The Interpretation of Branching Time Diagrams

The use of branching time diagrams in tense logic was originally suggested in 1957 by Saul Kripke. During the following years, A.N. Prior (1914-1969) developed models with forwards branching and backwards linearity. Prior's work on tense logic inspired several logicians during the 1960s, such as Nino Cochiarella (born 1933) and Henrik von Wright (1916-2003). Both of them questioned Prior's idea of a linear past. In the present paper, we argue that the best way to take advantage of the results of the various discussions of branching time since Prior would be to make use of a Molinistic version of the Ockhamistic model. We argue that this interpretation of branching time can reflect and support natural language reasoning in a very useful manner.