Thien Van Tran

Peter Lewis
PHI 349
April 30, 2013
Time Travel and Coincidences
The many coincidences required to make time travel consistent do indeed make it
strange, but not impossible. The present paper argues that the necessity of certain coincidences to
prevent the introduction of paradoxes is required, but does not rule out the possibility of time
travel nor does it limit the freedom of those who attempt to generate such contradictions.
Suppose that time travel is possible and that a man, Tim, is able to construct a time
machine that allows him to go backwards in time. There would be nothing to stop him from
going back to when his grandfather was alive. If he so wishes, he can then shoot and kill his
grandfather. However, this would mean that Tim is able to change the past so that he was never
born and thus could not have built his time machine in the first place. If he succeeded, this would
bring about a self-defeating loop so it must be impossible. It seems then that he, at the same time,
can kill and cannot kill his grandfather. This is the famous Grandfather Paradox, first introduced
by Rene Barjavel in 1943 in his book Le Voyageur Imprudent. It is classically used to argue that
backwards time travel is impossible, since it would allow for contradictions to arise.
Before I begin to explain how the contradiction may be resolved, I will presuppose the
fact that the past cannot be changed, since it is upon this principle that the argument stands.
However, the very idea of going back to an earlier point in time implies that this point in time
exists. Since the following arguments do not depend on what view of time we have, let us
assume that time is exactly how a block theorist believes, and that all events coexist timelessly.

Change is a qualitative difference between separate temporal parts, and therefore anything
undergoing change must have temporal parts. Events are instantaneous, and therefore do not
possess temporal parts and thus cannot change. This is the same for a series of instantaneous
events (Lewis, The Paradoxes of Time Travel 149). But what about the future? Surely one can
argue that events can be changed since the future is able to be shaped by present choices. This is
a misconception; one may be able to cause events in the future to happen, or to bring out certain
events, but what happens was always going to happen (Horwich 436). There is no genuine
change in events. So it appears that Tim is able to kill grandfather, but unable to change the past.
This is most certainly a contradiction. David Lewis argued that the use of the word can is
equivocal, so that there is no contradiction at all. The word can simply means that an event is
consistent with certain facts. Tim can kill his grandfather in the sense that his ability to do so is
consistent with his preparation, his gun, his resolve, etc. However, it is not consistent with him
being a time traveler. Relative to these facts, Tim cannot kill his grandfather (Lewis, The
Paradoxes of Time Travel 149).
So if Tim had the means and intent to kill his grandfather and change the past, what stops
him? It could be a number of things. Perhaps he slips on a banana peel, his gun malfunctions, or
an unsuspecting bird flies into the path of the bullet, or any other event, however unlikely. In any
event, his success was not meant to be. But suppose he is really determined to complete his
mission, and travels back in time repeatedly to try and murder his grandfather, only to be foiled
each and every time by some unlikely coincidence. There is something unsettling and odd about
such coincidences that are guaranteed to happen every time.
The large number of coincidences required may seem highly improbable, but the nature
of these happenstances is conditional on the fact that the time traveler has the intent of changing

the past. There may be others who travel to the past who merely wish to be observers or those
who do not attempt to bring about any paradoxes. These people would avoid the need for all of
these banana slips and bizarre mishaps, so their instances of time travel are entirely possible in
this respect. Now that we have isolated the fact that these strange coincidences are indeed the
obstacle for specific instances of time travel, I will show how these unlikely events are not as
surprising as they may seem.
Theodore Sider employs counterfactual conditionals in his Time Travel, Coincidences
and Counterfactuals (2002) to circumvent the problematic nature of coincidences.
Counterfactuals can be separated into would-be and might-be statements. Examples of wouldcounterfactuals and might-counterfactuals would be the following statements, respectively:
1) If Obama had no won the 2012 election, then Gary Johnson would have
2) If Obama had not won the 2012 election, then Gary Johnson might have
We know that the antecedents of the statements are false, but we are not able say that the first
statement is true, since it is almost certain that Romney would have won. However, statements
such as (2) are mostly true. This is because would-counterfactuals are almost never true, while
might-counterfactuals are generally true (Lewis, Counterfactuals and Comparative Possibility
419). Consider the action of throwing a rock at a window. One cannot simply say: If I were to
try to throw a rock at the window, then I would slip on a banana peel or miss or... This wouldcounterfactual is false, since such a simple task is suddenly rendered impossible. The following
counterfactual appears much more acceptable: If I were to throw a rock at the window, then I
might slip on a banana peel, or miss or However, if I build the failure into the antecedent,
then the would-counterfactual becomes true. If I was to try to throw a rock at the window and
the window did not break, then I would slip on a banana peel or We can say the same thing
3

about Tim. If Tim were to travel back in time and try to shoot his grandfather, then he would
have missed, or slipped on a banana peel. These coincidences happen, but only in the right
circumstances (Sider 8). We pick these circumstances to include the failure in the antecedent and
the unusual event in the consequent.
However, one may not be completely convinced that the fatalistic objection is completely
cleared. If we describe the attempt in another fashion, it may appear more unlikely. For example,
rather than saying that Tim tried and failed to kill Grandfather due to a banana peels fortuitous
placement, we could say Tim had the gun pointed and Grandfather and pulled the trigger. The
latter will appear much more problematic with the introduction of a banana peel in any context,
since the description of the events is much simpler. Why cant Tim just pull the trigger? The
solution lies in what Horwich calls the Principle of V-correlation (PVC). Two events can
seemingly be unrelated or coincidental until a third event occurs. For example, the two events of
(1) X being Tims younger self and (2) the dropping of a banana peel in the same time frame
may seem coincidental, until Tim decides to go back in time and kill X (Smith 369). Therefore
the existence of Tim and the dropping of the banana peel (or any other coincidence) are directly
related. It is a result of these coincidences that Tims birth was able to take place, and therefore
his ability to intend to kill X in the first place depends on the dropping of the banana peel. Any
event that prevents Tim from completing the simple task of pulling a trigger is not a coincidence,
but rather a simple fact. If we were to simply look at how Tim came to be born, it would seem to
require a long string of extraordinary coincidences, since countless decisions were made to result
in his conception and birth. But these coincidences are not required, merely de facto. They just
happened to occur and because of that Tim was able to be born and decide to kill himself in the
first place (Smith 376).

But suppose that everyone could time travel, and suddenly banana peels were popping up
all over the place. Wouldnt this apparent association of banana peels and other coincidences and
attempted grandfather-murders be problematic? Not really. Smith references an old road in
Sydney that has changed. Back in the day when there were few cars on this road, one could roll a
dozen tomatoes across the street and it would be a coincidence if one got squashed on the way
over. Nowadays with much heavier traffic, it would not be odd if all tomatoes were squashed
when one attempted to roll them across the street. Squashings of tomatoes are therefore no longer
coincidental because they are no longer improbable. An old man who used to roll tomatoes back
when a squashing was improbable could argue that increasing the number of cars on the road
would entail long strings of coincidences (many squashings). Long strings of coincidences are
improbable, and therefore an increase in the number of cars is improbable and therefore
problematic. This argument is not very strong, because it relies on ones contextual experience.
We observe that banana peel incidents are rare, and conclude that they must be improbable.
However, we cannot say that such incidents will never occur frequently in any place (Smith
370). So if many people were to begin traveling back in time with the intention of killing their
grandfathers, the presence of many banana peels cannot be deemed improbable.
Barry Dainton offers an interesting thought experiment. Suppose you are a block theorist,
and although you believe that changing the past is impossible, you decide to see what would
happen if you tried. You also possess a time machine, so you travel many years back in time to
cut down a tree that ended up growing in your backyard. You know that you will fail, since the
tree is still there in your present time. Once in the past, you start your chainsaw, and make your
way towards the tree. It seems absurd that the laws of logic will be sufficient to prevent you from
proceeding to cut down the tree. There must be a physical obstacle of some sort (Dainton 129).

So there must be some coincidental instance that prevents this. Although it may be purely
coincidental, it is required to happen. As Paul Nahin argues in Time Machines: Time Travel in
Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction argues, you must fail because you did fail.
Dainton states that, in a universe that allows for troublesome time travelers who wish to
bring about contradictions, coincidences are necessarily incorporated into the laws that govern
this universe. Therefore not only are these unfortunate series of events unsurprising, they are
required for a logically consistent universe. A universe that conforms to these logical laws will
have problematic coincidences to deal with problematic time travelers (Dainton 130).
Nonetheless, there is still some unease in regards to the freedom of individuals who seek
to change the past. Let us revisit the case of Tim who travels back in time with the desire to kill
his grandfather. Let us suppose that he is able to locate his grandfather and has his gun pointed
directly at his head. All he needs to do is pull the trigger, but he still fails at this seemingly
simple task. There must be some extraordinary constraints acting upon Tim so as to limit his
freedom.
It is important to realize that the fact that one does not do something does not mean that
one was not free to do it (Horwich 435). If we choose to define our selection to be instances in
which the highly improbable grandfather paradox could occur, then the constraints required for
this the paradox to occur would entail coincidental failures that were just as improbable.
Sider uses an analogy unrelated to time travel in order to illustrate this attentive
selection. Suppose that we define a permanent bachelor as a person who never gets married. If
we look at all the permanent bachelors in all possible worlds, we will find that they contain many
reasons for not getting married. Perhaps they never had any desire, or they could not find a mate,
or they slipped on a banana peel and tragically fell to their death on the way down the aisle. All

of them had the chance to get married, it just so happens that they didnt. This doesnt mean that
there are mysterious shackles at work. If indeed they happened to succeed in getting married,
they would no longer been considered as part of our selective attention. Our focus is only on
this disproportionate group that seems to contain a large amount of coincidental failures, but
these failures are merely that: coincidental. In this group of permanent bachelors, there are two
distinct possibilities. First, the permanent bachelor may belong to this group because he never
made an attempt to become married, because he simply has no desire. His freedom is not
hindered in any way. Now consider the group of permanent bachelors who have tried to get
married, but failed. A counterfactual may be stated as If this person had been a permanent
bachelor and tried to get married, he would have slipped on a banana peel, etc. These
coincidental failures may involve exceptionally bad luck, but no limit of freedom (Sider 11).
We can now apply this selective attention to the implausible coincidences in time travel.
In order to delineate our specific group, we must place several filters. First, out of all possible
worlds in which time travelers exist, we are interested in those that contain time travelers who
wish to commit murder. Second, these individuals must be seeking to kill their grandfathers. The
selection criteria for this group are prerequisites for these people to fail. This does not mean that
freedom is limited for these individuals. We have simply selected a group that presupposes the
inclusion of these failures, which may still to be genuine coincidences (Sider 13). In terms of
Lewiss arguments, the success of these attempted murders is not consistent with the constraints
we have put upon the group. He believed that the facts as to what someone can and cannot do are
context dependent. Depending on which facts one holds constant when assessing the
possibilities, what can be done and cannot be done may vary (Arntzenius 612). Our chosen
context has determined these coincidences.

Thus, we have established that the many coincidences required to maintain a consistent
theory of time travel do not provide sufficient reason to believe that time travel is any more
unlikely than we would have already. These improbable coincidences are built into the universal
laws, so as to prevent self-defeating loops and paradoxes from occurring. These are required,
since we have included the failure into the antecedent of any counterfactuals we wish to say
regarding failure of these attempted contradictions. Furthermore, repeated results of failure to
change the past do not indicate any covert shackles on personal freedom, since our selective
attention has delineated the class time-traveling grandpa-killers to contain this failure.

Bibliography
Arntzenius, Frank. "Time Travel: Double Your Fun." Philosophy Compass (2006): 599-616.
Barjavel, Rene. Le Voyageur Imprudent. French and European Publications, 1943. Book.
Dainton, Barry. Time and Space. Montreal: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2010. Print.
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. "The Paradoxes of Time Travel." American Philosophical Quarterly (1976): 145-152.
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