Time Travel
Summary | The philosophy of time travel involves investigation into the question of the physical, logical and metaphysical possibility of time travel. The topic centres on the fact that time travel scenarios seem physically possible, and yet many counterexamples have been put forward showing that it is not logically possible. The famous grandfather paradox asks whether it is possible for one to travel backwards in time to kill their own grandfather. The problem here is that, while it seems possible to engage in backwards time travel, it also seems impossible to change the past. Standard solutions to the paradox have interesting consequences for issues surrounding free will, as the thought goes that some event would always prevent a time traveller from doing the impossible and changing the past. However, without an explanation as to why a time traveller is prevented from performing certain actions this solution has been thought by some to be untenable. An alternative proposed solution, then, is that time is two-dimensional, and that it is possible to change the past on one of these temporal dimensions. Another, related, topic in the literature is that time travel involves backwards causation and, therefore, causal loops. There are two things at issue here. The first is the dispute between those who think that time travel entails causal loops and those who do not. And the second is the dispute between those who think that time travel does entail causal loops and that this is problematic and those who agree with the entailment but argue that it is not problematic. Additional issues in the time travel literature involve time travel and temporal ontology – i.e., whether or not the past, present and future are necessary for time travel – and time travel and identity over time – i.e., whether or not certain views of the persistence of objects rule out the possibility of the same object having two incompatible properties at the same time (due to a time-traveller encountering their younger self). |
Key works | Classic works on the grandfather paradox are Lewis 1976 and Horwich 1975. Lewis's solution to the grandfather paradox is defended against Horwich 1987 by Smith 1997 and Dowe 2003. The relationship between the grandfather paradox and free will is discussed in Sider 2002 and Vihvelin 1996. Riggs 1997 argues against the solution to the paradox whereby the time traveller is prevented from performing certain actions is untenable, and Baron 2017 looks at the two-dimensional solution to the paradox. Bernstein 2017 discusses time travel and the movable present. A solution to Einstein's field equations that permits closed time-like curves is given in Gödel 1949. Closed time-like curves are discussed in Dowe 2007. The compatibility between dynamic theories of time and time travel is discussed in Monton 2003, Miller 2005, Miller 2006, Miller 2006, Dowe 2009 and Sider 2005. Miller 2021 looks at time travel and future-bias. |
Introductions | Luminet 2011, and Le Poidevin 2003 both offer good introductions to the topic. |
- Persistence (1,134 | 154)
- Physics of Time (585)
- Temporal Experience (713 | 253)
- Temporal Logic (479)
- Temporal Expressions (471)
- The Direction of Time (265)
- Aspects of Time, Misc (222)
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David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Esa Diaz-Leon Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |