Self Visitation, Traveler Time, and Compatible Properties

Abstract

IntroductionTed Sider aptly and concisely states the self-visitation paradox thus: ‘Suppose I travel back in time and stand in a room with my sitting 10-year-old self. I seem to be both sitting and standing, but how can that be?’ (2001, 101). I will explore a relativist resolution of this paradox offered by, or on behalf of, endurantists. It maintains that the sitting and the standing are relative to the personal time or proper time of the time traveler and is intended to yield the result that Ted is sitting at a certain initial personal/proper time but is not standing relative to that time. Similarly, it is also supposed to yield that Ted is standing relative to a later personal/proper time, but not sitting relative to that time. Such a traveler-time relativism has been offered by Paul Horwich (1975, 433-5; 1987, 114-15) and also by Simon Keller and Michael Nelson (2001, 344). I will show that this relativist approach is a non-starter. It is so because Ted is sitting and standing at both the initial and the later personal/proper time.