Exterminous Hypertime

Philosophies 6 (4):85 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper investigates ‘exterminous hypertime’, a model of time travel in which time travellers can change the past in virtue of there being two dimensions of time. This paper has three parts. Part one discusses the laws which might govern the connection between different ‘hypertimes’, showing that there are no problems with overdetermination. Part two examines a set of laws that mean changes to history take a period of hypertime to propagate through to the present. Those laws are of interest because: (i) at such worlds, a particular problem for non-Ludovician time travel (‘the multiple time travellers’ problem) is avoided; and (ii) they allow us to make sense of certain fictional narratives. Part three discusses how to understand expectations and rational decision making in a world with two dimensions of time. I end with an appendix discussing how the different theories in the metaphysics of time (e.g., tensed/tenseless theories and presentism/eternalism/growing block theory) marry up with exterminous hypertime.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,219

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Time, and time again.Sam Baron & Yi-Cheng Lin - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2):259-282.
Why Time Travellers (Still) Cannot Change the Past.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2015 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 71 (70th Anniversary Issue on Metaph):677-94.
The puzzle of hyper‐change.Andrew Law - 2018 - Ratio 32 (1):1-11.
Purgatory, Hypertime, and Temporal Experience.Jonathan Curtis Rutledge - 2018 - Journal of Analytic Theology 6:151-161.
The Fall and Hypertime.Hud Hudson - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paradoxes of Time Travel to the Future.Sara Bernstein - 2022 - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Time Travel: Probability and Impossibility.Nikk Effingham - 2020 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Nowhere Man: Time Travel and Spatial Location.Sara Bernstein - 2015 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39 (1):158-168.
The Fall and Hypertime. [REVIEW]Klaas J. Kraay - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270):202-204.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-01-05

Downloads
43 (#352,595)

6 months
20 (#119,793)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Nikk Effingham
University of Birmingham

Citations of this work

Abilities, freedom, and inputs: a time traveller's tale.Olivia Coombes - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Edinburgh

Add more citations

References found in this work

Overdetermination Underdetermined.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (1):17-40.
The river of time.J. J. C. Smart - 1949 - Mind 58 (232):483-494.
The Real Truth About the Unreal Future.Rachael Briggs & Graeme A. Forbes - 2012 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics volume 7. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Bananas enough for time travel.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):363-389.

View all 33 references / Add more references