While logical theories of information attitudes, such as knowledge, certainty and belief, have flourished in the past two decades, formalization of other facets of rational behavior have lagged behind significantly. One intriguing line of research concerns the concept of intention. I will discuss one approach to tackling the notion within a logical framework, based on a database perspective.

Tense logic is a branch of contemporary logic which includes formal devices that allow us to deal with the temporal relations between propositions. The aim of our paper is threefold: 1) to reveal how Aristotelian philosophical ideas about time, truth, possibility and necessity were reinterpreted by the founder of contemporay tense logic Arthur Prior; 2) to discuss what novel solutions to the classical problem of future contingents are available using Priorean invention; 3) to describe how the tools of tense logic (...) have transcended their original theoretical purposes. (shrink)