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The Reality of the Future*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

John Leslie
Affiliation:
University of Guelph

Extract

This book would better have been called Backward Causation. For its central purposes, the reason for wanting the future to be real is that it must be real if it is to affect the present (see p. 12). Backward causation might be essential to the precognitions reported by paranormal psychologists (p. 20). Philosophers, too, might want it for giving power to Newcomb's Paradox (p. 42–45) in which the presence of a superbly efficient Predictor could discourage what would otherwise be evidently rational behaviour. Again, Time Machines (p. 226–237) and Ray Guns fired into the Past (p. 30f.) have attracted philosophical attention. Finally, and of more interest to Faye, physicists have published hundreds of papers speculating about advanced particles and tachyons. Advanced particles (Chapter 7) are conceived as moving backwards in time. Tachyons (Chapter 8) travel faster than light, which means that at least some observers will be inclined to view their temporal progress as backwards.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990

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References

* Jan Faye, The Reality of the Future (Odense: Odense University Press, 1989), p. 321. Page references are to this work.