Dummett and others have failed to show that an effect can precede its cause. Dummett claimed that 'backwards causation' is unproblematic in agentless worlds, and tried to show under what conditions it is rational to believe that even backwards agent-causation occurs. Relying on considerations originating in discussions of special relativity, I show that the latter conditions actually support the view that backwards agent-causation is impossible. I next show that in Dummett's agentless worlds explanation does not necessitate backwards causation. I then (...) show why even relative backwards causation is impossible in his and Tooley's scenarios of parallel processes in which causes apparently act in opposite temporal directions. We thus have good reasons for thinking that backwards causation is impossible. (shrink)

As the past-future asymmetry – that fact that we have records of the past but not the future – is still a puzzle the aim of this paper is twofold: a) to explain the asymmetry and its status in philosophy and physics and to critically review the proposed solutions to this puzzle; b) to advance a dynamic solution to the puzzle in terms of the ‘universality’ of the entropy relation in statistical mechanics.

Since Michel Dummett published “Can an effect precede its cause?”, in which he argued for the logical consistency of backwards causation, the controversial concept has turned to a subject of all kinds of interpretations and misinterpretations. Some like Ben-yami, Peijnenburg and Gorovitz have wrongly ascribed to Dummett the view that the argument for the consistency of believing in backwards causation applies only in cases where the agent doesn’t know about the occurrence of the past effect. In this paper I defend (...) Dummett’s argument by clearing up the confusion caused by ascribing the ignorance condition to Dummett. (shrink)

Michael Dummett and Storrs McCall have claimed that time travel scenarios in which an artist copies an artwork from a reproduction of it that has been sent from the future introduce a causal loop of a new kind: one involving artistic value. They have suggested that this poses a hitherto unacknowledged challenge to time travel theories. I argue that their conclusion depends on some unstated essentialist assumptions about metaphysics of art and the status of representations. By relaxing these assumptions, I (...) show that Dummett and McCall’s scenarios contain no causal loop involving artistic value, and thus pose no new problem for time travel theories. (shrink)