Future-biased individuals systematically prefer positively valenced events to be in the future (positive future-bias) and negatively valenced events to be in the past (negative future-bias). The most extreme form of future-bias is absolute future-bias, whereby we completely discount the value of past events when forming our preferences. Various authors have thought that we are absolutely future-biased (Sullivan (2018:58); Parfit (1984:173) and that future-bias (absolute or otherwise) is at least rationally permissible (Prior (1959), Hare (2007; 2008), Kauppinen (2018), Heathwood (2008)). The (...) permissibility of future-bias is often held to be grounded in the structure of the temporal dimension. In this paper I consider several proposals for grounding the permissibility of such preferences and evaluate these in the light of the preferences we would have, and judge that we should have, in various time-travel scenarios. I argue that what we learn by considering these scenarios is that these preferences really have nothing to do with temporal structure. So if something grounds their permissibility, it is not temporal structure. (shrink)

Continuists maintain that, aside from their distinct temporal orientations, episodic memory and future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT) are qualitatively continuous. Discontinuists deny this, arguing that, in addition to their distinct temporal orientations, there are qualitative metaphysical or epistemological differences between episodic memory and FMTT. This chapter defends continuism by responding both to arguments for metaphysical discontinuism, based on alleged discontinuities between episodic memory and FMTT at the causal, intentional, and phenomenological levels, and to arguments for epistemological discontinuism, based on (...) alleged discontinuities with respect to the epistemic openness of the past and future, the directness or indirectness of our knowledge of past and future, and immunity to error through misidentification. The chapter concludes by sketching a positive argument for continuism. (shrink)

In this chapter I articulate the threat that time travel to the past allegedly poses to the free will of the time traveler, and I argue that on the traditional way of thinking about free will, the incompatibilist about time travel and free will wins the day. However, a residual worry about the incompatibilist view points the way toward a novel way of thinking about free will, one that I tentatively explore toward the end of the chapter.

In this paper I defend the compossibility of presentism and time travel from two objections. One objection is that the presentist’s model of time leaves nowhere to travel to; the second objection attempts to equate presentist time travel with suicide. After targeting some misplaced scrutiny of the first objection, I show that presentists have the resources to account for the facts that make for time travel on the traditional Lewisian view. In light of this ability, I (...) argue that both of the objections fail. (shrink)

I have argued against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities using a time travel-based counterexample. Kelly McCormick has responded to my counterexample by arguing that the time travel scenario must be a scenario in which a time traveler’s actions are causally determined; hence, she claims, we should be suspicious of attributing moral responsibility to anyone in such a scenario. In this paper, I respond by arguing that one might be morally responsible in an indeterministic time travel scenario.

The Consequence argument is an argument from plausible premises–our lack of causal power over the laws and past–to an implausible conclusion: that if determinism is true, we are equally powerless with respect to the future. What the compatibilist needs is a theory of counterfactuals that preserves the links between counterfactuals, causation, and the natural laws in a way that supports our commonsense belief that we have the power to make a causal difference to the future but no such power with (...) respect to the past. Lewis’s critique of the Consequence argument was based on his theory of counterfactuals and his analysis of causation as a counterfactual relation between particular events. He argued that, at a world that is deterministic in the way that ours might be, counterfactuals are temporally asymmetric in a way that matches the contingent temporal asymmetry of cauation. So it is not surprising, but only to be expected, that the past is causally closed while the future is causally open. If this worked, it would be just what the compatibilist needs. But it doesn’t work. There is an argument, due to Tooley and recently endorsed by Wasserman, that a fundamental feature of Lewis’s theory of counterfactuals is inconsistent with the metaphysical possibility of time travel and backwards causation. If this is right, then Lewis’s response to the Consequence argument fails. I endorse this conclusion, but argue that there is a better theory of counterfactuals–a theory that leaves open the metaphysical possibility of time travel to the past and backwards causation. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine the tendency to view future-oriented mental time travel as a unitary faculty that, despite task-driven surface variation, ultimately reduces to a common phenomenological state. We review evidence that FMTT is neither unitary nor beholden to episodic memory: Rather, it is varied both in its memorial underpinnings and experiential realization. We conclude that the phenomenological diversity characterizing FMTT is dependent not on the type of memory activated during task performance, but on the kind of subjective (...) temporality associated with the memory in play. (shrink)

Nikk Effingham and Huw Price argue that in certain cases of Newcomb problems involving time travel and foreknowledge, being given information about the future makes it rational to choose as an evidential decision theorist would choose. Although the cases they consider have some intuitive pull, and so appear to aid in answering the question of what it is rational to do, we argue that their respective positions are not compelling. Newcomb problems are structured such that whichever way one chooses, (...) one might be led by one’s preferred decision theory to miss out on some riches (riches which others obtain whilst employing their preferred decision theory). According to the novel aesthetic diagnosis we shall offer of the Newcomb dialectic, missing out in this way does not render one irrational but, rather, subject to being seen as absurd. This is a different kind of cost but not one that undermines one’s rationality. (shrink)

Individuals are at risk of acquiring untreatable agents of infection when they travel to countries where antibiotic-resistant agents of infection are prevalent, and particularly when they travel for healthcare. Uncertainty with respect to the overall political and economic consequences seems to underlie the reluctance of public health authorities to issue relevant travel advisories. The conditions of choice, the act of choice and the consequences of choice can each be a primary focus of ethical appraisal of public health (...) policy. The ‘value of choice’ account provided by Scanlon draws attention to the value of the choices that individuals are given, and the potential for reasonable rejection of policies that do not give adequate emphasis to the conditions of individual choice. There is both instrumental and symbolic value in informing people of the risk of acquisition of antibiotic-resistant microbes associated with health tourism. We cannot reasonably reject a principle of actively informing unless there are insurmountable countervailing reasons. These reasons should be explicit and subject to review. If health tourism is a concern then we might also consider how best to facilitate alternative choices. (shrink)

Lewis argued that although paradoxes such as the famous Grandfather Paradox can be solved, only a limited set of time travel fiction is consistent. In this paper, I discuss how to extend a Lewisian approach to a class of time travel fiction not considered by Lewis: transmigration or mental time travel fiction. To this end, Lewis’s definition of personal time needs refining, and this is the primary focus of my paper. I discuss some alternative refinements of Lewis’s (...) definition: a Solely Mental definition and a Causal definition. I end by also applying these definitions to cases of reverse aging. (shrink)

David Lewis aimed to give an account of causation, and in particular, a semantics for the counterfactuals to which his account appeals, that is compatible with backwards causation and time travel. I will argue that he failed, but not for the reasons that have been offered to date, specifically by Collins, Hall and Paul and by Wasserman. This is significant not the least because Lewis’ theory of causation was the most influential theory over the last quarter of the 20th (...) century; and moreover, Lewis’ spirited defence of time travel in the 1970s has shaped philosophers’ approach to time travel to this day. (shrink)

Traveling-wave solutions of the standard and compound form of Korteweg–de Vries–Burgers equations are found using factorizations of the corresponding reduced ordinary differential equations. The procedure leads to solutions of Bernoulli equations of non-linearity 3/2 and 2 (Riccati), respectively. Introducing the initial conditions through an imaginary phase in the traveling coordinate, we obtain all the solutions previously reported, some of them being corrected here, and showing, at the same time, the presence of interesting details of these solitary waves that have been (...) overlooked before this investigation. (shrink)

Time travel is metaphysically possible. Nikk Effingham contends that arguments for the impossibility of time travel are not sound. Focusing mainly on the Grandfather Paradox, Effingham explores the ramifications of taking this view, discusses issues in probability and decision theory, and considers the potential dangers of travelling in time.

Jewish Travel in Antiquity. By Catherine Hezser. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, vol. 144. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Pp. x + 529. €139.

The objective was to test the Theory of Planned Behavior and the proposition that relative measures should be used in travel mode choice situations. Data from a survey in Norway was analyzed using regression analysis. The results indicated that factors of the Theory of Planned Behavior and past behavior predicted intentions to travel by car, public, transport, bicycle, and on foot. The results supported the idea that there is a split in perceived behavioral control in controllability and self-efficacy, (...) as controllability was a significant predictor only for intention to travel by car. The use of relative measures added to the predictive strength of all predictors and increased prediction of behavioral intention for all travel modes. The results supported the Theory of Planned Behavior and the proposition regarding choice situations. Previous tests of the theory may have underestimated its predictive power. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predict travel intentions and may be targeted in interventions aimed at promoting travel mode choice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the thesis that time travel is logically possible, is inconsistent with the necessary truth of any of the usual ‘open futureobjective present’ models of the universe. It has been relatively uncontroversial until recently to hold that presentism is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel. I argue that recent arguments to the contrary do not show that presentism is consistent with time travel. Moreover, the necessary truth of other open future-objective present (...) models which we might, prima facie, have supposed to be more amenable to the possibility of time travel, turn out also to be inconsistent with this possibility. (shrink)

A collection of articles and essays, critical analyses and personal reflections of travel and tourism by a diverse group of scholars and journalists. The authors consider the ethics and racial politics of traveling and doing research abroad and the privilege allowing them to enter peoples' lives, ask intimate questions, and publish their disclosures, effectively putting them on display.

This article explores Gypsy Travellers' changing views on their children's education. It highlights the positive means some schools use to encourage greater involvement of Gypsy Traveller parents. It argues that current educational policy needs to be re-developed to incorporate more effective and affirmative responses to interrupted and nomadic learning. It draws heavily on interviews with Gypsy Traveller families in an effort to give 'voice' to an under-represented community.

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of (...) puzzle. The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

A travel management programme allows an organisation to manage corporate travel expenditure, and through a well-formulated travel policy, to control its travel expenses. However, traveller non-compliance of the travel policy is an increasing area of concern with surveys conducted amongst travellers showing various reasons for non-compliance, both deliberate and unknowing. The purpose of this article is to look beyond the reasons and identify the underlying factors that influence travel policy compliance. Two broad categories of (...) factors that lead to non-compliance are distinguished: those related to the corporate travel policy as formulated and communicated by the organisation, referred to as corporate-related factors and including issues of corporate culture and business ethics; and those related to the person of the corporate traveller, referred as personal-related factors and including issues of personal ethics. This article makes a first attempt at identifying factors that have not previously been recognised in those industry or academic studies done on non-compliance or violation of the corporate travel policy. (shrink)

The last few years have been good for time machines. Kip Thorne's renowned general relativity group at Caltech invented a new quantum gravitational approach to building a time gate, and, in an international collaboration, gave a plausible rebuttal of "grandfather paradox" arguments against time travel. Another respected group suggested time machines that exploit quantum mechanical time uncertainty. The technical requirements for these suggestions exceed our present capabilities, but each new approach seems less onerous than the last. There is hope (...) yet that time travel will eventually become possible, even cheap. (shrink)

This article focuses on Claudio Magris’s reflections on time by interrogating two time-related notions from which his entire narrative oeuvre develops: the idea of eternal con-temporariness and his reworking of Carlo Michelstaedter’s concept of ‘persuasion’. Furthermore, it aims to explore the implications of these notions for the ways in which Magris revisits and represents both the familiar and the less familiar places that make up the fabric of his literary journeys. The discussion of Magris’s use of the two notions of (...) time begins with Danube, where he recounts the experiences of the traveler-narrator on the vast itinerary from the river’s source to the Black Sea. Following the curved and sinuous path that runs parallel to the Danube’s riverbanks, the traveler-narrator records his reflections on the ways in which the historical and intellectual European figures, as well as the ordinary characters around which the book centers, have dealt with the experience of time. In his two later novels, Microcosms and Blindly, Magris picks up the theme of reflection again as it continues to shape his wanderings through global and familiar places. In the short stories of Tempo curvo a Krems [Curving time in Krems], in contrast, the aging characters have somehow come to a standstill after migrating from Central and Eastern Europe to northern Italy. Here, Magris seems to take a different perspective, since the elderly protagonists have renounced the search for persuasion and tend to withdraw from life. At the same time, however, the narrator’s conjectures from the seashore again lead the reader back to the very beginning of Magris’s long-life literary journey “through time and against time.” By evoking the image of the river’s delta and the narrator’s sense of uncertainty when the latter faces the open sea, Magris reaffirms once again the importance of preserving a sense of the beyond through which to discover the complexity and uncertainty of one’s own identity. (shrink)

This article proposes a new problem which is called the Stochastic Travelling Advisor Problem in network optimization, and it is defined for an advisory group who wants to choose a subset of candidate workplaces comprising the most profitable route within the time limit of day working hours. A nonlinear binary mathematical model is formulated and a real application case study in the occupational health and safety field is presented. The problem has a stochastic nature in travelling and advising times since (...) the deterministic models are not appropriate for such real-life problems. The STAP is handled by proposing suitable probability distributions for the time parameters and simulating the problem under such conditions. Many application problems like this one are formulated as nonlinear binary programming models which are hard to be solved using exact algorithms especially in large dimensions. A novel binary version of the recently developed gaining-sharing knowledge-based optimization algorithm to solve binary optimization problems is given. GSK algorithm is based on the concept of how humans acquire and share knowledge during their life span. The binary version of GSK depends mainly on two stages that enable BGSK for exploring and exploitation of the search space efficiently and effectively to solve problems in binary space. The generated simulation runs of the example are solved using the BGSK, and the output histograms and the best-fitted distributions for the total profit and for the route length are obtained. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the theories of time travel in a perspective close to theories of time. In the last section we discuss the special ontology of the objects that exist on closed timelike curves. We simply assert that CTC need a new ontology and these objects are not simply impossible or unconcevaible.

This series celebrates the Bodleian Library's acquisition of Tom Phillips's archive of over 50,000 photographic postcards dating from the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, 'ordinary' people could afford to own their portraits. Each title in this series is thematically assembled and designed by the artist, the covers featuring a linked painting specially created for each title from Tom Phillips's signature work, A Humument.Fantasy Travel shows people sitting (...) proudly and playfully in studio mock-ups of aeroplanes, cars, speedboats and hot air balloons. Such modes of transport were beyond the dreams of the average person in the early twentieth century but the photographic studios allowed them to indulge wild flights of fancy and take away the resulting postcards. (shrink)

Theoria originally implied a kind of active observation, combining perception with asking questions and listening to local stories and myths. This is travel treated not as a metaphor in discourse, but as both source and goal of discourse, or movement as a format for conveying information seen and heard. This would be travel as paraphor or travel and discourse carried one alongside the other as a context for intellection. This article articulates travel as paraphor using Greg (...) Ulmer’s concept of the ‘popcycle’ to analyze the architect Le Corbusier’s ecstatic moment in the monastery at Val d’Ema, outside Florence, revealing thespatial practice of theoria within the architect’s travel tour. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to defend the general tenet that time travelers cannot change the past within B-theoretical models of time, independently of how many temporal dimensions there are. Baron Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98, 129–147 offered a strong argument intended to reach this general conclusion. However, his argument does not cover a peculiar case, i.e. a B-theoretical one-dimensional model of time that allows for the presence of internal times. Loss Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96, 1–11 used the latter model (...) to argue that time travelers can change the past within such model. We show a way to debunk Loss’s argument, so that the general tenet about the impossibility of changing the past within B-theoretical models is maintained. (shrink)

It is clearly stated what time-travel would be, were it possible, and it is thereby shown that the very concept of time-travel is incoherent.

In American ethnic literature of the last three decades of the 20th century, recurrent themes of mobility, travel, and “homing in” are emblematic of the search for identity. In this essay, which discusses three short stories, Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Louise Erdrich’s “The World’s Greatest Fishermen,” and Daniel Chacon’s “The Biggest City in the World,” I attempt to demonstrate that as a consequence of technological development, with travel becoming increasingly accessible to ethnic Americans, their search for identity assumes (...) wider range, transcending national and cultural boundaries. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at (...) a critique of human bioenhancement proposed by Mirko Garasic who argues that the bioenhancement of human astronauts is not only functional but necessary and thus morally permissible. However, he further claims that the bioethical arguments proposed for the context of space do not apply to the context of Earth. This paper forwards three arguments for how Garasic’s views are philosophically dubious: (1) when he examines our responsibility towards future generations he refers to a moral principle (which we will call the principle of mere survival) which, besides being vague, is not morally acceptable; (2) the idea that human bioenhancement is not natural is not only debatable but morally irrelevant; and (3) it is not true that the situations that may arise in space travel cannot occur on Earth. We conclude that not only is the (bio)enhancement of humans on Earth permissible but perhaps even necessary in certain circumstances. (shrink)

Contrary to the informed consensus, time travel implies spontaneity (as distinct from chance) so that time travel can only be of the second kind.

Travel route preferences can strongly interact with the events that happened in networked traveling, and this coevolving phenomena are essential in providing theoretical foundations for travel route recommendation and predicting collective behaviour in social systems. While most literature puts the focus on route recommendation of individual scenic spots instead of city travel, we propose a novel approach named City Travel Route Recommendation based on Sequential Events Similarity by applying the coevolving spreading dynamics of the city tour (...) networks and mine the travel spatiotemporal patterns in the networks. First, we present the Event Sequence Similarity Measurement Method based on modelling tourists’ travel sequences. The method can help measure similarities in various city travel routes, which combine different scenic types, time slots, and relative locations. Second, by applying the user preference learning method based on scenic type, we learn from the user’s city travel historical data and compute the personalized travel preference. Finally, we verify our algorithm by collecting data of 54 city travellers of their historical spatiotemporal routes in the ten most popular cities from Mafeng.com. CTRR-SES shows better performance in predicting the user’s new city travel sequence fitting the user’s individual preference. (shrink)

Most approaches to quantum gravity suggest that relativistic spacetime is not fundamental, but instead emerges from some non-spatiotemporal structure. This paper investigates the implications of this suggestion for the possibility of time travel in the sense of the existence of closed timelike curves in some relativistic spacetimes. In short, will quantum gravity reverse or strengthen general relativity’s verdict that time travel is possible?

It is not quite as easy to see that there is in fact no formula of this modal language having the same truth conditions (in terms of S5 Kripke semantics) as (1). This was rst conjectured by Allen Hazen2 and later proved by Harold Hodes3. We present a simple direct proof of this result and discuss some consequences for the logical analysis of ordinary modal discourse.

Counterpath is a collaborative work by Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida that answers to the gamble inherent in the idea of “travelling with” the philosopher of deconstruction. Malabou's readerly text of quotations and commentary demonstrates how Derrida's work, while appearing to be anything but a travelogue, is nevertheless replete with references to geographical and topographical locations, and functions as a kind of counter-Odyssey through meaning, theorizing, and thematizing notions of arrival, drifting, derivation, and catastrophe. In fact, by going straight to (...) the heart of the Derridean idea of “spacing,” she finally makes it seem as though Derrida has never written about anything but travel. Malabou's text is punctuated by a series of postcards received by Derrida from destinations such as Istanbul and Porto, Laguna Beach and Athens, which are inspired by his reading of her evolving discussion. Writing in a familiar and unguarded manner, as if he were “on vacation” from his own writing, Derrida still remains totally faithful to that work and invites the reader to reflect on much of what haunts his texts as well as his daily life, questions of distance and death, the relation to the other, and exile. (shrink)

Space and time are the most fundamental features of our experience of the world, and yet they are also the most perplexing. Does time really flow, or is that simply an illusion? Did time have a beginning? What does it mean to say that time has a direction? Does space have boundaries, or is it infinite? Is change really possible? Could space and time exist in the absence of any objects or events? What, in the end, are space and time? (...) Do they really exist, or are they simply the constructions of our minds? Robin Le Poidevin provides a clear, witty, and stimulating introduction to these deep questions and many other mind-boggling puzzles and paradoxes. He gives a vivid sense of the difficulties raised by our ordinary ideas about space and time, but he also gives us the basis to think about these problems independently, avoiding large amounts of jargon and technicality. His book is an invitation to think philosophically rather than a sustained argument for particular conclusions, but Le Poidevin does advance and defend a number of controversial views. He argues, for example, that time does not actually flow, that it is possible for space and time to be both finite and yet be without boundaries, and that causation is the key to an understanding of one of the deepest mysteries of time: its direction. Drawing on a variety of vivid examples from science, history, and literature, Travels in Four Dimensions brings to life some of the most profound questions imaginable. (shrink)

This paper focuses on problems for time travel that specifically concern continuous time-travel to the past, problems to do with potential collisions with past obstacles such as former time-slices of the time traveler herself. These problems have not been discussed nearly as much as other questions about time travel, such as the Grandfather Paradox. Here I focus on discussions by Bernstein, Dowe, Grey and Le Poidevin. After examination, I conclude that only the problems of turning around in (...) time have any merit and present a new proposal of my own for turning around in time without collisions. I assume a Lewisian framework throughout. (shrink)

In the fifth space-time dimension of the journey, in that invisible dimension of meaning, one also simultaneously enters the dimension of narration, in a double track that makes the dialogic dimension, traveling, a distinctive trait of traveling, both inside and outside oneself. The journey then becomes the occasion for a reinterpretation of meaning, the place of its return, the space within which to get lost and find oneself in a different articulation of oneself and one’s identity, the forge, the alchemical (...) _atanor_, where to live profound upheaval of oneself within a narrative and dialogic consciousness that makes the travel companion, the traveler, the other the focus and direction of our haughty representations and of our most unfathomable inner worlds. Because no one can tell only himself. We will therefore try to make people understand the special connection that exists between travel and narration, present within a literary tradition that crosses times and places, crossing the Middle Ages with Geoffrey Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ up to the most recent _Drive my Car_ by Murakami, in a common narrative and existential structure that unfolds precisely in the particularity of traveling together. Everything that happens to us while traveling becomes a form of narration that combines the lived experience of consciousness, the _Erlebnis_, the poetry of the word in expression, an expression of a deeper self that can manifest itself in its epiphany through the story of what we are while we travel, while we wander, while we walk in other places, with others, lost in walking on foot, by car or train, without space-time limits, in that way of flying over the world typical of _flânerie_. (shrink)

Campion, Edmund Review(s) of: Traveller to freedom: The Roger Pryke story, by Francis Ravel Harvey (Sydney: Freshwater Press, 2011), pp.392, $49.95.

Kadri Vihvelin, in "What time travelers cannot do" (Philos Stud 81: 315-330, 1996), argued that "no time traveler can kill the baby who in fact is her younger self, because (V1) "if someone would fail to do something, no matter how hard or how many times she tried, then she cannot do it", and (V2) if a time traveler tried to kill her baby self, she would always fail. Theodore Sider (Philos Stud 110: 115-138, 2002) criticized Vihvelin's argument, and Ira (...) Kiourti (Philos Stud 139: 343-352, 2008) criticized both Vihvelin's argument and Sider's critique. I present a critique of Vihvelin's argument different from both Sider's and Kiourti's critiques: I argue in a novel way that both V1 and V2 are false. Since Vihvelin's argument might be understood as providing a challenge to the possibility of time travel, if my critique succeeds then time travel survives such a challenge unscathed. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This study analyzes the interests of Spanish audiences in travel magazines within the current context of press consumption. The objectives are to identify the readers' reading frequency and reasons for reading, what contents interest them, and what aspects of the photographs attract them. The methodology involves a structured questionnaire completed by a representative sample of the Spanish population (n=1000). The main results reveal a low reading frequency, great interest in practical information, preference for landscape photography (over the age of (...) 54) and nightlife photography (young people), and indifference regarding the journalistic source of the images. These data provide relevant information on which to adapt travel magazines' content strategy. (shrink)

In an earlier paper I argued that time travellers cannot change the past: alleged models of changing the past either fall into contradiction or else involve avoiding, not changing, the past. Goddu has responded to my argument, maintaining that his hypertime model involves time travellers changing (not avoiding) the past. In the present paper I first discuss what would be required to substantiate the claim that a given model involves changing rather than avoiding the past. I then consider Goddu's hypertime (...) model and an earlier model due to Meiland. I argue that neither author does what would be required to substantiate the claim that the model involves changing (not avoiding) the past. I go on to give reasons for the stronger claim that no-one can present a coherent model and also substantiate the claim that it involves changing (not avoiding) the past. (shrink)

It is proved that time travel is not possible.

I argue that David Lewis’s philosophically dominant conception of time travel cannot straightforwardly handle what we might call cases of relativistic time travel—that is, the sort of time travel which could only plausibly occur in a relativistic setting. I evaluate whether or not the Lewisian account can be successfully adapted such that it would able to analyse potential cases of relativistic time travel satisfactorily while still being employable in the analysis of those cases that make no (...) mention of physics or the structure of spacetime. This is primarily an analytical and explanatory exercise, rather than a polemical one. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a narrative hypothesis on the nature of language and a proto-discursive hypothesis on the origin of our communicative abilities. Our proposal is based on two assumptions. The first assumption, concerning the properties of language, is tied to the idea that global discourse coherence governs the origin of our communicative abilities as well the functioning of these abilities. The second assumption, concerning processing devices, is connected to the idea that the systems of spatial and temporal navigation (...) are implicated in discourse coherence processing. Analysis of the relationship between these two assumptions allows us to integrate the model of language based on clues proposed by Sperber and Wilson with Relevance Theory with the discursive foundation of human communication. In this respect, our proposal can be considered as a tentative extension of Relevance Theory. (shrink)

The first section of this article focuses on the treatment of “time travel” in science-fiction literature and film as presented in the secondary literature in that field. The first anthology I will consider has a metaphysical focus, including (a) relating the time travel of science fiction to the banal time travel of all living beings, as we move inexorably toward the future; and (b) arguing for the filmstrip as the ultimate metaphor for time. The second anthology I (...) will consider has a more political focus, arguing that the “special effects” form of science-fiction films, rather than the visual or narrative content of science-fiction-films, is truly imaginative and futural. The second section of this article ties together a variety of concepts and insights between time-travel cinema and Deleuze’s Cinema 1, suggesting (among other things) that (c) time-traveling characters in cinema function as a redoubled phenomenon of the “mobile sections” of Bergsonian duration (in reference to Henri Bergson), and (d) time-travel cinema vividly illustrates the imagistic nature of the entire world. (shrink)