932-35). Others have probably been given to Prior by colleagues from the Victoria University at Wellington during Prior's stay as a British Council Visiting lecturer in New Zealand, August-September, 1965. See also Ninth folder/box 10.

All items are typewritten. Most are marked by one of the following signatures (added by hand):

• JMH, Victoria University at Wellington (Probably J. M. Hinton)
• GEH, Victoria University at Wellington (I.e. George Hughes)
• OU (i.e. University of Otago)
• University of Otago

Second folder

• Miscellaneous letters: Letter in French from Georges Kalinowski. 31 January, 1964. Letters from Ronald Harrop. 25 January 1965. 8 February, 1965. Letter from Nicholas Rescher. 24 November, 1965.
• Richard Harshman: ' "Empiricalness" and Laplacian Determinism Formulated with Tense and Modal Logic'. T (15 p.). Marked "Philosophy 182, Time and Modality". With handwritten corrections/comments by Prior.

Third folder

• Correspondence from Jan Lukasiewicz. 3 letters (2 May, 1953, 29 November, 1955, 20 January, 1956). The letters discuss the system C5 (a system of 'strict implication', see also ANP: The System C'5below).
• A letter on 'The Prisoner's Paradox' (undated; according to Mary Prior possibly from George Hughes); see The Paradox of the Prisoner in Logical Form/box 6.
• A letter on S5 (undated; according to Mary Prior probably from Jonathan Cohen)
• 'Extracts from letters on Modal Systems containing S4'. Ca. 1965.
• INFO (Per Hasle): These "Extracts" contain important passages on the subject in letters 1957–65 to Prior from Geach, Lemmon, Kripke, Dawson, and Sobocinski. The item must have been made by ANP (or under his supervision).
• Letters from ANP to: Anselm Müller (1 October, 1969), John [Lemmon] (30 November, 1957), David Meredith (20 July, 1956).
• Some notes associated with correspondence with D. Meredith (possibly these notes are by John Lemmon). HW (4 p.).
• ANP: The System C'5 (associated with letters to D. Meredith). Ca. 1957? HWU 8p.
• INFO (Per Hasle): Prior used the names C'1-C'5 to denote systems of propositional calculus in which the only primitive constant was the strict implication of Lewis' systems S1-S5. C'1-C'5 contain exactly those theses from the corresponding Lewis-systems that can be formulated with only this constant. Prior remarks "That C'-systems require to be explored was first pointed out to me by Mr. D. Meredith." [p. 1] Since the paper is thus written after his making acquaintance with D. Meredith, and is signed 'Canterbury University College', it is in all likelihood written about 1957. (Compare also with 1964j and 1969a.) This manuscript is contentwise clearly associated with a letter from ANP to D. Meredith dated 20/4/56. See also Extracts from letters on Modal Systems containing S4/box 4.

Fourth folder

Letters to Prior from:

• Bochenski (26 October, 1951, 26 October, 1955, 15 March, 1956).
• David Berg (1 December, 1965)
• Jack Canty (12 January/26 March, Year unknown, 20 March, 1968)
• J. Dopp (9 March, 6 April, 2 August, 1957)
• André Gombay (12 February, 1969)
• Ian Hacking (1 December, 1965)
• Sřren Halldén (20 August, 1957)
• A.S. Hanson (11 February, 1968
• Desmond Henry (June, 1957)
• Charles Howard (4 June, 1966)
• Z. Jordan (2 December, 1960)
• J.A. Kalman (1 October, 1959)
• Saul Kripke (3 September, 13 October, 1958, 27 February, 1964)
• INFO (Per Hasle): The letters from Kripke are particularly important, introducing in part the idea of branching time (September 1958), and pointing out the problem of the 'now' in tense logic when confronted with relativity theory (October 1958). A quote from [Øhrstrøm & Hasle 1993, pp. 27-28] is enlightening:

  "In two letters to Prior in September and October 1958 Kripke put forth some very stimulating ideas regarding temporal logic. The September letter contains an early version of the idea of branching time. Kripke suggested that we may consider the present as a point of "rank 1" and future possibilities at the next moment as points of "rank 2", and so forth. This gives rise to a tree structure representing the entire set of possible futures proliferating from the present. In this structure every point determines a subtree consisting of its own present and future... Prior clearly found this view of time interesting, and he further developed the idea of branching time in his later writings...

  In his October letter Kripke brought another important question regarding tense logic to Prior's attention. Kripke stated his doubt that tense logic is needed at all for scientific discourse. In Kripke's opinion a tenseless logic might be preferable. Kripke referred to relativistic physics wherein two events may be simultaneous to one observer, but not to another. Thus one observer could truthfully say "It is now the case that A, and it is now the case that B", while another observer could truthfully say "It is now the case that A, and it is not now the case that B, although it will be the case that B." Prior realized the importance of this problem and it seems that he often struggled with it."

  (In its section 5 the paper here quoted goes on to deal with Prior's attempted solutions; Chapter 2.7 of [Øhrstrøm & Hasle 1995] is also devoted to this problem.)

• C.I. Lewis (18 May, 1957)
• David Lewis (6 April, 1967)
• Azriel Levy (27 May, 1969)
• Michael Lockwood (25 December, 1968)
• David Londey (16 March, 1960)
• J.R. Lucas (no date)
• David Makinson (12 October, 1966, 27 June, 21 August, 1969)
• C.B. Martin (23 September, 1957)
• David Meredith (8 August, 1956)
• H. Montgomery (1 December, 1960, 13 June, 10 October, 1968)
• Vernon Pratt (3 November, 1966)
• R.H. Preson (20 October, 1959)
• W. Quine (5 December, 1953, 30 March, 9 June, 1954)
• Nicholas Rescher (23 February, 1966, 1 August, 1966)
• Richard Routley (15 December, 1968)
• Imre Ruzsa (28 September, 1968)
• W.W. Sawyer (10.04.1954)
• Krister Segerberg (26 May, 1966)
• Michael Shorter (22 May, 1959, 27 May, 1969
• Eric Toms (28 July, 1960)
• Christopher Williams (29 may, 1968)
• N.L. Wilson (19 March 1957, 25 June 1957, 26 August, 1957, 1 September, 1959)
• INFO (Per Hasle): This correspondence deals with Prior's paper 'Thank Godness That's over, (1959b)
• Zeman (6 November, 1963; 4 April 1968)
• INFO (Per Hasle): The 1963-letter makes it clear how Zeman was first introduced to the existential graphs of C.S. Peirce by Prior. It is also stated explicitly by Zeman that Peirce's Beta-graphs are equivalent with first order predicate calculus with identity (the earlist source of this insight of which I am aware; it seems the that Zeman/Prior have been the first to realise this relation).
  
• B. Wolniewicz (24 September, 1969).
• One letter from Charles Parsons to R.A. Bull, dated 1 April 1969.

Fifth folder

letters from:

• Nino Cocchiarella (5 April, 11 March, 1968)

The following letters are mainly personal:

• Storrs McCall (20 May, 1966)

This letter also contains a discussion of a light cone problem of special relativity.
--- Per Hasle

• Alison Hamilton (2 June, 1966)
• W.B. Stewart (5 November, 1962)
• Antero Palomaki (12 January, 1964)
• Amedeo G. Conte (4 April, 1964)
• Eduardo Garcia Maynez (27 June, 1963)
• Trenchard More (25 May, 1964)

- The Lukasiewicz Reduction of Bivalent C-Pure. Marked 18 August, 1956. CAM (C.A. Meredith). See First folder/box 8.
- a copy of 'Extracts from letters on Modal Systems containing S4', cf. Third folder/box 4.

Sixth folder

• A. Pampapathy Rao: An Attempt at an Alternative Formulation of Relative Consistency Proof for Church's P1. A Propositional Calculus with a Modified Excluded Middle. A Propositional Calculus with Two Monotone Operators. On Logical and Non-Logical Matrices.
• ANP: Comments on Papers by A. Pampapathy Rao. HWU (1 p.).
• Miscellaneous letters from other authors requesting Priors views on their thesises. (Peter Muller, 2 August, 1964, Laurent Larouche, 11 May, 1964, Mr. Sadler, 6 August, 1964).

Seventh folder

Letters from ANP to:

• Roger Gallie (6 November, 1967, 19 June, 1968, 6 May, 1968)
• Benson Mates (6 August, 1954, 5 March, 1968),
• Robert Bull (20/22/24/29 May, 4/5/6/13/17 June, 1 July, 13/30 September, 1968, 1 October, 1969); see Bull/box 1.
• Evan Luard (6 March, 1967)
• Nicholas Rescher (27 March, 1969)
• Storrs McCall (19/20 December, 1966, 11 January, 7 March, 24/27 April, 21 May, 18/23/24 October, 1/2 November, 2/4/11/13/27 December, 1967, 23 January, 1968); See McCall/box 2.
• INFO (Per Hasle): 

  Letters from the following dates:

  19/20 December, 1966, 11 January, 7 March, 24/27 April, 21 May, 18/23/24 October, 1/2 November, 2/4/11/13/27 December, 1967, 23 January, 1968.

  The letter of 23.10.67 is a reply to McCall's letter of 19.10.67 (McCall/box 2). It contains Prior's answer to McCall's question "Was it in fact your visit to California in 1965 that sparked off the renaissance in tense-logic?", but unfortunately no answer to the question "...why you abandoned the three-valued approach to tense-logic, and instead took up 'Ockhamist' and 'Peircean' solutions?"

  In the main, Prior's letter reads:

  Balliol 23/10/67

  Dear Storrs,

  Many thanks for the copy of your review [of 1967a]. I'm delighted with your alternative postulates for non-beginning & non-ending; they tie in rather nicely with McTaggart's Nature of Existence §329n. (& Goodman in the Structure of Appearance p. 366. It might be worth supplementing your formal result with these 2 reforms).

  Maybe you exaggerate the importance to anyone but myself of my visit to California in 1965, since Cocchiarella, Scott and Lemmon had got most of their results before I went there; on the other hand they hadn't published them (& still haven't), and I dare say I stirred them up a bit and pulled a few things together,

  - Thanks for the misprints. But the worst misprint is in the blurb on the cover (& in the advertising material), where "two years" should be ten years. I'm glad you implicitly conceed this in your opening sentence.

  .... [various less important remarks on miscellaneous subjects]

  Yours, Arthur

• David Lewis (21 April, 1967, 25 August, 1969)
• Peter Geach (21 May, 1967, 18 January, 1968)
• Jack Smart (21 February, 5 August, 1968)

Letters to ANP from:

• Roger Gallie (18 June, 1968, 2 May, 1969, 27 May, 1970 - to Mary Prior)
• Robert Bull (7 June, 10 August, 10 September, 7 October, 1969). See Bull/box 1.
• H.J Hanham (30 January, 1969, 24 February, 1969)
• David Shwayder (21 March, 1966)
• Jack Smart (31 July, 1969)
• John R. Chidgey (9 October, 1968)
• David Kaplan (19 October, 22 November, 1968) (on Egocentric logic 1968, cf. 1968h.) (see also Folder with material for the book 'Worlds, Times and Selves'/box 7).
• David Lewis (6 April, 16 May, 1967, 9 April, 1970 - to Mary Prior)

Envelope with letters concerning the Priors' stay in the USA 1965, Collected by David Lewis; including Prior's own CV-"form" for the California tour 1965.

Eighth folder

• A paper by R. Kamitz: The Principles of Mathematical Logic and Franz Brentano.
• Letters from M.J. Cresswell (6 September, 11/14/19 October, 1965)
• A note by Vernon Pratt, dated 21.02.1996, which contains a Limerick on Prior's moving to Oxford.