Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Multilocation Without Time Travel

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Erkenntnis Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Some philosophers defend the possibility of synchronic multilocation, and have even used it to defend other substantive metaphysical theses. But just how strong is the case for the possibility of synchronic multilocation? The answer to this question depends in part on whether synchronic multilocation is wedded to other controversial metaphysical notions. In this paper, I consider whether the possibility of synchronic multilocation depends on the possibility of time travel, and I conclude that the answer hinges on the nature of time and persistence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For a recent monograph on these paradoxes, see Wasserman (2018).

  2. Though I will be presupposing Hudson’s view, I do not think that much depends on this. Any theory of location which permits synchronic multilocation at least in principle would do.

  3. Emphasis in original. The qualifier ‘real’ is meant to distinguish time from Lewis’s (1976) notion of personal time, and to emphasize the unreality of the latter. On Wasserman’s view, personal time is an assignment of coordinates to events in (real) time that tracks identity-preserving causal relations.

  4. This is Wasserman’s term.

  5. For causal loops, it could be that some event A simultaneously causes another event B, which simultaneously causes A. For a variant of the Grandfather Paradox, suppose A simultaneously causes B, which simultaneously causes not-A [This second case is borrowed from Swinburne (1994, 82), who may have cases like the first implicitly in view as well, for he employs the second case in a general argument against causal loops, simultaneous causation, and backward causation].

  6. There is at least one argument against multilocation that is probably stronger if multilocation does not require time travel: the ‘Problem of Parsimony’ (Hudson 2005). See Mooney (2018a) n. 10.

  7. Thus, consider the clash between Hudson (2005, 2008a, b) and Parsons (2007, 2008). See also Donnelly (2010). Granted, the case for multilocation does not depend exclusively on the case for synchronic multilocation by concrete material objects, but the latter is clearly relevant. For example, a strong enough case for synchronic multilocation of concrete material objects would suffice to refute theories of location which rule out multilocation.

  8. Some of these applications appear in the context of arguments against endurantism or perdurantism. But below I will argue that whether synchronic multilocation requires time travel depends in part on whether endurantism or perdurantism is true. So arguments for one or the other of these accounts of persistence are not dialectically positioned to benefit from showing that synchronic multilocation can be freed from time travel.

  9. Since I am focused on concrete material objects, hypotheses on which God and immaterial souls are multilocated are not relevant. But multilocation of concrete material objects shows up in literature on the resurrection (Hudson 2010; Mooney 2018b) and the Eucharist (e.g. Pruss 2013).

  10. See also McDaniel (2007) and Saucedo (2011) for recombinatorial arguments supporting the possibility of multilocation.

  11. The arguments of the last two paragraphs were suggested by a referee.

  12. The reasoning in this paragraph owes a debt to Rasmussen’s (2014) modal continuity approach to the epistemology of modality.

  13. Though I will speak unqualifiedly of ‘diachronic identity’ and ‘diachoric identity’, my claims in this regard should be understood as tacitly restricted in scope to concrete material objects.

  14. The referee also notes that even A-theorists, who reject the thesis that time is closely analogous to space, tend to require that a backward time traveler who has just arrived from the future is identical to someone in the future only if they stand in immanent causal relations to that future person. But the journey backward in time is a diachronic one, where the immanent causal relations hold between the person at a later and earlier time. So although the backward time traveler is synchronically multilocated, it is not at all clear that the synchronic multilocation, rather than her journey through time, lies behind the demand for an immanent causal link.

  15. I here adopt the locational rather than the mereological characterization of endurantism (Gilmore 2014).

  16. Alternatively, you might continue to insist on the analogy, and conclude that synchronic multilocation is impossible. Thus Hudson (2005).

  17. As a referee points out, there are many ways to characterize endurantism, and what I have written here basically reflects Skow’s (2015, 184) characterization.

  18. Another worry some have about the primitive tense approach to the problem of temporary intrinsics—one which it is very natural to raise in this context—is that it doesn’t help with cases of synchronic multilocation, e.g., a backward time-traveler who is simultaneously sitting over here and standing over there (the case is from Sider 2001, 101ff). On this point, I think the A-theorist should simply concede that a different approach is required for diachoric cases than diachronic cases. Given that time and space are disanalogous on the A-theory, this isn’t terribly surprising. (Miller (2006) makes a similar point.) And if the primitive tense solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics failed for this reason, it’s not clear that this would undermine my point about diachronic multilocation given the A-theory. For that point depends on an appeal to primitive tense, but not on the A-theorist using primitive tense to solve the problem of temporary intrinsics.

  19. This point is inspired by similar comments made by Ned Markosian in a Seminar.

  20. Thanks to Sam Schechter and three referees for this journal for comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

  • Bennett, K. (2013). Having a part twice over. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 91(1), 83–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, J. W. (2011). A self-visitation, traveler time, and compatible properties. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41(3), 359–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dainton, B. (2008). The phenomenal self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Donnelly, M. (2010). Parthood and multi-location. In D. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 5, pp. 203–243). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donnelly, M. (2011). Using mereological principles to support metaphysics. The Philosophical Quarterly, 61(243), 225–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Effingham, N. (2010). Mereological explanation and time travel. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88, 333–345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Effingham, N. (2011). Temporal parts and time travel. Erkenntnis, 74, 225–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Effingham, N., & Robson, J. (2007). A mereological challenge to endurantism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85, 633–640.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fiocco, M. O. (2010). Temporary intrinsics and relativization. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91, 64–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilmore, C. (2007). Time travel, coincidence, and persistence. In D. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilmore, C. (2014). Location and mereology. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawley, K. (2001). How things persist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2001). A materialist metaphysics of the human person. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2005). The metaphysics of hyperspace. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2008a). Précis of the metaphysics of hyperspace. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(2), 422–426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2008b). Reply to Parsons, reply to Heller, and reply to Rea. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(2), 452–470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2010). Multiple and single location resurrection. In G. Gasser (Ed.), Personal identity and resurrection: How do we survive our death? (pp. 87–102). New York, NY: Ashgate Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, J., & O’Connor, T. (2003). Emergent individuals. The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(213), 540–555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, J., & O’Connor, T. (2010). Emergent individuals and the resurrection. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2, 69–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleinschmidt, S. (2011). Multilocation and mereology. Philosophical Perspectives, 25(1), 253–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. K. (1976). The paradoxes of time travel. American Philosophical Quarterly, 13(2), 145–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDaniel, K. (2004). Modal realism with overlap. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82, 137–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDaniel, K. (2007). Extended simples. Philosophical Studies, 133(1), 131–141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9010-y.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merricks, T. (1998). There are no criteria of identity over time. Nous, 32(1), 106–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, K. (2006). Travelling in time: How to exist in two places at the same time. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 36(3), 309–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mooney, J. (2018a). Multilocation and parsimony. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 7(3), 153–160.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mooney, J. (2018b). The possibility of resurrection by reassembly. International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 84(3), 273–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, E. T. (2010). Immanent causation and life after death. In G. Gasser (Ed.), Personal identity and resurrection (pp. 51–66). Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, J. (2007). Theories of location. In D. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 3, pp. 201–232). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, J. (2008). Review: Hudson on location. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(2), 427–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pruss, A. R. (2013). Omnipresence, multilocation, the real presence, and time travel. Journal of Analytic Theology, 1, 60–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, J. (2014). Continuity as a guide to possibility. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92(3), 525–538.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saucedo, R. (2011). Parthood and location. In K. Bennett & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 6, pp. 125–284). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sider, T. (2000). Simply possible. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60, 585–590. https://doi.org/10.2307/2653816.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sider, T. (2001). Four-dimensionalism: An ontology of persistence and time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Simon, J. (2019). Fragmenting the wave function. In K. Bennett & D. W. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 11, pp. 123–147). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skow, B. (2015). Objective becoming. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. (2009). Mereology without weak supplementation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87(3), 505–511.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swinburne, R. (1994). The Christian god. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tillman, C. (2011). Musical materialism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 51, 13–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wasserman, R. (2018). Paradoxes of time travel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman, D. (1997). Immanent causation. Philosophical Perspectives, 11, 433–471.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 150 Hicks Way, E305 South College, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Justin Mooney

Authors
  1. Justin Mooney
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Justin Mooney.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mooney, J. Multilocation Without Time Travel. Erkenn 86, 1431–1444 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00162-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00162-x

Search

Navigation