H UL 256 REPORT

On Philosophy of Time and Time travel

Mohit Tuteja 2008PH10625 Group-3 Siddhartha Das 2009EE10418 Group-3 Himanshu Gupta 2009EE10394 Group-3

HUL 256 Report!

HUL 256 REPORT

On Philosophy of Time and Time travel

Time
Discussions of the nature of time, and of various issues related to time, have always featured prominently in philosophy, but they have been especially important since the beginning of the 20th Century. There have been diverse philosophical views regarding the nature and structure of time and it has been a matter of rather heated philosophical arguments. In this article we present dierent views on the nature of time namely: Fatalism Reductionism and Platonism with respect to Time Presentism, Eternalism and The Growing Universe Theory Time Travel and related controversies.

Fatalism
The Fatalism thesis deals with the idea that whatever will happen in the future is already unavoidable i.e. we cannot do anything to prevent it from occurring. In other words it says that the future is pre-determined. The argument for Fatalism is as follows:
1. There exist now propositions about everything that might happen in the future 2. Every proposition is either true or else false. 3. If 1 and 2, then there exists now a set of true propositions that, taken together, correctly predict everything that will happen in the future. 4. If there exists now a set of true propositions that, taken together, correctly pre # # dict everything that will happen in the future, then whatever will happen in # the future is already unavoidable. The main objection to Fatalism is due the premise 2 and 4. Although the premise 2 is supported by Principle of Bivalence still many philosophers criticize it on the grounds that the truth value of the proposition regarding the future is indeterminate at present. The proposition that X will have lunch tomorrow cannot be true or false at present. The truth value can be determined only tomorrow. This is referred to as

HUL 256 Report!

Open Future response to Fatalism. The Open Future response suggests associating a time value to the truth value of a proposition i.e. The truth value is indeterminate prior to the event and is determinate henceforth. Also, it says that a proposition can have dierent truth values at dierent times. This is contrary to the conventional view of Semantics that propositions have truth value independent of time.

Reductionism and Platonism with respect to time

One prominent question that arises time and again is that is it possible to stop time? This idea has been well appreciated in science ction but it is a matter of Philosophical controversy. Opposers of the view that it is possible to freeze time are called the followers of Reductionism with respect to time since they believe that all talk about time can be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events. The opposing view is called Platonism with respect to time. It says that time is like an empty container that exists independently of whatever (objects) is placed in it. The concept of Reductionism says that time is nothing but a system of temporal relations between things and events. Hence, talking of time in which no event is taking place is nonsense. Reductionists with respect to time also say that if frozen time were to occur then we would never come to know of it as we would have no knowledge of any event that would have occurred in that time frame. On the other hand the concept of platonism states that the stagnant time in which the whole world is frozen is conceivable as time passes independent of the events occurring in it.

Presentism, Eternalism and The Growing Universe theory

Presentism is a view that only the present objects exist and says that if we were to make a list of all the objects that exist then there would not be even a single nonpresent item in that list. This is a view that we cannot conceive of alien life forms or of dead people as the objects that are existing. On the contrary there is a view of Non-Presentism which says that it is possible of objects in the future or past to also exist along with the present objects. One version of Non-Presentism is called Eternalism which says that objects from past and present can also exist along with present objects. It says that we might not be able to see the past or future objects at the moment, they might not exist in the same space-time vicinity as we are but they shall denitely be there in the list of all existing things. Another form of Non-presentism is that only objects that are past or present exist and not the objects that are in future. This view is what is called Growing Universe
HUL 256 Report! 3

Theory i.e. the universe is always increasing in size as more and more things are added on to the front end as the time passes.

Topology of Time
There are many theories regarding the topology or the structure of time. Many regard it as a straight line without a beginning or an end. The never ending nature of the timeline in either directions is important because if there would be a starting moment of time then by the virtue of being a moment of time it had to lie between a past and a future moment of time and hence it would no longer be the moment of origin of time. Similar argument holds for the fact that timeline never ends. This is referred to as Standard topology of time. Apart from this view there are other views about nature of time like many consider it to be like a system of parallel owing streams or some consider it to be like a branching river or like a circular loop. Amusing consequences arise from these different views like if time were composed of a number of parallel owing time streams then each moment in time stands in temporal relation to other moments in their own time streams.

Time Travel
Time travel is rather a familiar concept in science ction and most of us have imagined traveling back in time and reliving some moment of our lives. But according to laws of logic and metaphysics there are some serious concerns regarding such a belief such as the fact that if I were to go back in time and kill my Grandfather before my father was even conceived. In that case what would come of me? There is no possible way I would have been born then. Would I cease to exist in such a case? Such radical questions confront us when we talk of time travel.

The# Novikov self-consistency principle#

Because of the possibility of inuencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fullling his role in creating history, not changing it. The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that contradictory causal loops cannot form, but that consistent ones can.

HUL 256 Report!

For example, If a person goes to the past to kill his grandfather, some things will occur which will prevent him from doing so. He cannot change the past (history).

Ontological Paradox#
A scenario can occur where items or information are passed from the future to the past, which then become the same items or information that are subsequently passed back. This not only creates a loop, but a situation where these items have no discernible origin. In this problem, whatever is sent to the past allows the time travel in the rst place (such as saving your past self 's life, or sending vital information about the time travel mechanism). The paradox raises the ontological questions of where, when and by whom the items were created or the information derived. For example, a young physicist receives an old, disintegrating notebook containing information about future events sent by his future self via a time machine; he copies it over into a new notebook before it deteriorates so badly as to be unusable. Over the years the predictions of the notebook come true, allowing him to become wealthy enough to fund his own research, which results in the development of a time machine, which he uses to send the now old, tattered, disintegrating notebook back to his former self. The notebook is not a paradox (it has an end and a beginning; the beginning where he receives it and the end where he threw it out after he copied the information), but the information is; it is impossible to state where it came from. The professor has transferred the information that he wrote himself, so there was no original notebook.

Personal Identity#
Jennifer, a young teenager, is visited by an old woman who materializes in her bedroom. Let us call it event A. The old Jennifer travels back in time to talk with her younger self. Are there two Jennifers or just one Jennifer at event A? At the same moment in external time, a young Jennifer and an old Jennifer are separated by a distance of a few feet. At that moment, is there one person or two? In the case of Jennifer, it is therefore proper to say that at event A in her life, there is only one person, even though it is also true to say from an external perspective, that she has two dierent bodies present at event A. In the sense of personal time, Jennifer is one person who is perceiving another person (from either Jennifers perspective). The older Jennifers materialization into the presence of the younger Jennifer is strange, to be sure, but in a time travel story, it is explicable. Regardless, in her personal time, the causal continuity of her perception (and thus mental states) is consis-

HUL 256 Report!

tent. In the sense of external time, from the perspective of their surrounding world, there are two Jennifers at event A.% The mental state of the younger Jennifer is not identical to the mental state of the older Jennifer. But these mental states, these stages of Jennifers life are not duplicates of the same stage; rather, two moments of personal time overlap at one moment of external time. So is it still proper to say that there are two of her? No, it is not. The time traveler who meets up with her younger self gives the appearance to an outside observer that she is two dierent people, but in reality, there is only one person.

Physical and Psychological Time

Physical time is public time, the time that clocks are designed to measure. Psychological time or phenomenological time is private time. It is perhaps best understood as awareness of physical time. Psychological time passes relatively swiftly for us while we are enjoying an activity, but it slows dramatically if we are waiting anxiously for the water to boil on the stove. The slowness is probably due to focusing our attention on short intervals of physical time. Meanwhile, the clock by the stove is measuring physical time and is not aected by anybodys awareness. Some philosophers claim that psychological time is completely transcended in the mental state called nirvana and we might interpret this as implying that psychological time slows to a complete stop. Any organisms sense of time is subjective, but is the time that is sensed also subjective, a mind- dependent phenomenon? If judgments of time were subjective in the way judgments of being interesting vs. not-interesting are subjective, then it would be miraculous that everyone can so easily agree on the ordering of public events in time. For example, rst, Einstein was born, then he went to school, then he died. Everybody agrees that it happened in this order: birth, school, death. No other order. The agreement on time order for so many events is part of the reason that most philosophers and scientists believe physical time is an objective phenomenon that is not dependent on being consciously experienced. Aristotle raised this issue of the mind-dependence of time when he said, Whether, if soul (mind) did not exist, time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted... . He does not answer his own question because, he says rather profoundly, it depends on whether time is the conscious numbering of movement or instead is just the capability of movements being numbered were consciousness to exist. St. Augustine, adopting a subjective view of time, said time is nothing in reality but exists only in the minds apprehension of that reality.

HUL 256 Report!

It has been suggested by some philosophers that Einsteins theory of relativity, when conrmed, showed us that time depends on the observer, and thus that time is subjective, or dependent on the mind. This error is probably caused by Einsteins use of the term observer. Einsteins theory does imply that the duration of an event is not observer-independent but depends on the observers frame of reference or coordinate system. But what Einstein means by observers frame of reference is merely a perspective or coordinate framework from which measurements could be made. The observer does not have to be a conscious being or have a mind. So, Einstein is not making a point about mind-dependence.

References
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wikipedia. Internet enclyclopedia of Philosophy. Philosophy of time travel by G.Mathew Gilmore.

HUL 256 Report!