Exterminous Hypertime

Philosophies 6 (4):85 (2021)
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Abstract

This paper investigates ‘exterminous hypertime’, a model of time travel in which time travellers can change the past in virtue of there being two dimensions of time. This paper has three parts. Part one discusses the laws which might govern the connection between different ‘hypertimes’, showing that there are no problems with overdetermination. Part two examines a set of laws that mean changes to history take a period of hypertime to propagate through to the present. Those laws are of interest because: (i) at such worlds, a particular problem for non-Ludovician time travel (‘the multiple time travellers’ problem) is avoided; and (ii) they allow us to make sense of certain fictional narratives. Part three discusses how to understand expectations and rational decision making in a world with two dimensions of time. I end with an appendix discussing how the different theories in the metaphysics of time (e.g., tensed/tenseless theories and presentism/eternalism/growing block theory) marry up with exterminous hypertime.

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Nikk Effingham
University of Birmingham

Citations of this work

Abilities, freedom, and inputs: a time traveller's tale.Olivia Coombes - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Edinburgh

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References found in this work

Overdetermination Underdetermined.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (1):17-40.
The river of time.J. J. C. Smart - 1949 - Mind 58 (232):483-494.
The Real Truth About the Unreal Future.Rachael Briggs & Graeme A. Forbes - 2012 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics volume 7. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Bananas enough for time travel.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):363-389.

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