Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: If (backward) time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self (YS); then apparently I can kill him – I can commitretrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability ascompossibilitywith the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS ispossible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox.
Source: Pacific philosophical quarterly
Author: PETER B. M. VRANAS
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2057072220