No Time Travel for Presentists

Logos and Episteme 1 (2):353-360 (2010)
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Abstract

In the present paper, I offer a new argument to show that presentism about time is incompatible with time travel. Time travel requires leaving the present, which, under presentism, contains all of reality. Therefore to leave the present moment is to leave reality entirely; i.e. to go out of existence. Presentist “time travel” is therefore best seen as a form of suicide, not as a mode of transportation. Eternalists about time do not face the same difficulty, and time travel is compossible with eternalism.

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20690533

DOI

10.5840/logos-episteme2010129

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Author's Profile

Steven Hales
Bloomsburg University

Citations of this work

Time Travel.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2012 - In Ed Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

The Paradoxes of Time Travel.David Lewis - 1976 - American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (2):145-152.
A Defense of Presentism.Ned Markosian - 2004 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 1:47-82.
Presentism and properties.John Bigelow - 1996 - Philosophical Perspectives 10:35-52.
On presentism and triviality.Thomas M. Crisp - 2004 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 1:15-20.
Presentism.Thomas M. Crisp - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman, The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.

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