Time travel and consistency constraints

Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1098-1113 (2003)
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Abstract

The possibility of time travel, as permitted in General Relativity, is responsible for constraining physical fields beyond what laws of nature would otherwise require. In the special case where time travel is limited to a single object returning to the past and interacting with itself, consistency constraints can be avoided if the dynamics is continuous and the object's state space satisfies a certain topological requirement: that all null-homotopic mappings from the state-space to itself have some fixed point. Where consistency constraints do exist, no new physics is needed to enforce them. One needs only to accept certain global topological constraints as laws, something that is reasonable in any case.

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Douglas Kutach
Rutgers University - New Brunswick (PhD)

Citations of this work

Time travel and modern physics.Frank Arntzenius - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Constraints on data in worlds with closed timelike curves.Phil Dowe - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (5):724–735.
The temporal epistemic anomaly.Peter Riggs - 2018 - Manuscrito 41 (3):1-28.

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References found in this work

Time Travel and Modern Physics.Frank Arntzenius & Tim Maudlin - 2002 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50:169-200.

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