TIME travel, I maintain, is possible. The paradoxes of
time travel are oddities, not impossibilities. They
prove only this much, which few would have doubted:
that a possible world where time travel took place would
be a most strange world, different in fundamental ways
from the world we think is ours.
I shall be concerned here with the sort of time travel
that is recounted in science fiction. Not all science fiction
writers are clear-headed, to be sure, and inconsistent
time travel stories have often been written. But some
writers have thought the problems through with great
care, and their stories are perfectly consistent.
If I can defend the consistency of some science fiction
stories of time travel, then I suppose parallel defenses
might be given of some controversial physical hypotheses,
such as the hypothesis that time is circular or the
hypothesis that there are particles that travel faster than
light. But I shall not explore these parallels here.
What is time travel? Inevitably, it involves a discrepancy
between time and time. Any traveler departs and
then arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure
to arrival (positive, or perhaps zero) is the duration
of the journey. But if he is a time traveler, the
separation in time between departure and arrival does
not equal the duration of his journey. He departs; he travels
for an hour, let us say; then he arrives. The time he
reaches is not the time one hour after his departure. It
is later, if he has traveled toward the future; earlier, if he
has traveled toward the past. If he has traveled far toward
the past, it is earlier even than his departure. How
can it be that the same two events, his departure and his
arrival, are separated by two unequal amounts of time?
It is tempting to reply that there must be two independent
time dimensions; that for time travel to be possible,
time must be not a line but a plane.Then a pair of events may have two unequal separations if they are
separated more in one of the time dimensions than in
the other. The lives of common people occupy straight
diagonal lines across the plane of time, sloping at a rate
of exactly one hour of time per hour of time2. The life
of the time traveler occupies a bent path, of varying
slope.
On closer inspection, however, this account seems not
to give us time travel as we know it from the stories.
When the traveler revisits the days of his childhood, will
his playmates be there to meet him? No; he has not
reached the part of the plane of time where they are. He
is no longer separated from them along one of the two
dimensions of time, but he is still separated from them
along the other. I do not say that two-dimensional time
is impossible, or that there is no way to square it with
the usual conception of what time travel would be like.
Nevertheless I shall say no more about two-dimensional
time. Let us set it aside, and see how time travel is possible
even in one-dimensional time.
The world—the time traveler’s world, or ours—is a
four-dimensional manifold of events. Time is one dimension
of the four, like the spatial dimensions except that
the prevailing laws of nature discriminate between time
and the others—or rather, perhaps, between various
timelike dimensions and various spacelike dimensions.
(Time remains one-dimensional, since no two timelike
dimensions are orthogonal.) Enduring things are timelike
streaks: wholes composed of temporal parts, or stages,
located at various times and places. Change is qualitative
difference between different stages—different temporal
parts—of some enduring thing, just as a “change” in
scenery from east to west is a qualitative difference between
the eastern and western spatial parts of the landscape.
If this paper should change your mind about the possibility of time travel, there will be a difference of
opinion between two different temporal parts of you, the
stage that started reading and the subsequent stage that
finishes.
If change is qualitative difference between temporal
parts of something, then what doesn’t have temporal
parts can’t change. For instance, numbers can’t change;
nor can the events of any moment of time, since they
cannot be subdivided into dissimilar temporal parts. (We
have set aside the case of two-dimensional time, and
hence the possibility that an event might be momentary
along one time dimension but divisible along the other.)
It is essential to distinguish change from “Cambridge
change,” which can befall anything. Even a number can
“change” from being to not being the rate of exchange
between pounds and dollars. Even a momentary event
can “change” from being a year ago to being a year and
a day ago, or from being forgotten to being remembered.
But these are not genuine changes. Not just any old reversal
in truth value of a time-sensitive sentence about
something makes a change in the thing itself.
A time traveler, like anyone else, is a streak through
the manifold of space-time, a whole composed of stages
located at various times and places. But he is not a streak
like other streaks. If he travels toward the past he is a
zig-zag streak, doubling back on himself. If he travels
toward the future, he is a stretched-out streak. And if he
travels either way instantaneously, so that there are no
intermediate stages between the stage that departs and
the stage that arrives and his journey has zero duration,
then he is a broken streak.
I asked how it could be that the same two events were
separated by two unequal amounts of time, and I set
aside the reply that time might have two independent
dimensions. Instead I reply by distinguishing time itself,
external time as I shall also call it, from the personal time
of a particular time traveler: roughly, that which is measured
by his wristwatch. His journey takes an hour of his
personal time, let us say; his wristwatch reads an hour
later at arrival than at departure. But the arrival is more
than an hour after the departure in external time, if he
travels toward the future; or the arrival is before the departure
in external time (or less than an hour after), if
he travels toward the past.
That is only rough. I do not wish to define personal
time operationally, making wristwatches infallible by
definition. That which is measured by my own wristwatch
often disagrees with external time, yet I am no
time traveler; what my misregulated wristwatch measures
is neither time itself nor my personal time. Instead
of an operational definition, we need a functional definition
of personal time; it is that which occupies a certain
role in the pattern of events that comprise the time traveler’s
life. If you take the stages of a common person,
they manifest certain regularities with respect to external
time. Properties change continuously as you go along,
for the most part, and in familiar ways. First come infantile
stages. Last come senile ones. Memories accumulate.
Food digests. Hair grows. Wristwatch hands move.
If you take the stages of a time traveler instead, they do
not manifest the common regularities with respect to external
time. But there is one way to assign coordinates
to the time traveler’s stages, and one way only (apart
from the arbitrary choice of a zero point), so that the
regularities that hold with respect to this assignment
match those that commonly hold with respect to external
time. With respect to the correct assignment properties
change continuously as you go along, for the most part,
and in familiar ways. First come infantile stages. Last
come senile ones. Memories accumulate. Food digests.
Hair grows. Wristwatch hands move. The assignment of
coordinates that yields this match is the time traveler’s
personal time. It isn’t really time, but it plays the role in
his life that time plays in the life of a common person.
It’s enough like time so that we can—with due caution—
transplant our temporal vocabulary to it in discussing
his affairs. We can say without contradiction, as the time
traveler prepares to set out, “Soon he will be in the past.”
We mean that a stage of him is slightly later in his personal
time, but much earlier in external time, than the
stage of him that is present as we say the sentence.
We may assign locations in the time traveler’s personal
time not only to his stages themselves but also to
the events that go on around him. Soon Caesar will die,
long ago; that is, a stage slightly later in the time traveler’s
personal time than his present stage, but long ago
in external time, is simultaneous with Caesar’s death.
We could even extend the assignment of personal time
to events that are not part of the time traveler’s life, and
not simultaneous with any of his stages. If his funeral in
ancient Egypt is separated from his death by three days
of external time and his death is separated from his birth
by three score years and ten of his personal time, then
we may add the two intervals and say that his funeral
follows his birth by three score years and ten and three
days of extended personal time. Likewise a bystander
might truly say, three years after the last departure of
another famous time traveler, that “he may even now—if
I may use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-
haunted oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline
seas of the Triassic Age.” If the time traveler does wander
on an oolitic coral reef three years after his departure
in his personal time, then it is no mistake to say with
respect to his extended personal time that the wandering
is taking place “even now”.
We may liken intervals of external time to distances
as the crow flies, and intervals of personal time to distances
along a winding path. The time traveler’s life is
like a mountain railway. The place two miles due east
of here may also be nine miles down the line, in the
westbound direction. Clearly we are not dealing here
with two independent dimensions. Just as distance along
the railway is not a fourth spatial dimension, so a time
traveler’s personal time is not a second dimension of time. How far down the line some place is depends on
its location in three-dimensional space, and likewise the
locations of events in personal time depend on their locations
in one-dimensional external time.
Five miles down the line from here is a place where
the line goes under a trestle; two miles further is a place
where the line goes over a trestle; these places are one
and the same. The trestle by which the line crosses over
itself has two different locations along the line, five miles
down from here and also seven. In the same way, an
event in a time traveler’s life may have more than one
location in his personal time. If he doubles back toward
the past, but not too far, he may be able to talk to himself.
The conversation involves two of his stages, separated
in his personal time but simultaneous in external time.
The location of the conversation in personal time should
be the location of the stage involved in it. But there are
two such stages; to share the locations of both, the conversation
must be assigned two different locations in personal
time.
The more we extend the assignment of personal time
outwards from the time traveler’s stages to the surrounding
events, the more will such events acquire multiple
locations. It may happen also, as we have already seen,
that events that are not simultaneous in external time
will be assigned the same location in personal time—or
rather, that at least one of the locations of one will be
the same as at least one of the locations of the other. So
extension must not be carried too far, lest the location of
events in extended personal time lose its utility as a
means of keeping track of their roles in the time traveler’s
history.
A time traveler who talks to himself, on the telephone
perhaps, looks for all the world like two different people
talking to each other. It isn’t quite right to say that the
whole of him is in two places at once, since neither of the
two stages involved in the conversation is the whole of
him, or even the whole of the part of him that is located
at the (external) time of the conversation. What’s true is
that he, unlike the rest of us, has two different complete
stages located at the same time at different places. What
reason have I, then, to regard him as one person and not
two? What unites his stages, including the simultaneous
ones, into a single person? The problem of personal identity
is especially acute if he is the sort of time traveler whose
journeys are instantaneous, a broken streak consisting of
several unconnected segments. Then the natural way to regard
him as more than one person is to take each segment
as a different person. No one of them is a time traveler,
and the peculiarity of the situation comes to this: all but
one of these several people vanish into thin air, all but another
one appear out of thin air, and there are remarkable
resemblances between one at his appearance and another
at his vanishing. Why isn’t that at least as good a description
as the one I gave, on which the several segments are
all parts of one time traveler?
I answer that what unites the stages (or segments) of
a time traveler is the same sort of mental, or mostly mental,
continuity and connectedness that unites anyone else.
The only difference is that whereas a common person is
connected and continuous with respect to external time,
the time traveler is connected and continuous only with
respect to his own personal time. Taking the stages in
order, mental (and bodily) change is mostly gradual
rather than sudden, and at no point is there sudden
change in too many different respects all at once. (We
can include position in external time among the respects
we keep track of, if we like. It may change discontinuously
with respect to personal time if not too much else
changes discontinuously along with it.) Moreover, there
is not too much change altogether. Plenty of traits and
traces last a lifetime. Finally, the connectedness and the
continuity are not accidental. They are explicable; and
further, they are explained by the fact that the properties
of each stage depend causally on those of the stages just
before in personal time, the dependence being such as
tends to keep things the same.
To see the purpose of my final requirement of causal
continuity, let us see how it excludes a case of counterfeit
time travel. Fred was created out of thin air, as if in the
midst of life; he lived a while, then died. He was created
by a demon, and the demon had chosen at random what
Fred was to be like at the moment of his creation. Much
later someone else, Sam, came to resemble Fred as he
was when first created. At the very moment when the
resemblance became perfect, the demon destroyed Sam.
Fred and Sam together are very much like a single person:
a time traveler whose personal time starts at Sam’s
birth, goes on to Sam’s destruction and Fred’s creation,
and goes on from there to Fred’s death. Taken in this
order, the stages of Fred-cum-Sam have the proper connectedness
and continuity. But they lack causal continuity,
so Fred-cum-Sam is not one person and not a time
traveler. Perhaps it was pure coincidence that Fred at his
creation and Sam at his destruction were exactly alike;
then the connectedness and continuity of Fred-cum-Sam
across the crucial point are accidental. Perhaps instead
the demon remembered what Fred was like, guided Sam
toward perfect resemblance, watched his progress, and
destroyed him at the right moment. Then the connectedness
and continuity of Fred-cum-Sam has a causal explanation,
but of the wrong sort. Either way, Fred’s first
stages do not depend causally for their properties on
Sam’s last stages. So the case of Fred and Sam is rightly
disqualified as a case of personal identity and as a case
of time travel.
We might expect that when a time traveler visits the
past there will be reversals of causation. You may punch
his face before he leaves, causing his eye to blacken centuries
ago. Indeed, travel into the past necessarily involves
reversed causation. For time travel requires
personal identity—he who arrives must be the same person
who departed. That requires causal continuity, in
which causation runs from earlier to later stages in the
order of personal time. But the orders of personal and
external time disagree at some point, and there we have
causation that runs from later to earlier stages in the order
of external time. Elsewhere I have given an analysis
of causation in terms of chains of counterfactual dependence,
and I took care that my analysis would not rule
out casual reversal a priori. I think I can argue (but not
here) that under my analysis the direction of counterfactual
dependence and causation is governed by the direction
of other de facto asymmetries of time. If so, then
reversed causation and time travel are not excluded altogether,
but can occur only where there are local exceptions
to these asymmetries. As I said at the outset, the
time traveler’s world would be a most strange one.
Stranger still, if there are local—but only local—causal
reversals, then there may also be causal loops: closed
causal chains in which some of the causal links are normal
in direction and others are reversed. (Perhaps there
must be loops if there is reversal: I am not sure.) Each
event on the loop has a causal explanation, being caused
by events elsewhere on the loop. That is not to say that
the loop as a whole is caused or explicable. It may not
be. Its inexplicability is especially remarkable if it is
made up of the sort of causal processes that transmit
information. Recall the time traveler who talked to himself.
He talked to himself about time travel, and in the
course of the conversation his older self told his younger
self how to build a time machine. That information was
available in no other way. His older self knew how because
his younger self had been told and the information
had been preserved by the causal processes that constitute
recording, storage, and retrieval of memory traces.
His younger self knew, after the conversation, because
his older self had known and the information had been
preserved by the causal processes that constitute telling.
But where did the information come from in the first
place? Why did the whole affair happen? There is simply
no answer. The parts of the loop are explicable, the whole
of it is not. Strange! But not impossible, and not too different
from inexplicabilities we are already inured to. Almost
everyone agrees that God, or the Big Bang, or the
entire infinite past of the universe, or the decay of a tritium
atom, is uncaused and inexplicable. Then if these
are possible, why not also the inexplicable causal loops
that arise in the time travel?
I have committed a circularity in order not to talk
about too much at once, and this is a good place to set
it right. In explaining personal time, I presupposed that
we were entitled to regard certain stages as comprising
a single person. Then in explaining what united the
stages into a single person, I presupposed that we were
given a personal time order for them. The proper way
to proceed is to define personhood and personal time
simultaneously, as follows. Suppose given a pair of an
aggregate of persona-stages, regarded as a candidate for
personhood, and an assignment of coordinates to those
stages, regarded as a candidate for his personal time. If
the stages satisfy the conditions given in my circular explanation
with respect to the assignment of coordinates,
then both candidates succeed: the stages do comprise a
person and the assignment is his personal time.
I have argued so far that what goes on in a time travel
story may be a possible pattern of events in four-dimensional
space-time with no extra time dimension; that it
may be correct to regard the scattered stages of the alleged
time traveler as comprising a single person; and
that we may legitimately assign to those stages and their
surroundings a personal time order that disagrees sometimes
with their order in external time. Some might concede
all this, but protest that the impossibility of time
travel is revealed after all when we ask not what the
time traveler does, but what he could do. Could a time
traveler change the past? It seems not: the events of a
past moment could no more change than numbers could.
Yet it seems that he would be as able as anyone to do
things that would change the past if he did them. If a
time traveler visiting the past both could and couldn’t
do something that would change it, then there cannot
possibly be such a time traveler.
Consider Tim. He detests his grandfather, whose success
in the munitions trade built the family fortune that
paid for Tim’s time machine. Tim would like nothing so
much as to kill Grandfather, but alas he is too late.
Grandfather died in his bed in 1957, while Tim was a
young boy. But when Tim has built his time machine and
traveled to 1920, suddenly he realizes that he is not too
late after all. He buys a rifle; he spends long hours in
target practice; he shadows Grandfather to learn the
route of his daily walk to the munitions works; he rents
a room along the route; and there he lurks, one winter
day in 1921, rifle loaded, hate in his heart, as Grandfather
walks closer, closer,. . . .
Tim can kill Grandfather. He has what it takes. Conditions
are perfect in every way: the best rifle money
could buy, Grandfather an easy target only twenty yards
away, not a breeze, door securely locked against intruders.
Tim a good shot to begin with and now at the peak
of training, and so on. What’s to stop him? The forces
of logic will not stay his hand! No powerful chaperone
stands by to defend the past from interference. (To imagine
such a chaperone, as some authors do, is a boring
evasion, not needed to make Tim’s story consistent.) In
short, Tim is as much able to kill Grandfather as anyone
ever is to kill anyone. Suppose that down the street another
sniper, Tom, lurks waiting for another victim,
Grandfather’s partner. Tom is not a time traveler, but otherwise
he is just like Tim: same make of rifle, same murderous
intent, same everything. We can even suppose
that Tom, like Tim, believes himself to be a time traveler.
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to deceive Tom into
thinking so. There’s no doubt that Tom can kill his victim;
and Tim has everything going for him that Tom
does. By any ordinary standards of ability, Tim can kill
Grandfather.
Tim cannot kill Grandfather. Grandfather lived, so to kill
him would be to change the past. But the events of a past
moment are not subdivisible into temporal parts and therefore
cannot change. Either the events of 1921 timelessly
do include Tim’s killing of Grandfather, or else they
timelessly don’t. We may be tempted to speak of the
“original” 1921 that lies in Tim’s personal past, many
years before his birth, in which Grandfather lived; and
of the “new” 1921 in which Tim now finds himself waiting
in ambush to kill Grandfather. But if we do speak
so, we merely confer two names on one thing. The events
of 1921 are doubly located in Tim’s (extended) personal
time, like the trestle on the railway, but the “original” 1921
and the “new” 1921 are one and the same. If Tim did not
kill Grandfather in the “original” 1921, then if he does kill
Grandfather in the “new” 1921, he must both kill and not
kill Grandfather in 1921—in the one and only 1921, which
is both the “new” and the “original” 1921. It is logically
impossible that Tim should change the past by killing
Grandfather in 1921. So Tim cannot kill Grandfather.
Not that past moments are special; no more can anyone
change the present or the future. Present and future
momentary events no more have temporal parts than
past ones do. You cannot change a present or future
event from what it was originally to what it is after you
change it. What you can do is to change the present or
the future from the unactualized way they would have
been without some action of yours to the way they actually
are. But that is not an actual change: not a difference
between two successive actualities. And Tim can
certainly do as much; he changes the past from the unactualized
way it would have been without him to the
one and only way it actually is. To “change” the past in
this way, Tim need not do anything momentous; it is
enough just to be there, however unobtrusively.
You know, of course, roughly how the story of Tim
must go on if it is to be consistent: he somehow fails.
Since Tim didn’t kill Grandfather in the “original” 1921,
consistency demands that neither does he kill Grandfather
in the “new” 1921. Why not? For some commonplace
reason. Perhaps some noise distracts him at the last
moment, perhaps he misses despite all his target practice,
perhaps his nerve fails, perhaps he even feels a pang of
unaccustomed mercy. His failure by no means proves
that he was not really able to kill Grandfather. We often
try and fail to do what we are able to do. Success at
some tasks requires not only ability but also luck, and
lack of luck is not a temporary lack of ability. Suppose
our other sniper, Tom, fails to kill Grandfather’s partner
for the same reason, whatever it is, that Tim fails to kill
Grandfather. It does not follow that Tom was unable to.
No more does it follow in Tim’s case that he was unable
to do what he did not succeed in doing.
We have this seeming contradiction: “Tim doesn’t, but
can, because he has what it takes” versus “Tim doesn’t, and
can’t, because it’s logically impossible to change the past.” I
reply that there is no contradiction. Both conclusions are
true, and for the reasons given. They are compatible because
“can” is equivocal.
To say that something can happen means that its happening
is compossible with certain facts. Which facts?
That is determined, but sometimes not determined well
enough, by context. An ape can’t speak a human language—
say, Finnish—but I can. Facts about the anatomy
and operation of the ape’s larynx and nervous system
are not compossible with his speaking Finnish. The corresponding
facts about my larynx and nervous system
are compossible with my speaking Finnish. But don’t
take me along to Helsinki as your interpreter: I can’t
speak Finnish. My speaking Finnish is compossible with
the facts considered so far, but not with further facts
about my lack of training. What I can do, relative to one
set of facts, I cannot do, relative to another, more inclusive,
set. Whenever the context leaves it open which facts
are to count as relevant, it is possible to equivocate about
whether I can speak Finnish. It is likewise possible to
equivocate about whether it is possible for me to speak
Finnish, or whether I am able to, or whether I have the
ability or capacity or power or potentiality to. Our many
words for much the same thing are little help since they
do not seem to correspond to different fixed delineations
of the relevant facts.
Tim’s killing Grandfather that day in 1921 is compossible
with a fairly rich set of facts: the facts about his
rifle, his skill and training, the unobstructed line of fire,
the locked door and the absence of any chaperone to
defend the past, and so on. Indeed it is compossible with
all the facts of the sorts we would ordinarily count as
relevant is saying what someone can do. It is compossible
with all the facts corresponding to those we deem
relevant in Tom’s case. Relative to these facts, Tim can
kill Grandfather. But his killing Grandfather is not compossible
with another, more inclusive set of facts. There
is the simple fact that Grandfather was not killed. Also
there are various other facts about Grandfather’s doings
after 1921 and their effects: Grandfather begat Father in
1922 and Father begat Tim in 1949. Relative to these facts,
Tim cannot kill Grandfather. He can and he can’t, but
under different delineations of the relevant facts. You
can reasonably choose the narrower delineation, and
say that he can; or the wider delineation, and say that
he can’t. But choose. What you mustn’t do is waver,
say in the same breath that he both can and can’t, and
then claim that this contradiction proves that time
travel is impossible.
Exactly the same goes for Tom’s parallel failure. For
Tom to kill Grandfather’s partner also is compossible
with all facts of the sorts we ordinarily count as relevant,
but not compossible with a larger set including, for instance,
the fact that the intended victim lived until 1934.
In Tom’s case we are not puzzled. We say without hesitation
that he can do it, because we see at once that the
facts that are not compossible with his success are facts
about the future of the time in question and therefore
not the sort of facts we count as relevant in saying what
Tom can do.
In Tim’s case it is harder to keep track of which facts
are relevant. We are accustomed to exclude facts about
the future of the time in question, but to include some
facts about its past. Our standards do not apply unequivocally
to the crucial facts in this special case: Tim’s
failure, Grandfather’s survival, and his subsequent doings.
If we have foremost in mind that they lie in the
external future of that moment in 1921 when Tim is almost
ready to shoot, then we exclude them just as we
exclude the parallel facts in Tom’s case. But if we have
foremost in mind that they precede that moment in Tim’s
extended personal time, then we tend to include them.
To make the latter be foremost in your mind, I chose to
tell Tim’s story in the order of his personal time, rather
than in the order of external time. The fact of Grandfather’s
survival until 1957 had already been told before I
got to the part of the story about Tim lurking in ambush
to kill him in 1921. We must decide, if we can, whether
to treat these personally past and externally future facts
as if they were straightforwardly past or as if they were
straightforwardly future.
Fatalists—the best of them—are philosophers who
take facts we count as irrelevant in saying what someone
can do, disguise them somehow as facts of a different
sort that we count as relevant, and thereby argue that
we can do less than we think—indeed, that there is nothing
at all that we don’t do but can. I am not going to
vote Republican next fall. The fatalist argues that, strange
to say, I not only won’t but can’t; for my voting Republican
is not compossible with the fact that it was true
already in the year 1548 that I was not going to vote
Republican 428 years later. My rejoinder is that this is
a fact, sure enough; however, it is an irrelevant fact
about the future masquerading as a relevant fact about
the past, and so should be left out of account in saying
what, in any ordinary sense, I can do. We are unlikely
to be fooled by the fatalist’s methods of disguise in
this case, or other ordinary cases. But in cases of time
travel, precognition, or the like, we’re on less familiar
ground, so it may take less of a disguise to fool us.
Also, new methods of disguise are available, thanks to
the device of personal time.
Here’s another bit of fatalist trickery. Tim, as he lurks,
already knows that he will fail. At least he has the wherewithal
to know it if he thinks, he knows it implicitly. For
he remembers that Grandfather was alive when he was
a boy, he knows that those who are killed are thereafter
not alive, he knows (let us suppose) that he is a time
traveler who has reached the same 1921 that lies in his
personal past, and he ought to understand—as we do—
why a time traveler cannot change the past. What is
known cannot be false. So his success is not only not
compossible with facts that belong to the external future
and his personal past, but also is not compossible with
the present fact of his knowledge that he will fail. I
reply that the fact of his foreknowledge, at the moment
while he waits to shoot, is not a fact entirely about that
moment. It may be divided into two parts. There is the fact
that he then believes (perhaps only implicitly) that he will
fail; and there is the further fact that his belief is correct,
and correct not at all by accident, and hence qualifies as
an item of knowledge. It is only the latter fact that is not
compossible with his success, but it is only the former
that is entirely about the moment in question. In calling
Tim’s state at that moment knowledge, not just belief,
facts about personally earlier but externally later moments
were smuggled into consideration.
I have argued that Tim’s case and Tom’s are alike, except
that in Tim’s case we are more tempted than usual—
and with reason—to opt for a semi-fatalist mode of
speech. But perhaps they differ in another way. In Tom’s
case, we can expect a perfectly consistent answer to the
counterfactual question: what if Tom had killed Grandfather’s
partner? Tim’s case is more difficult. If Tim had
killed Grandfather, it seems offhand that contradictions
would have been true. The killing both would and
wouldn’t have occurred. No Grandfather, no Father; no
Father, no Tim; no Tim, no killing. And for good measure:
no Grandfather, no family fortune; no fortune, no time
machine; no time machine, no killing. So the supposition
that Tim killed Grandfather seems impossible in more
than the semi-fatalistic sense already granted.
If you suppose Tim to kill Grandfather and hold all
the rest of his story fixed, of course you get a contradiction.
But likewise if you suppose Tom to kill Grandfather’s
partner and hold the rest of his story
fixed—including the part that told of his failure—you
get a contradiction. If you make any counterfactual supposition
and hold all else fixed you get a contradiction.
The thing to do is rather to make the counterfactual supposition
and hold all else as close to fixed as you consistently
can. That procedure will yield perfectly
consistent answers to the question: what if Tim had not
killed Grandfather? In that case, some of the story I told
would not have been true. Perhaps Tim might have been
the time-traveling grandson of someone else. Perhaps he
might have been the grandson of a man killed in 1921
and miraculously resurrected. Perhaps he might have
been not a time traveler at all, but rather someone created
out of nothing in 1920 equipped with false memories
of a personal past that never was. It is hard to say
what is the least revision of Tim’s story to make it true
that Tim kills Grandfather, but certainly the contradictory
story in which the killing both does and doesn’t occur
is not the least revision. Hence it is false (according to
the unrevised story) that if Tim had killed Grandfather
then contradictions would have been true.
What difference would it make if Tim travels in
branching time? Suppose that at the possible world of
Tim’s story the space-time manifold branches; the
branches are separated not in time, and not in space, but
in some other way. Tim travels not only in time but also
from one branch to another. In one branch Tim is absent
from the events of 1921; Grandfather lives; Tim is born,
grows up, and vanishes in his time machine. The other
branch diverges from the first when Tim turns up in
1920; there Tim kills Grandfather and Grandfather leaves
no descendants and no fortune; the events of the two
branches differ more and more from that time on. Certainly
this is a consistent story; it is a story in which
Grandfather both is and isn’t killed in 1921 (in the different
branches); and it is a story in which Tim, by killing
Grandfather, succeeds in preventing his own birth (in
one of the branches). But it is not a story in which Tim’s
killing of Grandfather both does occur and doesn’t: it
simply does, though it is located in one branch and not
the other. And it is not a story in which Tim changes the
past. 1921 and later years contain the events of both
branches, coexisting somehow without interaction. It remains
true at all the personal times of Tim’s life, even
after the killing, that Grandfather lives in one branch and
dies in the other.
time travel are oddities, not impossibilities. They
prove only this much, which few would have doubted:
that a possible world where time travel took place would
be a most strange world, different in fundamental ways
from the world we think is ours.
I shall be concerned here with the sort of time travel
that is recounted in science fiction. Not all science fiction
writers are clear-headed, to be sure, and inconsistent
time travel stories have often been written. But some
writers have thought the problems through with great
care, and their stories are perfectly consistent.
If I can defend the consistency of some science fiction
stories of time travel, then I suppose parallel defenses
might be given of some controversial physical hypotheses,
such as the hypothesis that time is circular or the
hypothesis that there are particles that travel faster than
light. But I shall not explore these parallels here.
What is time travel? Inevitably, it involves a discrepancy
between time and time. Any traveler departs and
then arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure
to arrival (positive, or perhaps zero) is the duration
of the journey. But if he is a time traveler, the
separation in time between departure and arrival does
not equal the duration of his journey. He departs; he travels
for an hour, let us say; then he arrives. The time he
reaches is not the time one hour after his departure. It
is later, if he has traveled toward the future; earlier, if he
has traveled toward the past. If he has traveled far toward
the past, it is earlier even than his departure. How
can it be that the same two events, his departure and his
arrival, are separated by two unequal amounts of time?
It is tempting to reply that there must be two independent
time dimensions; that for time travel to be possible,
time must be not a line but a plane.Then a pair of events may have two unequal separations if they are
separated more in one of the time dimensions than in
the other. The lives of common people occupy straight
diagonal lines across the plane of time, sloping at a rate
of exactly one hour of time per hour of time2. The life
of the time traveler occupies a bent path, of varying
slope.
On closer inspection, however, this account seems not
to give us time travel as we know it from the stories.
When the traveler revisits the days of his childhood, will
his playmates be there to meet him? No; he has not
reached the part of the plane of time where they are. He
is no longer separated from them along one of the two
dimensions of time, but he is still separated from them
along the other. I do not say that two-dimensional time
is impossible, or that there is no way to square it with
the usual conception of what time travel would be like.
Nevertheless I shall say no more about two-dimensional
time. Let us set it aside, and see how time travel is possible
even in one-dimensional time.
The world—the time traveler’s world, or ours—is a
four-dimensional manifold of events. Time is one dimension
of the four, like the spatial dimensions except that
the prevailing laws of nature discriminate between time
and the others—or rather, perhaps, between various
timelike dimensions and various spacelike dimensions.
(Time remains one-dimensional, since no two timelike
dimensions are orthogonal.) Enduring things are timelike
streaks: wholes composed of temporal parts, or stages,
located at various times and places. Change is qualitative
difference between different stages—different temporal
parts—of some enduring thing, just as a “change” in
scenery from east to west is a qualitative difference between
the eastern and western spatial parts of the landscape.
If this paper should change your mind about the possibility of time travel, there will be a difference of
opinion between two different temporal parts of you, the
stage that started reading and the subsequent stage that
finishes.
If change is qualitative difference between temporal
parts of something, then what doesn’t have temporal
parts can’t change. For instance, numbers can’t change;
nor can the events of any moment of time, since they
cannot be subdivided into dissimilar temporal parts. (We
have set aside the case of two-dimensional time, and
hence the possibility that an event might be momentary
along one time dimension but divisible along the other.)
It is essential to distinguish change from “Cambridge
change,” which can befall anything. Even a number can
“change” from being to not being the rate of exchange
between pounds and dollars. Even a momentary event
can “change” from being a year ago to being a year and
a day ago, or from being forgotten to being remembered.
But these are not genuine changes. Not just any old reversal
in truth value of a time-sensitive sentence about
something makes a change in the thing itself.
A time traveler, like anyone else, is a streak through
the manifold of space-time, a whole composed of stages
located at various times and places. But he is not a streak
like other streaks. If he travels toward the past he is a
zig-zag streak, doubling back on himself. If he travels
toward the future, he is a stretched-out streak. And if he
travels either way instantaneously, so that there are no
intermediate stages between the stage that departs and
the stage that arrives and his journey has zero duration,
then he is a broken streak.
I asked how it could be that the same two events were
separated by two unequal amounts of time, and I set
aside the reply that time might have two independent
dimensions. Instead I reply by distinguishing time itself,
external time as I shall also call it, from the personal time
of a particular time traveler: roughly, that which is measured
by his wristwatch. His journey takes an hour of his
personal time, let us say; his wristwatch reads an hour
later at arrival than at departure. But the arrival is more
than an hour after the departure in external time, if he
travels toward the future; or the arrival is before the departure
in external time (or less than an hour after), if
he travels toward the past.
That is only rough. I do not wish to define personal
time operationally, making wristwatches infallible by
definition. That which is measured by my own wristwatch
often disagrees with external time, yet I am no
time traveler; what my misregulated wristwatch measures
is neither time itself nor my personal time. Instead
of an operational definition, we need a functional definition
of personal time; it is that which occupies a certain
role in the pattern of events that comprise the time traveler’s
life. If you take the stages of a common person,
they manifest certain regularities with respect to external
time. Properties change continuously as you go along,
for the most part, and in familiar ways. First come infantile
stages. Last come senile ones. Memories accumulate.
Food digests. Hair grows. Wristwatch hands move.
If you take the stages of a time traveler instead, they do
not manifest the common regularities with respect to external
time. But there is one way to assign coordinates
to the time traveler’s stages, and one way only (apart
from the arbitrary choice of a zero point), so that the
regularities that hold with respect to this assignment
match those that commonly hold with respect to external
time. With respect to the correct assignment properties
change continuously as you go along, for the most part,
and in familiar ways. First come infantile stages. Last
come senile ones. Memories accumulate. Food digests.
Hair grows. Wristwatch hands move. The assignment of
coordinates that yields this match is the time traveler’s
personal time. It isn’t really time, but it plays the role in
his life that time plays in the life of a common person.
It’s enough like time so that we can—with due caution—
transplant our temporal vocabulary to it in discussing
his affairs. We can say without contradiction, as the time
traveler prepares to set out, “Soon he will be in the past.”
We mean that a stage of him is slightly later in his personal
time, but much earlier in external time, than the
stage of him that is present as we say the sentence.
We may assign locations in the time traveler’s personal
time not only to his stages themselves but also to
the events that go on around him. Soon Caesar will die,
long ago; that is, a stage slightly later in the time traveler’s
personal time than his present stage, but long ago
in external time, is simultaneous with Caesar’s death.
We could even extend the assignment of personal time
to events that are not part of the time traveler’s life, and
not simultaneous with any of his stages. If his funeral in
ancient Egypt is separated from his death by three days
of external time and his death is separated from his birth
by three score years and ten of his personal time, then
we may add the two intervals and say that his funeral
follows his birth by three score years and ten and three
days of extended personal time. Likewise a bystander
might truly say, three years after the last departure of
another famous time traveler, that “he may even now—if
I may use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-
haunted oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline
seas of the Triassic Age.” If the time traveler does wander
on an oolitic coral reef three years after his departure
in his personal time, then it is no mistake to say with
respect to his extended personal time that the wandering
is taking place “even now”.
We may liken intervals of external time to distances
as the crow flies, and intervals of personal time to distances
along a winding path. The time traveler’s life is
like a mountain railway. The place two miles due east
of here may also be nine miles down the line, in the
westbound direction. Clearly we are not dealing here
with two independent dimensions. Just as distance along
the railway is not a fourth spatial dimension, so a time
traveler’s personal time is not a second dimension of time. How far down the line some place is depends on
its location in three-dimensional space, and likewise the
locations of events in personal time depend on their locations
in one-dimensional external time.
Five miles down the line from here is a place where
the line goes under a trestle; two miles further is a place
where the line goes over a trestle; these places are one
and the same. The trestle by which the line crosses over
itself has two different locations along the line, five miles
down from here and also seven. In the same way, an
event in a time traveler’s life may have more than one
location in his personal time. If he doubles back toward
the past, but not too far, he may be able to talk to himself.
The conversation involves two of his stages, separated
in his personal time but simultaneous in external time.
The location of the conversation in personal time should
be the location of the stage involved in it. But there are
two such stages; to share the locations of both, the conversation
must be assigned two different locations in personal
time.
The more we extend the assignment of personal time
outwards from the time traveler’s stages to the surrounding
events, the more will such events acquire multiple
locations. It may happen also, as we have already seen,
that events that are not simultaneous in external time
will be assigned the same location in personal time—or
rather, that at least one of the locations of one will be
the same as at least one of the locations of the other. So
extension must not be carried too far, lest the location of
events in extended personal time lose its utility as a
means of keeping track of their roles in the time traveler’s
history.
A time traveler who talks to himself, on the telephone
perhaps, looks for all the world like two different people
talking to each other. It isn’t quite right to say that the
whole of him is in two places at once, since neither of the
two stages involved in the conversation is the whole of
him, or even the whole of the part of him that is located
at the (external) time of the conversation. What’s true is
that he, unlike the rest of us, has two different complete
stages located at the same time at different places. What
reason have I, then, to regard him as one person and not
two? What unites his stages, including the simultaneous
ones, into a single person? The problem of personal identity
is especially acute if he is the sort of time traveler whose
journeys are instantaneous, a broken streak consisting of
several unconnected segments. Then the natural way to regard
him as more than one person is to take each segment
as a different person. No one of them is a time traveler,
and the peculiarity of the situation comes to this: all but
one of these several people vanish into thin air, all but another
one appear out of thin air, and there are remarkable
resemblances between one at his appearance and another
at his vanishing. Why isn’t that at least as good a description
as the one I gave, on which the several segments are
all parts of one time traveler?
I answer that what unites the stages (or segments) of
a time traveler is the same sort of mental, or mostly mental,
continuity and connectedness that unites anyone else.
The only difference is that whereas a common person is
connected and continuous with respect to external time,
the time traveler is connected and continuous only with
respect to his own personal time. Taking the stages in
order, mental (and bodily) change is mostly gradual
rather than sudden, and at no point is there sudden
change in too many different respects all at once. (We
can include position in external time among the respects
we keep track of, if we like. It may change discontinuously
with respect to personal time if not too much else
changes discontinuously along with it.) Moreover, there
is not too much change altogether. Plenty of traits and
traces last a lifetime. Finally, the connectedness and the
continuity are not accidental. They are explicable; and
further, they are explained by the fact that the properties
of each stage depend causally on those of the stages just
before in personal time, the dependence being such as
tends to keep things the same.
To see the purpose of my final requirement of causal
continuity, let us see how it excludes a case of counterfeit
time travel. Fred was created out of thin air, as if in the
midst of life; he lived a while, then died. He was created
by a demon, and the demon had chosen at random what
Fred was to be like at the moment of his creation. Much
later someone else, Sam, came to resemble Fred as he
was when first created. At the very moment when the
resemblance became perfect, the demon destroyed Sam.
Fred and Sam together are very much like a single person:
a time traveler whose personal time starts at Sam’s
birth, goes on to Sam’s destruction and Fred’s creation,
and goes on from there to Fred’s death. Taken in this
order, the stages of Fred-cum-Sam have the proper connectedness
and continuity. But they lack causal continuity,
so Fred-cum-Sam is not one person and not a time
traveler. Perhaps it was pure coincidence that Fred at his
creation and Sam at his destruction were exactly alike;
then the connectedness and continuity of Fred-cum-Sam
across the crucial point are accidental. Perhaps instead
the demon remembered what Fred was like, guided Sam
toward perfect resemblance, watched his progress, and
destroyed him at the right moment. Then the connectedness
and continuity of Fred-cum-Sam has a causal explanation,
but of the wrong sort. Either way, Fred’s first
stages do not depend causally for their properties on
Sam’s last stages. So the case of Fred and Sam is rightly
disqualified as a case of personal identity and as a case
of time travel.
We might expect that when a time traveler visits the
past there will be reversals of causation. You may punch
his face before he leaves, causing his eye to blacken centuries
ago. Indeed, travel into the past necessarily involves
reversed causation. For time travel requires
personal identity—he who arrives must be the same person
who departed. That requires causal continuity, in
which causation runs from earlier to later stages in the
order of personal time. But the orders of personal and
external time disagree at some point, and there we have
causation that runs from later to earlier stages in the order
of external time. Elsewhere I have given an analysis
of causation in terms of chains of counterfactual dependence,
and I took care that my analysis would not rule
out casual reversal a priori. I think I can argue (but not
here) that under my analysis the direction of counterfactual
dependence and causation is governed by the direction
of other de facto asymmetries of time. If so, then
reversed causation and time travel are not excluded altogether,
but can occur only where there are local exceptions
to these asymmetries. As I said at the outset, the
time traveler’s world would be a most strange one.
Stranger still, if there are local—but only local—causal
reversals, then there may also be causal loops: closed
causal chains in which some of the causal links are normal
in direction and others are reversed. (Perhaps there
must be loops if there is reversal: I am not sure.) Each
event on the loop has a causal explanation, being caused
by events elsewhere on the loop. That is not to say that
the loop as a whole is caused or explicable. It may not
be. Its inexplicability is especially remarkable if it is
made up of the sort of causal processes that transmit
information. Recall the time traveler who talked to himself.
He talked to himself about time travel, and in the
course of the conversation his older self told his younger
self how to build a time machine. That information was
available in no other way. His older self knew how because
his younger self had been told and the information
had been preserved by the causal processes that constitute
recording, storage, and retrieval of memory traces.
His younger self knew, after the conversation, because
his older self had known and the information had been
preserved by the causal processes that constitute telling.
But where did the information come from in the first
place? Why did the whole affair happen? There is simply
no answer. The parts of the loop are explicable, the whole
of it is not. Strange! But not impossible, and not too different
from inexplicabilities we are already inured to. Almost
everyone agrees that God, or the Big Bang, or the
entire infinite past of the universe, or the decay of a tritium
atom, is uncaused and inexplicable. Then if these
are possible, why not also the inexplicable causal loops
that arise in the time travel?
I have committed a circularity in order not to talk
about too much at once, and this is a good place to set
it right. In explaining personal time, I presupposed that
we were entitled to regard certain stages as comprising
a single person. Then in explaining what united the
stages into a single person, I presupposed that we were
given a personal time order for them. The proper way
to proceed is to define personhood and personal time
simultaneously, as follows. Suppose given a pair of an
aggregate of persona-stages, regarded as a candidate for
personhood, and an assignment of coordinates to those
stages, regarded as a candidate for his personal time. If
the stages satisfy the conditions given in my circular explanation
with respect to the assignment of coordinates,
then both candidates succeed: the stages do comprise a
person and the assignment is his personal time.
I have argued so far that what goes on in a time travel
story may be a possible pattern of events in four-dimensional
space-time with no extra time dimension; that it
may be correct to regard the scattered stages of the alleged
time traveler as comprising a single person; and
that we may legitimately assign to those stages and their
surroundings a personal time order that disagrees sometimes
with their order in external time. Some might concede
all this, but protest that the impossibility of time
travel is revealed after all when we ask not what the
time traveler does, but what he could do. Could a time
traveler change the past? It seems not: the events of a
past moment could no more change than numbers could.
Yet it seems that he would be as able as anyone to do
things that would change the past if he did them. If a
time traveler visiting the past both could and couldn’t
do something that would change it, then there cannot
possibly be such a time traveler.
Consider Tim. He detests his grandfather, whose success
in the munitions trade built the family fortune that
paid for Tim’s time machine. Tim would like nothing so
much as to kill Grandfather, but alas he is too late.
Grandfather died in his bed in 1957, while Tim was a
young boy. But when Tim has built his time machine and
traveled to 1920, suddenly he realizes that he is not too
late after all. He buys a rifle; he spends long hours in
target practice; he shadows Grandfather to learn the
route of his daily walk to the munitions works; he rents
a room along the route; and there he lurks, one winter
day in 1921, rifle loaded, hate in his heart, as Grandfather
walks closer, closer,. . . .
Tim can kill Grandfather. He has what it takes. Conditions
are perfect in every way: the best rifle money
could buy, Grandfather an easy target only twenty yards
away, not a breeze, door securely locked against intruders.
Tim a good shot to begin with and now at the peak
of training, and so on. What’s to stop him? The forces
of logic will not stay his hand! No powerful chaperone
stands by to defend the past from interference. (To imagine
such a chaperone, as some authors do, is a boring
evasion, not needed to make Tim’s story consistent.) In
short, Tim is as much able to kill Grandfather as anyone
ever is to kill anyone. Suppose that down the street another
sniper, Tom, lurks waiting for another victim,
Grandfather’s partner. Tom is not a time traveler, but otherwise
he is just like Tim: same make of rifle, same murderous
intent, same everything. We can even suppose
that Tom, like Tim, believes himself to be a time traveler.
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to deceive Tom into
thinking so. There’s no doubt that Tom can kill his victim;
and Tim has everything going for him that Tom
does. By any ordinary standards of ability, Tim can kill
Grandfather.
Tim cannot kill Grandfather. Grandfather lived, so to kill
him would be to change the past. But the events of a past
moment are not subdivisible into temporal parts and therefore
cannot change. Either the events of 1921 timelessly
do include Tim’s killing of Grandfather, or else they
timelessly don’t. We may be tempted to speak of the
“original” 1921 that lies in Tim’s personal past, many
years before his birth, in which Grandfather lived; and
of the “new” 1921 in which Tim now finds himself waiting
in ambush to kill Grandfather. But if we do speak
so, we merely confer two names on one thing. The events
of 1921 are doubly located in Tim’s (extended) personal
time, like the trestle on the railway, but the “original” 1921
and the “new” 1921 are one and the same. If Tim did not
kill Grandfather in the “original” 1921, then if he does kill
Grandfather in the “new” 1921, he must both kill and not
kill Grandfather in 1921—in the one and only 1921, which
is both the “new” and the “original” 1921. It is logically
impossible that Tim should change the past by killing
Grandfather in 1921. So Tim cannot kill Grandfather.
Not that past moments are special; no more can anyone
change the present or the future. Present and future
momentary events no more have temporal parts than
past ones do. You cannot change a present or future
event from what it was originally to what it is after you
change it. What you can do is to change the present or
the future from the unactualized way they would have
been without some action of yours to the way they actually
are. But that is not an actual change: not a difference
between two successive actualities. And Tim can
certainly do as much; he changes the past from the unactualized
way it would have been without him to the
one and only way it actually is. To “change” the past in
this way, Tim need not do anything momentous; it is
enough just to be there, however unobtrusively.
You know, of course, roughly how the story of Tim
must go on if it is to be consistent: he somehow fails.
Since Tim didn’t kill Grandfather in the “original” 1921,
consistency demands that neither does he kill Grandfather
in the “new” 1921. Why not? For some commonplace
reason. Perhaps some noise distracts him at the last
moment, perhaps he misses despite all his target practice,
perhaps his nerve fails, perhaps he even feels a pang of
unaccustomed mercy. His failure by no means proves
that he was not really able to kill Grandfather. We often
try and fail to do what we are able to do. Success at
some tasks requires not only ability but also luck, and
lack of luck is not a temporary lack of ability. Suppose
our other sniper, Tom, fails to kill Grandfather’s partner
for the same reason, whatever it is, that Tim fails to kill
Grandfather. It does not follow that Tom was unable to.
No more does it follow in Tim’s case that he was unable
to do what he did not succeed in doing.
We have this seeming contradiction: “Tim doesn’t, but
can, because he has what it takes” versus “Tim doesn’t, and
can’t, because it’s logically impossible to change the past.” I
reply that there is no contradiction. Both conclusions are
true, and for the reasons given. They are compatible because
“can” is equivocal.
To say that something can happen means that its happening
is compossible with certain facts. Which facts?
That is determined, but sometimes not determined well
enough, by context. An ape can’t speak a human language—
say, Finnish—but I can. Facts about the anatomy
and operation of the ape’s larynx and nervous system
are not compossible with his speaking Finnish. The corresponding
facts about my larynx and nervous system
are compossible with my speaking Finnish. But don’t
take me along to Helsinki as your interpreter: I can’t
speak Finnish. My speaking Finnish is compossible with
the facts considered so far, but not with further facts
about my lack of training. What I can do, relative to one
set of facts, I cannot do, relative to another, more inclusive,
set. Whenever the context leaves it open which facts
are to count as relevant, it is possible to equivocate about
whether I can speak Finnish. It is likewise possible to
equivocate about whether it is possible for me to speak
Finnish, or whether I am able to, or whether I have the
ability or capacity or power or potentiality to. Our many
words for much the same thing are little help since they
do not seem to correspond to different fixed delineations
of the relevant facts.
Tim’s killing Grandfather that day in 1921 is compossible
with a fairly rich set of facts: the facts about his
rifle, his skill and training, the unobstructed line of fire,
the locked door and the absence of any chaperone to
defend the past, and so on. Indeed it is compossible with
all the facts of the sorts we would ordinarily count as
relevant is saying what someone can do. It is compossible
with all the facts corresponding to those we deem
relevant in Tom’s case. Relative to these facts, Tim can
kill Grandfather. But his killing Grandfather is not compossible
with another, more inclusive set of facts. There
is the simple fact that Grandfather was not killed. Also
there are various other facts about Grandfather’s doings
after 1921 and their effects: Grandfather begat Father in
1922 and Father begat Tim in 1949. Relative to these facts,
Tim cannot kill Grandfather. He can and he can’t, but
under different delineations of the relevant facts. You
can reasonably choose the narrower delineation, and
say that he can; or the wider delineation, and say that
he can’t. But choose. What you mustn’t do is waver,
say in the same breath that he both can and can’t, and
then claim that this contradiction proves that time
travel is impossible.
Exactly the same goes for Tom’s parallel failure. For
Tom to kill Grandfather’s partner also is compossible
with all facts of the sorts we ordinarily count as relevant,
but not compossible with a larger set including, for instance,
the fact that the intended victim lived until 1934.
In Tom’s case we are not puzzled. We say without hesitation
that he can do it, because we see at once that the
facts that are not compossible with his success are facts
about the future of the time in question and therefore
not the sort of facts we count as relevant in saying what
Tom can do.
In Tim’s case it is harder to keep track of which facts
are relevant. We are accustomed to exclude facts about
the future of the time in question, but to include some
facts about its past. Our standards do not apply unequivocally
to the crucial facts in this special case: Tim’s
failure, Grandfather’s survival, and his subsequent doings.
If we have foremost in mind that they lie in the
external future of that moment in 1921 when Tim is almost
ready to shoot, then we exclude them just as we
exclude the parallel facts in Tom’s case. But if we have
foremost in mind that they precede that moment in Tim’s
extended personal time, then we tend to include them.
To make the latter be foremost in your mind, I chose to
tell Tim’s story in the order of his personal time, rather
than in the order of external time. The fact of Grandfather’s
survival until 1957 had already been told before I
got to the part of the story about Tim lurking in ambush
to kill him in 1921. We must decide, if we can, whether
to treat these personally past and externally future facts
as if they were straightforwardly past or as if they were
straightforwardly future.
Fatalists—the best of them—are philosophers who
take facts we count as irrelevant in saying what someone
can do, disguise them somehow as facts of a different
sort that we count as relevant, and thereby argue that
we can do less than we think—indeed, that there is nothing
at all that we don’t do but can. I am not going to
vote Republican next fall. The fatalist argues that, strange
to say, I not only won’t but can’t; for my voting Republican
is not compossible with the fact that it was true
already in the year 1548 that I was not going to vote
Republican 428 years later. My rejoinder is that this is
a fact, sure enough; however, it is an irrelevant fact
about the future masquerading as a relevant fact about
the past, and so should be left out of account in saying
what, in any ordinary sense, I can do. We are unlikely
to be fooled by the fatalist’s methods of disguise in
this case, or other ordinary cases. But in cases of time
travel, precognition, or the like, we’re on less familiar
ground, so it may take less of a disguise to fool us.
Also, new methods of disguise are available, thanks to
the device of personal time.
Here’s another bit of fatalist trickery. Tim, as he lurks,
already knows that he will fail. At least he has the wherewithal
to know it if he thinks, he knows it implicitly. For
he remembers that Grandfather was alive when he was
a boy, he knows that those who are killed are thereafter
not alive, he knows (let us suppose) that he is a time
traveler who has reached the same 1921 that lies in his
personal past, and he ought to understand—as we do—
why a time traveler cannot change the past. What is
known cannot be false. So his success is not only not
compossible with facts that belong to the external future
and his personal past, but also is not compossible with
the present fact of his knowledge that he will fail. I
reply that the fact of his foreknowledge, at the moment
while he waits to shoot, is not a fact entirely about that
moment. It may be divided into two parts. There is the fact
that he then believes (perhaps only implicitly) that he will
fail; and there is the further fact that his belief is correct,
and correct not at all by accident, and hence qualifies as
an item of knowledge. It is only the latter fact that is not
compossible with his success, but it is only the former
that is entirely about the moment in question. In calling
Tim’s state at that moment knowledge, not just belief,
facts about personally earlier but externally later moments
were smuggled into consideration.
I have argued that Tim’s case and Tom’s are alike, except
that in Tim’s case we are more tempted than usual—
and with reason—to opt for a semi-fatalist mode of
speech. But perhaps they differ in another way. In Tom’s
case, we can expect a perfectly consistent answer to the
counterfactual question: what if Tom had killed Grandfather’s
partner? Tim’s case is more difficult. If Tim had
killed Grandfather, it seems offhand that contradictions
would have been true. The killing both would and
wouldn’t have occurred. No Grandfather, no Father; no
Father, no Tim; no Tim, no killing. And for good measure:
no Grandfather, no family fortune; no fortune, no time
machine; no time machine, no killing. So the supposition
that Tim killed Grandfather seems impossible in more
than the semi-fatalistic sense already granted.
If you suppose Tim to kill Grandfather and hold all
the rest of his story fixed, of course you get a contradiction.
But likewise if you suppose Tom to kill Grandfather’s
partner and hold the rest of his story
fixed—including the part that told of his failure—you
get a contradiction. If you make any counterfactual supposition
and hold all else fixed you get a contradiction.
The thing to do is rather to make the counterfactual supposition
and hold all else as close to fixed as you consistently
can. That procedure will yield perfectly
consistent answers to the question: what if Tim had not
killed Grandfather? In that case, some of the story I told
would not have been true. Perhaps Tim might have been
the time-traveling grandson of someone else. Perhaps he
might have been the grandson of a man killed in 1921
and miraculously resurrected. Perhaps he might have
been not a time traveler at all, but rather someone created
out of nothing in 1920 equipped with false memories
of a personal past that never was. It is hard to say
what is the least revision of Tim’s story to make it true
that Tim kills Grandfather, but certainly the contradictory
story in which the killing both does and doesn’t occur
is not the least revision. Hence it is false (according to
the unrevised story) that if Tim had killed Grandfather
then contradictions would have been true.
What difference would it make if Tim travels in
branching time? Suppose that at the possible world of
Tim’s story the space-time manifold branches; the
branches are separated not in time, and not in space, but
in some other way. Tim travels not only in time but also
from one branch to another. In one branch Tim is absent
from the events of 1921; Grandfather lives; Tim is born,
grows up, and vanishes in his time machine. The other
branch diverges from the first when Tim turns up in
1920; there Tim kills Grandfather and Grandfather leaves
no descendants and no fortune; the events of the two
branches differ more and more from that time on. Certainly
this is a consistent story; it is a story in which
Grandfather both is and isn’t killed in 1921 (in the different
branches); and it is a story in which Tim, by killing
Grandfather, succeeds in preventing his own birth (in
one of the branches). But it is not a story in which Tim’s
killing of Grandfather both does occur and doesn’t: it
simply does, though it is located in one branch and not
the other. And it is not a story in which Tim changes the
past. 1921 and later years contain the events of both
branches, coexisting somehow without interaction. It remains
true at all the personal times of Tim’s life, even
after the killing, that Grandfather lives in one branch and
dies in the other.
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