Time Travel Essay

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One of Grey’s objections to time travelling is the concept of no destination, which is based mostly on the belief of presentism and the rejection on the concept of past and future. His argument is that time travelling is only possible when the traveler travels to a past or future destination, and the destination has to exist. The past and the future don’t exist according to presentism, which is also called “Heraclitean” conception of time by Grey. No one can travel to somewhere that doesn’t exist. Therefore, time travel is not possible. He also made a second argument to strengthen his reason for travelling to the past. If travelling to the past were possible, the traveler could change the past. The past is fixed and unchangeable; therefore, travelling to the past is not possible. However, his arguments for time travel are based on the principles of presentism, leaving a lot of room for rejections and challenges for the premises, which means Time travel is possible.
In the second premises, he states that the past and future don’t exist. Presentism states that only the present exists and that the past and the future doesn’t exist, which supports Grey’s second premises. However saying that the past doesn’t exist is like rejecting the fact that Muhammad Ali is the greatest boxer or the fact that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player. In common sense would suggest that they do exist, but according to presentism, it states that they don’t exist. How can the past not exist when past-tense sentences like “Nixon was the president of the 20th century” or “Abraham Lincoln stopped slavery” exists?
In the third premises, Grey states that no one can travel to somewhere that doesn’t exist. If the no destination argument were a sound...

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...inning but later travels to the past from the future, the traveler has changed the past with his presence. Dowe explains this paradox by explaining that there are two different timelines, two different pasts. In the temporal timelines, if the time traveler had traveled to the past then that means he has always been in the past. In the movie 12 monkeys, the past with recording evidence from the psychologist and the death of John at the airport all existed when John traveled back. He didn’t change the past because the past is fixed, but he was just part of the past events.
Overall, Grey’s two arguments for no destination relied too much on the concept on presentism, which allowed space for rejections and solutions. The solutions and arguments against his paradox were all reasonable and sound proposals, which still allows the concept of time travelling to be possible.

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