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.