[SydPhil] Time Travel and Torturing Nikk Effingham: Thursday @ 3.00

[Kristie Miller]

Dear all,

Our Anderson Fellow, Nikk Effingham, will be giving a paper at this week’s current projects’ seminar on Thursday at 3.00 in the Muniment Room. We hope to see you all there. 

Title: Time Travel and Torturing Nikk Effingham
Abstract: As I’m about to present this paper, a time travelling DeLorean from the future appears and I stumble out of it. Delirious, and suffering from radiation poisoning, I tell you that you are all doomed as nuclear war will break out next week. I then die at the feet of my earlier self. We are all distraught. We are staunch adherents of David Lewis when it comes to time travel – we are Ludovicians. Ludovicians believe that time cannot be changed in the sense that you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather nor, as is the case here, can you escape a nuclear war by using a time machine and then try and stop the war. What will be, will be.  But behind my back a Professor whispers a plan: you’ll kidnap me and hide me away; you’ll torture me until I’m mad; you’ll make me think a nuclear war has taken place when actually it’s all sunshine and joy in the outside world; you’ll poison me with polonium; finally, you’ll bundle me into a time travelling DeLorean to go back and tell everyone what I, erroneously, think will happen. Is it rational to do this? I argue that, in fact, it is.




Associate Professor Kristie Miller
Senior ARC Research Fellow
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room 407, A 14

kmiller at usyd.edu.au
kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Ph: +612 9036 9663
http://www.kristiemiller.net/KristieMiller2/Home_Page.html















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