Abstract

This paper investigates ‘exterminous hypertime’, a model of time travel in which time travellers can change the past in virtue of there being two dimensions of time. This paper has three parts. Part one discusses the laws which might govern the connection between different ‘hypertimes’, showing that there are no problems with overdetermination. Part two examines a set of laws that mean changes to history take a period of hypertime to propagate through to the present. Those laws are of interest because: (i) at such worlds, a particular problem for non-Ludovician time travel (‘the multiple time travellers’ problem) is avoided; and (ii) they allow us to make sense of certain fictional narratives. Part three discusses how to understand expectations and rational decision making in a world with two dimensions of time. I end with an appendix discussing how the different theories in the metaphysics of time (e.g., tensed/tenseless theories and presentism/eternalism/growing block theory) marry up with exterminous hypertime.

Highlights

  • Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

  • I stress again, though, that this is where one’s interest should likely stop, for there is no reason to think our world is a world of exterminous hypertime

  • Having said that, were you to ever find yourself in 1930 with a dead Hitler at your feet, exterminous hypertime should be on your list of candidates as to which metaphysical theory might account for what you have just witnessed

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Summary

Two Dimensional Time

Exterminous hypertemporal worlds have multiple dimensions of time. To better understand exterminous hypertime’s multiple dimensions of time, compare them to the multiple dimensions of space. We can represent two temporal dimensions with two axes, one being the regular temporal axis and the other being the hypertemporal axis. To name different instants of regular time (where tn names an arbitrarily selected instant from n AD). Use the following notation to pick out different points of time-hypertime: ‘tn -Tm ’ picks out time tn at hypertime Tm , e.g., t1930 -T1 picks out an instant from 1930 at hypertime T1 whilst t2021 -T14 picks out an instant from 2021 at hypertime T14

Time Travel
Hypercausation
Explaining Stability
Overdetermination
The Threat of Overdetermination
There Is No Problem of Overdetermination
Hypercausal Laws
Propagative Laws
Applications of Global Propagation
The Multiple Time Travellers Problem
The Metaphysical Possibility of Time Travel Fictions
Hyperexpectations
Personal Hyperfutures
Conclusions
The Dimensionality of the A-Series
Growing Block Theory and the Open Future
Summary
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