Time Travel and Changing the Past: (Or How to Kill Yourself and Live to Tell the Tale)

Ratio 16 (1):16-32 (2004)
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Abstract

According to the prevailing sentiment, changing the past is logically impossible. The prevailing sentiment is wrong. In this paper, I argue that the claim that changing the past entails a contradiction ultimately rests upon an empirical assumption, and so the conclusion that changing the past is logically impossible is to be resisted. I then present and discuss a model of time which drops the empirical assumption and coherently models changing the past. Finally, I defend the model, and changing the past, against objections.

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G. C. Goddu
University of Richmond

Citations of this work

Time Travel and the Open Future.Kristie Miller - 2005 - Disputatio 1 (19):223 - 232.
How to Change the Past in One-Dimensional Time.Roberto Loss - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1):1-11.
Back to the Unchanging Past.Sam Baron - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (1):129-147.

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