In this chapter (Paul Horwich, “Time Travel” in Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), 111-128.) Horwich discusses Gö
In this chapter (Paul Horwich, “Time Travel” in Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), 111-128.) Horwich discusses Gödelian time travel. He defends Gödel’s claim against the objection that time travel, as he envisions it, cannot occur since it would engender anomalous consequences. He then briefly deals with arguments for a Gödelian spacetime, which entails a closed universe and closed timelines. He then defends issues about anomalous changes and bilking arguments dealing with backwards causation. He concludes his arguments with a defense of Gödel’s thesis that there is a real possibility of trips to the spatially distant past (128).
The doctrine of creatio originans refers to God’s original conservation of creation–a sustaining causal relationship. This doctrine typically entails an A theory of time.
A theory of time (dynamic): The ultimate reality of time is tensed (God is in time)
B theory of time (static): The ultimate reality of time is atemporal (God is outside of time)
The doctrine of creation implies an A theory of time (dynamic, tensed). If one adopts B theory of time, then things do not literally come into existence. The whole four-dimensional spacetime manifold exists coeternally with God.
Creatio continuans entails a B theory (a continual creation). According to B theory, all events are equally real. Yesterday is just as real as tomorrow and exist in the same moment. If creatio orignans fails, can B theory make more sense of conservation?
Can God act tenselessly on e to sustain it from t1 to t2 [a time interval]
The universe was created 13.73 billion years ago. At about 10-44 seconds after the big bang inflation kicked in and underwent a period of rapid inflation (expansion, this inflation force is thought to be dark energy depicted in Einstein’s lambda term (the cosmological constant) in the right hand side of his field equation describing the energy momentum of the universe.) The cosmological constant is a characteristic of the spacetime fabric of the universe related to its stretching energy (space energy density—commonly referred to as dark energy). The more the universe expends, the greater this stretching energy becomes. When the spacetime fabric stretches, the bodies of masses, such as galaxies, move farther apart by the stretching of space. The cosmological constant is in effect a pulling property that works against gravity. Since creation, the cosmological constant’s effect has been increasing. Initial expectations were for the expansion to slow down and for the universe to collapse back in on itself. For instance, when a ball is tossed in the air its speed slows down and the ball falls to the ground.
J.M.E. McTaggart provides an objection to the A series of time but suggesting that it may be true that past, present, and future are mere illusions of the mind. McTaggart dismisses the argument’s subjectivity of time by simply defining it out of existence.
- Anything existent can either possess the characteristic of being in time or the characteristic of not being in time.
- Anything existent does not possess the characteristic of being in time [due to subjective references, a lack of indexing events from moment to moment or changing, etc.]
- Therefore, anything existent does not possess the characteristic of being in time (time is illusory).
The objection to the A series by the subjectivity of the individual mind is not so easy to dismiss as McTaggart seems to do. With advances in relativity theory this objection may have phenomenological credibility. Though McTaggart’s rejection of the argument is correct, there are better reasons for opposing the argument of the mind’s subjective relationship to time.
The special theory of relativity (STR) states that clocks in motion slow down. This time dilation occurs with respects to the observer. In the early 1900’s, Albert Einstein’s STR changed how physicists and philosophers viewed the previous Newtonian paradigm of absolute simultaneity. If STR is correct, then an observer in motion will experience time at a slower rate than an observer at rest. Perhaps, given STR, the A series of time is really illusory since the experience of time is relative to the subject (the object being the spacetime fabric).
STR may still permit an A series of time where the subject’s experience of objective becoming is supported by the object’s relation to the subject. There are two concurrent ways this ma