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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In this paper I wish to examine the claim that it would be possible for us now to do something which would be the posterior efficient cause of some past event. I am not prepared to discuss the physics of elementary particles, and I will not consider what is sometimes called time reversal. Rather my analysis will be limited to cases in which it is alleged that we, in a world of middle-sized physical objects where most causes precede or are simultaneous with their effects, could conceivably do something so that something else should have happened. I will argue that some of the cases which meet this description are indeed backwards causation if one is prepared to make certain (not uncommon) assumptions about time. I will not evaluate these assumptions; rather I will try to clarify them and to make plain their implications for causality. For the argument about backwards causation is most fundamentally, or so I will try to show, an argument about the nature of time.
1 That is, where all events are imagined to occur in reverse order, thereby making all causes subsequent to their effects.
2 See Dummett, M. and Flew, A. ‘Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Soceity, Supp. Vol. 28 (1954);Google Scholar Black, M. Why Cannot an Effect Precede its Cause?’ Analysis 16 (1956);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Flew, A. ‘Effects Before Their Causes? Addenda and Corrigenda,’ Analysis 16 (1956);Google Scholar Ayer, A. The Problem of Knowledge (London: Penguin 1956), 192-8;Google Scholar Scriven, M. ‘Randomness and the Causal Order,’ Analysis 17 (1957);Google Scholar Pears, D.F. ‘The Priority of Causes,’ Analysis 17 (1957);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Flew, A. ‘Causal Disorder Again,’ Analysis 17 (1957);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Chisholm, R. and Taylor, R. ‘Making things to Have Happened,’ Analysis 20 (1960);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dummett, M. 'Bringing About the Past,’ Philosophical Review 73 (1964);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gorovitz, S. ‘Leaving the Past Alone,’ Philosophical Review 73 (1964);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gale, R. Why a Cause Cannot Be Later Than Its Effect,’ Review of Metaphysics 19 (1965);Google Scholar Mackie, J. ‘The Direction of Causation,’ Philosophical Review 75 (1966);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gale, R. The Language of Time (London: Macmillan 1968);Google Scholar Brier, B. ‘Magicians, Alarm Clocks, and Backward Causation,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1973);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Flew, A. ‘Magicians, Alarm Clocks, and Backward Causation: A Comment,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1973);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fitzgerald, P. ‘Retrocausality,’ Philosophia 4 (1974);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Waterlow, S. 'Backwards Causation and Continuing,’ Mind 83 (1974);Google Scholar Mackie, J. The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: 1974), 160-92;Google Scholar Dwyer, L. ‘Time Travel and Changing the Past,’ Philosophical Studies 27 (1975);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dwyer, L. ‘How to Affect, But Not Change, the Past,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 15 (1977);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dwyer, L. ‘Time Travel and Some Alleged Logical Asymmetries between Past and Future,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Chisholm and Taylor, 74-5; italics mine. Chisholm and Taylor's example may be faulty. They admit that the poison is only sufficient ‘together with such other circumstances as exist’ for the death. But unless Smith's death is overdetermined, taking poison is also necessary ‘together with such circumstances as exist’ for his death at T3. Hence C1 is necessary as well as sufficient for E. But the point proves irrelevant. For all Chisholm and Taylor really need is that Smith's death is not sufficient (even in the circumstances) for Jones's election, a claim which seems plausible, given that one can limit the circumstances in question to those relevant to Smith's death.
4 Chisholm and Taylor 75
5 Chisholm and Taylor, 76
6 Ibid.
7 Taylor, Richard ‘Fatalism,’ Philosophical Review 71 (1962) 58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar italics mine.
8 See Dummett, ‘Bringing About the Past,’ 341-2; Scriven, 8; and Dwyer, ‘How to Affect, But Not Change, the Past.'
9 See Gale, The Language of Time, 29.Google Scholar The reality of time's passage also explains why, according to this view, past, present, and future would not be reducible to earlier than and later than, as some philosophers have maintained. For to say that x is earlier than y is not to say whether x is past, present, or future.
10 Gale, 117
11 See Pears, D.F. ‘Time, Truth, and Inference,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 51 (1950-51) 14.Google Scholar
12 Dummett rejects this analysis in ‘Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?', 36-7, but his account of causality vitiates his claim. See section IV, below.
13 Dwyer, ‘Time Travel and Some Alleged Logical Asymmetries between Past and Future,’ 23
14 See Dwyer, Time Travel and Changing the Past,’ 345.
15 Dwyer, ‘Time Travel and Some Alleged Logical Asymmetries between Past and Future,’ 33, 32
16 Dwyer, ibid., 23
17 I owe this point to James Spellman.
18 Eddington, A.S. Space, Time, and Gravitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1921), 51Google Scholar
19 See McCall, Storrs ‘Temporal Flux,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966) 270.Google Scholar McCall rejects this view of time.
20 On several occasions in discussions among philosophers I have heard it proposed that the B-theory is fatalistic or that it undermines real causal relations. It is difficult, however, to find a clear example of this view in the literature. In Dummelt's case, even though he does weaken causal relations, alleged B-theory fatalism would not seem to be his motive for doing so. The main reason for not attributing to Dummett the belief the B-theory entails fatalism is that in his 1964 paper ‘Bringing About the Past’ Dummett argues for the compatibility of causality and fatalism. There Dummett asserts that on any sense of ‘if’ which Justifies the inference from q to p ᑐ q, p ᑐ q is compatible with both ~ p ᑐ q and ~ p ᑐ ~ q. But, Dummett claims, while the pair p ᑐ q and ~ p ᑐ q describes fatalism, p ᑐ q and ~ p ᑐ ~ q describes causal effectiveness; therefore fatalism and causal effectiveness are compatible. Any fatalist, of course, would reject Dummett's description of his view. Therefore Dummett's willingness in his 1964 paper to use the if-then relation given by material implication to formalize fatalism suggests that he is not attracted to it. With regard to causality, in 1964 Dummett offers no verbal analysis of causal realations. Nevertheless his use of material implication shows that in 1964 as in 1952 Dummett takes causal relations to be regularities. Given these facts one can reasonably conjecture that even in 1952 Dummett's motive for understanding causal relations as he did was something other than a certain picture of time. See ‘Bringing About the Past,’ 346-8. As for the thought that knowledge of the future (which Dummett allows) requires that future states of affairs somehow exist already, see section V and also my ‘Forthcoming Sea Fights: What Theory of Time?,’ New Scholasticism 54 (1980). It should also be pointed that Dummett's 1964 proposal according to which one might reject knowledge claims about the past if one intends to bring about a past state of affairs is less than radical when causal relations are analyzed as regularities.
21 Dummett, ‘Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?',43
22 Ibid.
23 Dummett, ibid., 42
24 Dummett, ibid., 44
25 Chisholm and Taylor, ‘Making Things to Have Happened,’ 78. Chisholm and Taylor's actual reply is: ‘This thought [namely, that things future… are sometimes up to us, in the sense that it is up to us whether they happen or not] seems to embody something that is true. But if it does, then it would seem that the expression “it is up to us” conveys some idea that cannot be analyzed in terms of conditions necessary or sufficient for each other. It is exceedingly difficult to see what that idea might be.'
26 Mackie, ‘The Direction of Causation,’ 455
27 Chisholm and Taylor, ‘Making Things to Have Happened,’ 76
28 In addition to the works by Flew, Pears, and Gale which are listed in note 2, see D.F. Pears, ‘Time, Truth, and Inference,’ 1-24.
29 I am not convinced by Mackie's ingenious attempt to avoid bilking and thus preserve backwards causation (but not bringing about the past) even given that time passes. Mackie's idea is as follows: if a subsequent cause were itself already caused before the occurrence of its supposed prior effect, then one could not, as the bilking experiment requires, let the effect occur and then prevent the cause since some event sufficient for the cause would already have occurred. A diagram will make the point clearer. Where the arrows indicate causality, 
But the artificiality of Mackie's approach makes the claim of subsequent causation dubious. Z cannot be prevented once Y has occurred because X, which precedes Y, is sufficient for Z. Nss one can ask ‘what if Z failed to occur?”, and one can arrange control cases where Y might occur in the absence of X and hence in the absence of its alleged cause, Z. (For Z, which is supposed to be sufficient for Y, cannot be thought also to be necessary for Y lest Y be sufficient for Z, that is, the cause of Z, rather than conversely.) And in any case, as I have argued, the temporal necessity of past events makes them independent of the occurrence or nonoccurrence of any subsequent event. For Mackie's account, see The Cement of the Universe, 180.
30 Flew, ‘Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?', 48Google Scholar