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How to Make Things Have Happened

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Graham Nerlich
Graham Nerlich*
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

Might something I do now make something have happened earlier? This paper is about an argument which concludes that I might. Some arguments ([3], [27]) about “backward causation” conclude that the world could have been the kind of place in which actions make things have happened earlier. The present argument says that it is that kind of place: that we actually are continually doing things that really make earlier things have happened. The argument is not new (see e.g. [31]). It sees temporal direction as logically independent of any direction which necessary and sufficient conditions may have and it sees causal direction as properly deriving from the latter. Thus the directions of time and of making things happen need not coincide and, as it turns out, do not actually coincide in fact. There are examples of events which are sufficient, in a suitably rich sense, for the occurrence of earlier events; hence they make the earlier events happen. My purpose in this paper is to lend support to the argument by filling in some details which ‘backward sufficient conditions’ may lay claim to.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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