The Language of Special Relativity

The Special Theory of Relativity is often interpreted as forcing us to accept a conceptual revolution in our thinking about space, time, and the temporal distinction between past, present, and future. Most importantly, it is claimed that the notion of absolute simultaneity that is embodied in our pre-relativistic thinking about time must be abandoned. Thus, our natural language use of linguistic tense appears to be ill-founded. This constitutes a problem for philosophical analysis: Given that our natural language talk is based on a (supposedly erroneous) conception of absolute simultaneity, can we analyze and clarify such talk? Prima facie, our natural language use of tenses is well captured by tense logic. Can we adjust the machinery of that logical framework such as to meet the relativistic challenge? In my paper, I will first sketch the project of tense logic as a so-called A-theory of time (Section 2). I will then state the relativistic challenge (Section 3). Finally, I will try to answer the challenge by extending the formal framework of tense logic, taking a lead from Arthur Prior’s idea of a “logic of points of view” (Section 4). Very much in the spirit of tense logic, I will claim that the special theory of relativity is best interpreted as a multi-modal logic.