Peter Vranas

"Time Travel: Processes and Paradoxes"

Peter Vranas, November 8th, 2018

Time travel is an exciting topic. It is explored not only in countless works of fiction, but also in extensive scientific and philosophical literatures. But different people imagine time travel differently, and the first main task of this talk is to sort out the numerous time travel processes that have been proposed. The second main task is to investigate the bewildering array of time travel paradoxes. Do the paradoxes show time travel to be impossible? If not, how are the paradoxes to be resolved? It turns out that not all time travel paradoxes are created equal: some are relatively easy to solve, but others hinge on thorny metaphysical issues.