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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Mellor's argument against backward causation may fail even if his argument against time travel succeeds.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Mellor's argument presupposes that the same kind of processes obeying the same kind of macroscopic physical laws enter into both the forward and backward parts of a causal loop.
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    • 2.This assumption may hold for time travel but not for backward causation.
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    • 3.If the assumption does not hold for backward causation, Mellor's argument cannot be extended to rule out backward causation.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Mellor's argument against time travel depends on the impossibility of causal loops, but backward causation need not involve closed causal loops.
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    • 2.Dummett's 1964 analysis of backward causation treats it as asymmetric single-direction influence from effect to cause, structurally distinct from the loop topology Mellor targets.
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    • 3.Without a causal loop, the decision-theoretic paradoxes Mellor invokes—where agents exploit foreknowledge to defeat prior causes—cannot arise to generate his reductio.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Mellor's argument against time travel relies on Lewis-style personal time requiring physical continuity of a persisting traveler through the loop.
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    • 2.Backward causation requires only counterfactual dependence running from later to earlier events, a condition Price and Dowe analyze without presupposing any persisting physical medium.
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    • 3.Because the metaphysical commitments of backward causation are weaker than those of time travel, Mellor's resources sufficient to defeat the latter are insufficient to defeat the former.
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