55 - Alison Fernandes: Time Travel and Causation

Alison Fernandes is a professor of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Prior to that, she did her graduate work at Columbia University, where she studied with two other denizens of the Robinson’s Podcast universe, David Albert and Achille Varzi. Alison is the author of the upcoming book with Cambridge University Press, The Temporal Asymmetry of Causation, some of the contents of which are the subject of this episode. After rehashing the dominant theories of causation, Alison and Robinson discussion backward causation and time travel, the temporal asymmetry of causation, and Alison’s agency theory of causation. You can keep up with her at alisonfernandes.net.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

00:46 Introduction

4:05 Alison’s Interest in Causation

5:36 Hume’s Theory of Causation

8:11 Dominant Accounts of Causation

14:33 Backward Causation and Time Travel

28:42 Causal and Temporal Asymmetry

42:22 Alison’s Account of Causation

53:24 A Return to Time Travel

56:55 Achille Varzi on Time Travel

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.