Wide Scope A philosophy blog that ranges over philosophy and other fun stuff.

In one of Ted Sider’s recent papers, he’s got a nice section trying to explain why philosophers should care about the metaphysical possibility of time travel. Here’s a passage.

Before expending too much energy on the topic, it is worth thinking a bit about
its point. Beyond the (perfectly legitimate) desire to set the record straight, is
there any reason to care about time travel?

The most straightforward reason to care is that today’s physics community
cares. Whether the actual laws of nature permit time travel is a live debate
in contemporary physics journals (Earman, 1995). Suppose the arguments
to be discussed in this paper against the possibility of time travel (without
shackles) succeeded. Then, given that many physicists tell us otherwise, that is
a problem! Whatever else metaphysicians must do, they should at least try to
make metaphysical sense out of what physicists take seriously.

I started to wonder exactly how seriously the physics community cares. That led to this post last week.

I found another interesting news story this week. The article is a bit sensationalist, and it’s a little older - but it does report on a physicist, Amos Ori, who explains how he thinks we could make time travel happen. I assume this is the Physical Review article the newspaper is referring to. (Note: Amos Ori has an even earlier article here)

Too bad you can only read the abstracts online.