Closed Causal Loops and the Bilking Argument

Synthese 136 (3):305-320 (2003)
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Abstract

The most potentially powerful objection to the possibility oftime travel stems from the fact that it can, under the right conditions, give rise to closedcausal loops, and closed causal loops can be turned into self-defeating causal chains;folks killing their infant selves, setting out to destroy the world before they were born,and the like. It used to be thought that such chains present paradoxes; the receivedwisdom nowadays is that they give rise to physical anomalies in the form of inexplicably correlated events. I argue against the received wisdom. I can find nothing in them that argues against the possibility (even, the probability) of time travel.

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Jenann Ismael
Columbia University

Citations of this work

Ontic Structural Realism.Kerry McKenzie - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (4):e12399.
Time Travel.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Explanation impossible.Sam Baron & Mark Colyvan - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (2):559-576.

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