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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The finite-range restriction reflects the requirement that a time machine be an intervention in spacetime, not merely a description of it, a distinction central to interventionist accounts of causation from Woodward onward.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Relativistic spacetime already contains closed timelike curves globally; locally finite-range constraints cannot avoid global causality issues inherent to the geometry.
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    • 2.If time machines are physically impossible anyway, restricting their range is arbitrary—the real work is explaining why they violate physical law, not limiting their scope.
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    • 3.Interventionist accounts assume temporal asymmetry; in relativistic physics, such asymmetry is observer-dependent, making finite-range restrictions conceptually unstable.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Interventions require agents to actively manipulate systems; infinite-range effects would make all events causally connected, eliminating meaningful intervention.
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    • 2.Woodward's interventionist framework requires that causes be independent variables we can actually set; unbounded time machines violate this independence condition.
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    • 3.Physics distinguishes dynamical laws (describing evolution) from initial conditions (intervention points); finite-range time machines respect this foundational distinction.
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