Common Contracts
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Peter B. M. Vranas vranas@iastate.edu Iowa State University 21 November 2004Academic Paper • November 22nd, 2004
Abstract. There is widespread agreement, even among those who accept the possibility of back- ward causation, that it is impossible to change the past. I argue that this agreement corresponds to a relatively uninteresting understanding of what changing the past amounts to. In one sense it is in- deed impossible to change the past: in no possible world is an action performed which makes the past in that world different from the past in that world. In another sense, however, it may be possi- ble to change the past: maybe in some possible world an action is performed which makes the past in that world different from the actual past. I argue that those who accept the possibility of back- ward causation are committed to accepting the possibility that the past changes in the latter sense.
