Time Travel

Probability and Impossibility
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-884250-7
Verlag: Oxford University Press(UK)

Buch, Englisch, 260 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

There are various arguments for the metaphysical impossibility of time travel. Is it impossible because objects could then be in two places at once? Or is it impossible because some objects could bring about their own existence? In this book, Nikk Effingham contends that no such argument is sound and that time travel is metaphysically possible. His main focus is on the Grandfather Paradox: the position that time travel is impossible because someone could not go back in time and kill their own grandfather before he met their grandmother. In such a case, Effingham argues that the time traveller would have the ability to do the impossible (so they could kill their grandfather) even though those impossibilities will never come about (so they won't kill their grandfather). He then explores the ramifications of this view, discussing issues in probability and decision theory. The book ends by laying out the dangers of time travel and why, even though no time machines currently exist, we should pay extra special care ensuring that nothing, no matter how small or microscopic, ever travels in time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Effingham, Nikk

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1: Modes of Time Travel

- 2: The Self Visitation Paradox

- 3: The Time Discrepancy Paradox

- 4: The Double Occupancy Problem

- 5: The Bootstrapping Paradox

- 6: Changing the Past

- 7: The Grandfather Paradox

- 8: Constrict Theories

- 9: Inconsistency Theories

- 10: Incapacity Theory

- 11: Impossibility Theory

- 12: Probability

- 13: Decision Theory

- 14: The Tourist Paradox

Über Autor(innen)

Nikk Effingham is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. He received his doctorate from the University of Leeds and has previously worked at the University of Glasgow. His areas of research include metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of science. Other than time travel, he has also written papers on supersubstantivalism, composition, and perdurantism.