Is It Possible For A Man to Both Father And Murder Himself?
Pragmatically speaking, one would find the statement regarding the possibility of a man both fathering and killing himself to be both absurd and fallacious. Nonetheless, Murray Macbeath writes about the bizarre tale of Dr. Who, a man who seemed to have achieved the impossible. A man who traveled in a time machine and somehow became his own Father and own murderer in the process. Although the idea is interesting to ponder, this loopy story has many incongruities, the most concrete incongruity being the feasibility of time travel. In order for this story to be coherent on logical and uncontradictory grounds, time travel must exist. ...view middle of the document...
In a world where time travel isn’t possible, the statement: an effect cannot precede its cause constitutes a necessary truth (Macbeath, 1982, p.412). In Macbeath’s story, his death occurs over thirty years before his birth which goes against the concept of what a necessary truth is, to be true in all possible worlds. Because time machines don’t exist, one cannot take a time machine into the past and as a result, it is a necessary truth that nobody born in 1985 can reach their 21st birthday in 1945. A good example that describes the impossibility of someone recreating their past is best illustrated in David Lewis’ excerpt Paradoxes of Time Travel. In the excerpt, there is a story involving a boy named Tim wanting to go back in time to kill his grandfather. If Tim went back in time to kill his grandfather before he met his grandmother, then Tim’s father would’ve never been born, which means no Tim (Lewis, 1976, pp.149-150).
In addition to going back in time, Arthur travels into the future where he meets his mother and essentially conceives himself. This bizarre occurrence is illogical because in order to travel into the future, according to Dr. Einstein, one must travel close to or faster than the speed of light (Law, 2003, p.37). Hypothetically, one must build a spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light which is highly impractical. For instance, take the principal known as Ockham’s razor. Ockham’s razor states that the simplest hypothesis is the best and most rational option to take (Law, 2003, pp.74-75). If one were to create two hypotheses regarding the possibility of traveling to the future it would read like this: There is a possibility of traveling to the future by building a spaceship that can move quicker than...