[lit-ideas] Re: Theoretical question
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:04:07 -0800
Marlena asked:
If you could travel through time, where would you go, and how long would
you stay?
Room H3, King's College, Cambridge, the evening of October 25, 1946. I'd
stay for ten minutes, to settle for myself the question of whether
Wittgenstein threatened Popper with a poker, who said what, etc. I'd
take a camera loaded with high speed film, and invite Donal to come along.
Any additional thoughts on the question (such as reasons why, if you've
ever thought of this question before, etc) are welcome, too!
Travel through time seems easy in the books and films where it happens;
but if I'm asked where I'd like to go, and when, I must think of the
present 'me' in situations in which either there was as yet no 'me,' or
in situations in which there would be a former 'me' whose thoughts and
perceptions would have to be considered, and this raises problems.
I wouldn't like to be 'me' at age five, whatever that might mean,
because NOW I no longer (for the most part) perceive the world as I did
THEN, and to wish to return to that way of perceiving it is to wish away
the experiences of a lifetime in such a way that for 'me,' 'me-at-five'
is no longer me. If I were to wish to return to the world as 'me' (me
NOW) as it was in 1936, there would be… Who? My parents and grandparents
and no five-year-old 'me'? Or a five-year-old 'me' who was not me? No
wonder Leibniz thought that there were complete individual concepts
containing all that one was and would be, in infinite array.
Time travel as 'me-NOW' strikes me as ultimately incoherent, however
appealing it may seem at first.
Robert Paul
Department of Impossible Dreams
Mutton College
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