Banana Peels and Time Travel

Author(s): G. C. Goddu
Source: Dialectica, Vol. 61, No. 4 (2007), pp. 559-572
Published by: Wiley
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dialctica Vol. 61, N 4 (2007), pp. 559-572

DOI: 1 0. 1 1 1 l/j. 1 746-836 1 .2007.0 1 1 26.x

Banana Peels and Time Travel

G. C. Goddu+

Abstract

A world in which time travel into the past occurred would seem like a most strange world.
Nicholas Smith, however, in his 'Bananas Enough for Time Travel', argues that time travel is not
so strange as we think. In particular, he argues against what he views as the main reason time

travel worlds seem so strange - the claim that time travel entails unusual numbers of coincidences. I shall argue that Smith's argument for rejecting the claim is inadequate. Hence, the
debate over the consequences of the coincidences of time travel cannot be avoided by denying the
coincidences themselves.

According to David Lewis, '[A] possible world where time travel took place would
be a most strange world, different in fundamental ways from the world we think is

ours' (Lewis 1976, 145). Nicholas Smith maintains that Lewis' view is widely held.
Indeed, one might argue that it is the very strangeness of time travel that makes time

travel so philosophically interesting. What makes time travel worlds seem so

strange? According to Smith, the view, made popular by Paul Horwich, that
backward time travel entails unusual numbers of coincidences (see Horwich 1975,
1987).1 Smith, however, argues that 'backward time travel does not entail unusual
numbers of coincidences' (Smith 1997, 363). He goes on to add that 'in arguing for
this conclusion, I hope to dispel somewhat the widely held view that worlds in which

backward time travel occurs are very odd places. For all the difference it need make

to what we see around us, time travellers could be in our midst today' (Smith 1997,

364). I shall argue, however, that Smith's arguments for doubting:

(1) Time travel, of the sort philosophers are primarily interested in, entails
unusual numbers of coincidences,
are inadequate.
This paper proceeds as follows: In section 1, 1 shall provide some context for
Smith's arguments by presenting and discussing the dialectic which generates the
claim that time travel entails unusual numbers of coincidences and the problems
that allegedly result because of it. In section 2, 1 shall present and briefly discuss
Smith's arguments for doubting (1). In section 3, 1 argue that (i) Smith's arguments
' Department of Philosophy, North Court, University of Richmond, VA 23713 USA;
Email: ggoddu@richmond.edu
1 Note, it is the possibility of closed causal loops, in which you apparently get something
for nothing, and not strings of coincidences, that Lewis calls strange. See Lewis 1976, 148, 149.

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ultimately rest on the obviousness of the impossibility of changing the past and (ii)

that whether the past can be changed is not at all obvious. I shall conclude that
Smith fails to show the inadequacy of (1) and so the debate over the consequences

of (1) cannot be so easily sidestepped.

7.

Consider the following, fairly typical, time travel scenarios:

Jack, brilliant but tormented, builds a time machine and resolves to go back in time
and kill his maternal grandfather before Jack's mother was born . . .
or,

Israeli scientists develop backward time travel. Mossad gains access to the technologies and begins an across-the-centuries campaign to protect Jewish interests throughout history. Unsurprisingly, one of their prime targets is a young, out of work painter
named Adolf Hitler.

How these scenarios play out depends on the predilections of the writer, but there
are two general plot options - either the time travellers succeed in their mission to
change the past or they fail.

Philosophers, however, argue that both options are problematic. Success, most

argue, is impossible for it implies a contradiction. Consider, for example, those

stories in which the time traveller, Jack, succeeds in killing his maternal grandfather when Grandfather was only five years old. But then Grandfather both does and

does not survive past the age of five, both does and does not have a daughter, etc.
Jack, on the other hand, erases himself from existence and so is not around to kill

Grandfather in which case Jack grows up, brilliant and tormented, and goes back
in time and kills Grandfather. Such stories, it is commonly argued, are incoherent
and inconsistent for they describe contradictory and so logically impossible states
of affairs. It just cannot be that Grandfather both does and does not survive past the

age of five.

Failure, or at least repeated failure, most argue, implies highly improbable

coincidences. Suppose Jack tries to kill Grandfather and fails. Why? Well, at the
crucial moment he slips on a banana peel; on his next attempt the gun jams; on
another attempt he kills Grandfather's best friend (whose death turned Grandfather

into the bitter, cruel individual Jack remembers and hates). Mossad fares no better

than Jack. The best marksmen all fail to get Adolf at any age - wind changes,
jammed guns, defective bullets, heart attacks, changes of heart, and a few more
stray banana peels foil Mossad's best efforts.
If success is impossible, then failure is the only option. Repeated failure is the

result of extremely improbable and odd coincidences. Hence, regular time travel

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 561

worlds are worlds in which extremely improbable coincidences occur and so are,
at the very least, most strange and odd worlds.

Some have argued that the coincidences of failure show more than that time
travel is merely odd or strange. Samuel Gorovitz, for example, in 'Leaving the Past

Alone', writes of a Jack-type case:

We are faced with the problem of explaining why it is that I (the time traveller)
cannot fire the gun, or if I can, why it is that I can fire it only in certain directions.
Either the gun is not behaving as the normal physical object we take it to be or the

notion of voluntary action does not apply in the usual way (Gorovitz 1964, 367).

Paul Horwich argues that if there were regular time travel into the local past then,

given human capacities and inclinations, there would undoubtedly be numerous

bilking attempts, i.e. attempts to 'bilk' nature, to undo the past. But according to
Horwich, the 'regular thwarting of bilking attempts will involve an endless string

of improbable coincidences' (Horwich 1987, 123), i.e. slips on banana peels and so

on. Hence time travel into the local past entails the occurrence of extremely
improbable coincidences and so time travel itself is extremely improbable. Kadri
Vihvelin argues that the massive failure shows that there are no worlds close
enough to our own in which Jack can, in the sense relevant to what we ordinarily
mean by 'can', kill Grandfather, and so time travel does entail a restriction on what

time travellers can do (Vihvelin 1996).

Ted Sider, in a recent article, defends time travel against several arguments,
including those of Horwich and Vihvelin, trying to draw conclusions from the
coincidences of time travel. Sider concludes that none of the arguments 'succeeds

in undermining the possibility or likelihood of time travel' or 'undermines time

travellers' freedom' (Sider 2002, 116, 137). Regardless, Sider does not question
the starting point - the bizarre coincidences of time travel, at least time travel of a
certain sort.

According to Smith, however, time travel of the sort under discussion does not
entail the occurrence of extremely improbable coincidences. If Smith is right, then

attempts to show that the coincidences cause problems for time travel are funda-

mentally flawed and defences such as Sider' s superfluous.

Before turning to Smith's arguments, let us be clearer about the sort of time

travel that is our concern and the import of (1). No one is claiming that all
instances of time travel into the past would generate long strings of coincidences.

For example, suppose successful transport of a human sized object even, say, one
year into the past requires more energy than the sun produces in 1000 years. If true,
we could expect time travel to either occur extremely rarely or be restricted to very

small objects. Time travel would occur, but there would be no attempts to bilk
nature, and so no long strings of bizarre coincidences. Another possibility is that
the time travellers who visit the past are so psychologically disciplined, perhaps as

a result of continued human development or perhaps extensive psychological

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conditioning, that they have no interest in trying to change the past. Again, time

travel would occur but there would be no attempts to bilk nature and so no
coincidences. Plenty of time travel stories can be told that do not involve coincidences.

The claim, rather, is that recurrent time travel involving human beings, psy-

chologically as they are now, back into their relatively local past, i.e. within the
past few thousand years of their departure point, would entail long strings of
coincidences.2 After all, it is such regular and local time travel that, given human

curiosity, regrets, desires, etc., would generate the serious bilking attempts, i.e.
repeated attempts to change the past. The failure of repeated attempts would in
turn generate a pattern of occurrences that, taken together, would be an extremely

improbable string of coincidences. Indeed, this line of reasoning for (1) is worth
demarcating since it will be the focus of Smith's arguments. In particular, from:
(la) Regular, local, etc., time travel into the past involves serious bilking attempts,

and,
(lb) Serious bilking attempts generate improbable strings of coincidences,

we are supposed to arrive at (1). As we shall see below, (la) is Smith's ultimate
target.

Clearly the 'entailment' Horwich and Smith, et al. , are discussing is not logical
entailment, but rather some sort of natural necessity. Given worlds in which

objects and people have causal powers pretty much like the causal powers they
have in this world, then regular time travel would entail improbable strings of
coincidences. So worlds in which the natural laws change after each instance of
time travel or in which time travellers all mysteriously suffer amnesia regarding
why they are travelling or in which time travellers who attempt to bilk nature are

immediately returned to their point of origin, etc., while certainly logically possible, are not within the domain of concern.
Finally, if regular, local, etc., time travel does entail long strings of what are

now considered coincidences, then, were such regular trips into the local past to
begin, we would expect to see lots of bilking attempts and so lots of strings of
coincidences. But after a while, rather than think them odd we might even get to
the point where we would no longer think the strings of occurrences were coincidences. Regardless, the question remains - does recurrent time travel by human

beings into the local past necessarily generate what we currently consider to be
long strings of coincidences?

2 See Sider 2002, 117-118, for more discussion of the sort of time travel of concern.

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 563

2.

According to Smith,
Backward time travel, in itself, does not entail slips on banana peels and other such
coincidences. Rather each argument which purports to derive such coincidences as
output, given backward time travel as input, also uses as input - in addition to
backward time travel itself - occurrences which are themselves as rare and apparently
improbable as long strings of slips on banana peels. Hence, in order to derive large

numbers of output coincidences, the objections need to stipulate the occurrence of

large numbers of input coincidences (Smith 1997, 381).

In essence, Smith is arguing that the best the massive failure scenarios show is that:
(2) Time travel, of the sort philosophers are primarily interested in, entails the
occurrence of unusual numbers of output coincidences only if large numbers of
input coincidences are assumed,
rather than:

(1) Time travel, of the sort philosophers are primarily interested in, entails unusual
numbers of coincidences.

The former, however, does not support Horwich's repudiation of time travel.
Note that despite Smith's initial suggestion that he would argue for the claim
that 'backward time travel does not entail unusual numbers of coincidences' in

order 'to dispel somewhat the widely held view that worlds in which backward

time travel occurs are very odd places' (Smith 1997, 364), the strategy Smith
pursues here, if successful, establishes a significantly weaker claim, viz., 'backward time travel has not been established to entail unusual numbers of coinci-

dences.' After all, what is required to reject (1) is a case in which regular, local time

travel by human beings occurs and no coincidences occur. Smith has not provided
such a case. Nor does he explicitly argue that such a case is easily constructible or
even possible. So far, he merely argues that the cases offered in which both regular

time travel and output coincidences occur also have input coincidences.
The fact that (1) has yet to be rejected, however, leaves Horwich and company
room to rebuff Smith's challenge. All that is needed, given Smith's current strategy, is a clear case in which we have regular time travel, odd output coincidences,

but no assumption of input coincidences. Clearly some time travel scenarios

assume some extremely odd and improbable things happening. One of Smith's

examples is that 'some military regime programmes as many soldiers as you

please to kill their younger selves, and wipes the soldiers of their memories, so that

they do not recognize their younger selves when they meet them' (Smith 1997,
382). Sider, for example, speculates about what can be concluded if an 'Institute
for Autoinfanticide' is formed (Sider 2002, 116). But do all regular-time-travelby-human-beings scenarios involve improbable setups?

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How improbable is it that Mossad would want to kill Adolf Hitler? How
improbable is it, for any given person, that there isn't something in their past they

would try to change if given the chance? Consider also the following scenario:
Sarah decides to test her just-built time machine on herself tomorrow morning at
which time she intends to travel back one day. In the meantime, she goes home, puts
some salve on the burn she received that day, and goes to bed. In the morning, Sarah,
with coffee in hand, sits down to read the morning paper. She opens the paper to the

following headline: 'Famous physicist found dead.' Below is a picture of her body,
salved burn clearly visible on her arm, inside her pristine time machine. Underneath
is the caption: 'Nobel-prize winning physicist found dead yesterday in mysterious

device that materialized near city hall.' Extremely shaken, Sarah now has every
intention of never getting into the time machine.

Despite her intentions she gets into the time machine. Perhaps while trying to
dismantle part of the time machine she slips and falls into the machine severely
hitting her head and starting the machine in the process. Perhaps after double and
triple checking everything she decides to risk the trip anyway. Perhaps she is pushed
into the machine by a rival intent on stealing her secrets. But suppose Sarah enlists
the aid of numerous friends and co-workers to help her avoid getting into her time

machine. Several are sent to destroy the machine. Others are enlisted to make
absolutely sure she does not leave the house. For some reason all of these efforts fail.
No one succeeds in destroying the machine or even altering its pristine condition. No
one, not even Sarah, succeeds in preventing Sarah from leaving the house or getting
into her time machine.3

What is so improbable about Sarah and her friends and colleagues not wanting her
to get into the time machine?
Smith admits that any number of stories can be told in which time travellers
deliberately try to change some aspect of the past, whether it be killing Grandfather or Hitler or something as trivial as making sure little Joey didn't wear green

corduroy pants to school on a particular day in the second grade. For instance, a
time traveller might fall for what Smith calls the second-time-around fallacy and
fail to realize that changing the past is impossible or a time traveller might believe

in resurrection and believe he or she remembers being resurrected. According to

Smith, however, these stories 'all suffer from the same defect, namely: improbable

outputs can be derived only on the assumption that equally improbable inputs
occur' (Smith 1997, 381-382). So, for example, according to Smith,
If a high proportion of time travellers were to fall for the second-time-around fallacy,

then local backward time travel would indeed entail a great many slips on banana
peels and so on. But it seems improbable that there should be a systematic correlation

between time travelling intentions and fallacious reasoning. . . . similarly for the

second story: it would be a remarkable coincidence if a large number of time

travellers were to believe in resurrection (Smith 1997, 382).

In essence then, Smith's claim is that getting sufficient numbers of time travellers
to try to change the past would require getting sufficient numbers of time travellers
3 This scenario is a slightly modified version of Scenario 2 from Goddu 2003.

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 565

to believe that changing the past was possible and getting them to believe that
would involve an extremely improbable amount of fallacious reasoning. Hence, if
any output coincidence will be the result of a bilking attempt and bilking attempts

will require an improbable amount of fallacious reasoning, then any time travel

scenario that generates the output coincidences will have input coincidences.
Consequently, the best that can be shown is (2), which will not support the
conclusions Horwich and others wish to draw from the alleged coincidences of
time travel.

Put another way, Smith is arguing that (la), regular, local, etc., time travel into
the past generates serious bilking attempts, cannot be established. The best that can
be established is:

(2a) Regular, local, etc., time travel into the past involves serious bilking attempts,

only if improbable coincidences (at the very least improbable amounts of

fallacious reasoning) are assumed.

But (2a), when combined with (lb) - bilking attempts will generate improbable
coincidences - (which Smith accepts) results in, at best, (2) rather than (1). Hence,
the best that can be shown is that time travel entails output coincidences only given

the assumption of input coincidences.

Though Smith never explicitly argues from the fact that only (2) can be
established to the outright falsity of (1), we can see a means for him to do so.
Assuming that regular time travel and fallacious reasoning are not necessarily
connected, then it is possible to have the time travel without the fallacious reasoning. But if the bilking attempts in time travel worlds require the fallacious
reasoning, then there could be time travel without the bilking attempts and so (la)

is false. Further, assuming that, in at least some cases, the bilking attempts are
causally necessary for the occurrence of the coincidences, then the lack of bilking

attempts will mean no coincidences and so (1) is false. Hence, regular, local, etc.,
time travel does not, by itself, entail long strings of coincidences.

3.

The crux of Smith's argument is the claim:

(3) The generation of repeated attempts to bilk the past requires an improbable
amount of fallacious reasoning.

If bilking the past requires an improbable amount of fallacious reasoning and if the

output coincidences can only come about as the result of bilking attempts, then

time travel will not generate the output coincidences without an improbable
amount of fallacious reasoning.
I shall argue that Smith fails to establish (3) and so fails to establish the falsity

of (1). The first step will be to argue that relying on the physical impossibility of

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changing the past to ground the improbable reasoning of time travellers is too
weak. The second step will be to argue that relying on mere logical impossibility
will also, in some cases for similar reasons to relying on physical impossibility, fail

to ground (3). Finally, I shall argue that (i) what is required to ground (3) is the
obviousness of the logical impossibility of changing the past and (ii), whatever the
actual status of the logical possibility/impossibility of changing the past, it is far
from obvious.

Suppose one is agnostic about the logical possibility of changing the past, but

attempts to argue that changing the past is physically impossible and so getting
time travellers to attempt bilking is implausible. Certainly our best current physical theories do not maintain that time is structured in the way supposed by either

existing model alleging the logical possibility of changing the past, i.e. my own
hypertemporal model (Goddu 2003) and Jack Meiland's two-dimensional model

(Meiland 1974). In regards to the latter, Alasdair Richmond points out that
Einsteinian space-time with two time-like dimensions still does not allow for
changing the past (Richmond 2000).
Relying on physical impossibility to ground the alleged improbable reasoning

of time travellers, however, is too weak. Firstly, suppose scientists have time
machines (which are not excluded by our best physical theories) and believe that
changing the past is physically impossible based on the accepted physical theories.

Even so, since one aspect of the scientific method is confirmation of existing
theories, might not these scientists reasonably attempt to change the past in order
to confirm the theory? In fact, the scientists may even be looking for the coinci-

dences as part of the evidence that the theory's prohibition against changing the
past is correct.
Secondly, even if scientists are not interested in confirming the theory in this

way, there is significant debate even now about the mechanism that would prohibit changing the past - for example, why exactly can't we send a billiard ball
back in time through a wormhole on a trajectory that would make the billiard

ball knock itself away from the mouth of the wormhole in the first place?
(Physicists are not impressed by philosophical appeals to the laws of logic in
this regard. See for example, Echevarria et al. 1991). But if the exact nature of
the constraints on physical systems involving backwards time travel is unknown,

then as good seekers of truth what should we do? Run experiments and try to
change the past to see if we can gain information about the nature of the constraints. Since our experiments must be repeatable, we will try to change the past

many times. When we run our experiments, then, we continually fail and see a

drastic increase in what prior to the advent of time travel were highly improbable coincidences. In this scenario we have time travel with the intent to
change the past, no faulty reasoning, and yet we still have the long strings of
coincidences.

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 567

Thirdly, our current best physical theory of the nature of space-time is inconsistent with our best theory of fundamental particles. Something has to give.
But if the overall status of the theory of space-time is itself in some doubt, then
regardless of whether changing the past is in fact physically impossible, we may

still wonder whether changing the past is physically possible because we have
doubts about the adequacy of our theory. In this circumstance would it be unreasonable for time travellers to attempt to change the past?
Fourthly, if we suppose the time travellers in question are not explorers of the
nature of space-time or the physical universe, then the possible scenarios multiply

drastically. For example, suppose that time machines become as ubiquitous as

television sets. (If this hypothesis itself seems implausible, ask how accurately an

Assyrian charioteer would have been able to judge the probability that 'selfpowered chariots' would one day be as ubiquitous as the soldiers in the largest
Persian army.) If time machines were as available as television sets, how improbable is it that, given a society inundated by Seven Days , Star Trek , and X-Files , let

alone crystals, psychic phone lines, etc., many people just wouldn't believe it was

physically impossible to change the past and so keep trying?

Appealing to just the physical impossibility of changing the past will not
support Smith's contention that 'in order to derive large numbers of output coincidences, the objections need to stipulate the occurrence of large numbers of input

coincidences' (Smith 1997, 381). But those who attempt to generate problematic
conclusions from the alleged coincidences of time travel generally accept the

stronger claim that changing the past is logically impossible. So perhaps the
stronger claim will support (3). I shall now argue, however, that, even granting

the logical impossibility of time travel, we can still avoid Smith's 'input
coincidences'.

Smith argues that time travel, in itself, does not entail unusual numbers of
coincidences on the grounds that generating the output coincidences requires input

coincidences. He argues that the input coincidences are required on the grounds
that any remotely plausible time travel story involving serious bilking attempts,

i.e., sustained attempts to change the past, will ultimately involve an unusual
amount of fallacious reasoning.
Certainly, if changing the past is logically impossible, then any reasoning to the

belief that changing the past is possible is flawed in some way. But given this, we
should, in fact, not be surprised by a correlation between intentions to change the

past motivated by a belief in the possibility of changing the past and flawed
reasoning. Given the assumption that changing the past is impossible, any belief
that changing the past is possible arrived at via reasoning will involve flawed
reasoning. In the context of discussing time travel to change the past, Smith writes:

'It seems improbable that there should be a systematic correlation between time
travelling intentions and fallacious reasoning' (Smith 1997, 382). But if changing

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the past is logically impossible, then all reasoned intentions to change the past will

be the result of flawed reasoning.

Presumably, however, the real worry is not that time travel stories involving

bilking will have an improbable systematic correlation between time travelling

intentions and fallacious reasoning, but that, given the logical impossibility of
changing the past, an improbable amount of fallacious reasoning is going to have
to happen in order to get sufficient time travellers to engage in bilking behaviour
in the first place. But should we, even given the logical impossibility of changing
the past, be surprised by the number of people who somehow generate the intention to change the past?
Suppose that the logical possibility of changing the past is an epistemically open

question. In other words, even assuming that changing the past is logically impossible, it is not known whether changing the past is logically impossible or not. But

if whether changing the past is possible or not is an open question, then (a) some
people might attempt changing the past without believing that changing the past is

possible and (b) even if some people did come to believe that changing the past is
possible, it is not necessarily strange or unusual that they will be engaged in flawed

reasoning. In the case of (a), a time traveller may be agnostic about the possibility
of changing the past and yet attempt to change the past as part of an inquiry aimed

at (i) discovering whether changing the past is possible or (ii) confirming that
changing the past is at least physically impossible or (iii) discovering the mechanisms preventing changing the past. In the case of (b), if the fact that changing the

past is logically impossible is unknown to us, is it truly improbable that a large

number of time travellers would each in his or her own way come to believe that
changing the past might be possible? There are plenty of things that are impossible

that many people have thought could be done - like trisecting an angle with only a

straight edge and compass, transmuting lead to gold, building a perpetual motion
machine, etc. The mere fact that, by hypothesis, changing the past is impossible, is
not itself sufficient reason to maintain that getting time travellers to try to change the

past would require unusual amounts of fallacious reasoning.

Consider trisecting an angle with only a straight edge and compass. Some

people who tried may have been agnostic and tried as part of the process of
determining whether or not it was possible. Some may have even suspected it was

impossible, but tried anyway in order to get clear on the obstacles preventing
success as a first step in showing that at least one of those obstacles was insurmountable. On the other hand, some people who tried to trisect the angle may have

believed it was possible. Should we be surprised that these people arrived at this
erroneous belief? No. Firstly, the possibility of trisecting the angle seems to be a

natural extension of something that is possible, viz., bisecting an angle with a

straight edge and compass. Secondly, there is nothing obviously impossible about
trisecting an angle.

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 569

Now consider trying to change some particular part of the past such as preventing Adolf Hitler from surviving childhood. Some who try may be agnostic
about whether changing the past is possible and still try for a variety of reasons.
For example, even those who suspect it may be impossible may try on the grounds
that the benefit of improbable success may far outweigh the effort of trying. Some

who try to kill young Hitler will likely believe killing young Hitler is possible. Is
this odd or strange? On the one hand, killing a child is a type of thing that can be
done. (Which is even stronger justification than in the trisecting case that was only
an extension of what could be done.)4 On the other hand, given the supposition that

whether the past can change or not is an epistemically open question, it too is not
obvious that changing the past is impossible. Hence, in either (a)-type or (b)-type

circumstances, even granting the logical impossibility of changing the past, it

appears possible that there could be bilking attempts without unusual or improb-

able amounts of fallacious reasoning, in which case (3) is false.

But perhaps a defender of Smith will argue that, unlike the trisecting the angle

case, it is obvious that changing the past is impossible. After all, perhaps pointing

to the Jack or Mossad scenarios above, generating contradictions from the supposition that the past can change is just so easy. But if it is obvious that changing the
past is impossible, then the supposition that whether the past can change is an open

question is itself highly implausible. Hence, (3) is true, not because of the mere
logical impossibility of changing the past, but because it is obvious that changing

the past is logically impossible.

I reject the claim that changing the past is obviously logically impossible.
Elsewhere I have argued that, despite general philosophical opinion, changing the

past is, in fact, logically possible (Goddu 2003). Since I reject the claim that
changing the past is impossible, I certainly reject the claim that it is obvious that

changing the past is impossible. However, I am, for the purposes of this paper,
granting to Smith and Horwich, etc., the logical impossibility of changing the past.

Regardless, even granting the logical impossibility of changing the past, I still
reject the claim that changing the past is obviously logically impossible.
Consider, first, the claim that given a straight line and a fixed point from that
line, there is exactly one straight line through the point that does not intersect the
4 One referee for this journal wonders why repeated attempts to trisect an angle did not
result in coincidences, even though the expectation is that repeated attempts to change the past
will. I suspect the beginnings of an answer will be related to the fact that there is no instantiation

of 'trisecting an angle with only compass and straight edge', but many instantiations of 'killing
defenceless children with a gun or a knife or whatever'. Hence, in the time travel case what is odd

is the failure of this attempt to be like the many other successful instantiations, but in the
trisection case there are no successes of the appropriate type against which failure appears odd.
Put another way - there is no combination of possible straight edge and compass actions that
results in the trisection of an angle, but there are plenty of combinations of trigger pulling,
aiming, etc., that result in killings, so the repeated appearance of defeaters to these combinations
in time travel cases will be coincidental.

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570

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C.

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given line. Isn't it just obvious that any straight line drawn from the point that
veered away from the given line in one direction would have to veer toward the line

in the other direction such that the only possibility would be the single line that at

every point is the same distance away from the given line as the original point? It
may be obvious given an assumption about the curvature of the space the line and

the point occupy. But drop the assumption and the 'obvious' claim is no longer
obvious and, it turns out, is false. My argument against the logical impossibility of
changing the past begins with a similar strategy by suggesting that the seemingly

'obvious' contradictions of time travel involving changing the past rely on an

empirical assumption about the nature of time (Goddu 2003, section I). Drop the
assumption and, I argue, there are consistent temporal structures on which the past

changes, and so the 'obvious' claim is no longer obvious and, it turns out, is false.
But even if I am wrong that there are consistent temporal structures on which
the past changes and it turns out to be true that changing the past is impossible, it

will still not be obvious that changing the past is impossible. Firstly, if there is
some flaw in my argument for the logical possibility of changing the past, the flaw

is not obvious and so the impossibility of changing the past cannot be obvious
either. Secondly, whatever makes changing the past impossible is something more
than just the conundrums that quickly appear in discussions of changing the past.

To render clear whatever makes changing the past impossible will require claims
and arguments about what happens given various possibilities for the nature of

time, causation, event identity, etc. For example, Smith argues that apparent
changes of the past are really avoidances of the past based on a certain view of
event identity (Smith 1997, 365-366). Lewis argues that branching time need not
allow for changing of the past (Lewis 1976, 152). But if showing that changing the
past is impossible requires showing that apparent changes are avoidances and that
branching time or multi-dimensional time or any other temporal structure for that

matter will not suffice, then the claim that changing the past is impossible is not

obvious. In addition, since these arguments often depend on philosophically

unsettled and non-obvious positions concerning the nature of time or causation or
event identity, etc., none of these arguments or claims will themselves be obvious.

But if whatever makes changing the past impossible is not obvious, then the fact

that many people might (i) fail to see that changing the past is impossible or (ii)
positively believe that changing the past is possible is not at all strange or unusual.

Finally, and admittedly most speculatively, suppose that changing the past is
logically impossible and, contra what I have just argued, it is fairly obvious that it

is impossible. Is this even stronger claim sufficient to ground (3)? I suspect not.
Firstly, I grant that if it is obvious that changing the past is logically impossible,
then reasonable inquiries into whether the past can be changed or whether the past

can be physically changed are excluded. In addition, while it may be reasonable to

suppose that lots of people will have plausible (even if ultimately fallacious)

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Banana Peels and Time Travel 571

reasons for trying to do impossible things that are not obviously impossible, it is
not at all reasonable to suppose that lots of people will have plausible reasons for
trying to do obviously impossible things. But even granting that changing the past

is obviously logically impossible, it may not be at all obvious how this logical
impossibility will be excluded by the physical mechanisms of our universe. If so,

then scientists who grant the obvious logical impossibility of changing the past
might still run bilking experiments in order to see what physical mechanisms come

into play when we try to change the past.

Secondly, is it really improbable that a sufficient number of people would fail

to see the fairly obvious and try to bilk the past anyway? Might not a single person

who had both a time machine and a willingness to try over and over again be
sufficient to generate the coincidences? But surely it is not at all implausible to
imagine that at least one person might fail to see the obvious, for whatever reason,

and be sufficiently motivated to try repeatedly to change the past. After all, the
motivation may have little to do with reason, but rather anger or despair or hatred.

Given easy enough access to time machines and a large enough pool of people, we
should, I imagine, expect to see instances of 'irrational' time travel behaviour and
should be surprised if none occurred.

Conclusion

Coincidences need not arise if changing the past is logically possible, so ultimately
Smith and I agree that (1) is false and so regular time travel by human beings into

the local past does not entail long strings of coincidences. However, Smith's
reason for denying (1) is inadequate. Ultimately Smith's reason depends not only
on the logical impossibility of changing the past, but the obviousness of this
impossibility. Even granting the logical impossibility, there is no good reason to
think it is obviously impossible. But if the possibility or impossibility of changing

the past can reasonably be an open question, then plenty of plausible stories
involving bilking attempts can be told with (a) no fallacious reasoning involved or

(b), even if fallacious reasoning is involved, no unusual amounts of fallacious

reasoning. Hence, Smith has failed to show that time travel worlds (of the intended

sort) do not involve bilking attempts that result in unusual coincidences. But then

the question of what can be concluded from the strange coincidence of standard
time travel remain and the debate between Horwich and Vihvelin on the one hand
and Sider on the other cannot be so easily sidestepped.*

* A distant ancestor of this paper was read at Longwood University in March 2002 I am
grateful to the audience there for useful discussion. Thanks are also due to Ted Sider for helpful
comments on an earlier version of this paper, and several anonymous referees for this journal who
provided extremely helpful and thought-provoking comments.

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572

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References

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with Closed Timelike Curves: Classical Theory', Physical Review D 44, pp. 1077-1099.
Horwich, P. 1975, 'On Some Alleged Paradoxes of Time Travel', Journal of Philosophy 72, pp.
432^44.

Horwich, P. 1987, Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Goddu, G. C. 2003, 'Time Travel and Changing the Past', Ratio 16, pp. 16-32.
Gorovitz, S. 1964, 'Leaving the Past Alone', Philosophical Review 73, pp. 360-371.
Lewis, D. 1976, 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel', American Philosophical Quarterly 13, pp. 145-152.

Meiland, J. 1974, 'A Two Dimensional Passage Model of Time for Time Travel', Philosophical
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Sider, T. 2002, 'Time Travel, Coincidences and Counterfactuals', Philosophical Studies 110,
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Vihvelin, K. 1996, 'What Time Travelers Cannot Do', Philosophical Studies 81, pp. 315-330.

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