Time Travel, Foreknowledge, and Constitutive Constraints

Abstract

Some time travelers would appear subject to invisible forces that limit their capacities in surprising ways. This article develops a new account of this phenomenon by connecting it to a long-standing issue in the philosophy of religion. More specifically, I consider a traditional worry for certain incompatibilists about freedom and foreknowledge, and I argue that a parallel problem arises for anyone who believes that time travelers are limited in ways that ordinary people are not. This analogy helps to clarify one of the central puzzles about time travel, while also pointing toward a novel solution.