Going Back to the Future with David Lewis

David Lewis in his essay The Paradox of Time Travel exclaims that ‘time travel is possible” (492). Before talking about the 1984 film Back to the Future featuring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and a cast of other great actors and actresses, I want to discuss Lewis’s thoughts on time travel and his philosophy that time travel is not an impossible notion. Lewis claims that if, “he can defend the consistency of some science fiction stories of time travel, then he supposes parallel defenses might be given of some controversial physical hypothesis” (492). In other words, Lewis knows that by defending the idea of time travel being possible he is also allowing other hypotheses to be possible, but Lewis exclaims that time travel should not be held as a scientific myth. The explanation of what time travel is precisely is a discrepancy between time and time. He explains this idea further that the “time travelers” world is much like ours, but is a four-dimensional manifold of events, meaning that time is one dimension of the four and there are differences between various time-like dimensions and various space-like dimensions (493).

Hopefully I have no confused you all too much… So where does this leave Back to the Future?

First, a quick description of Back the Future. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a normal 1980s teenager (what does that mean you ask? Faded jeans, skateboards, and ugly colored vests), who is sent back to 1955 by the crazy Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in a plutonium fueled DeLorean. Not only is he sent back thirty years, but when he is there he has to ensure his parents hit it off so the future Marty as well as his brother and sister can exist in the future. Not to mention while he is there he also creates the future “sound” at the school dance by playing “Jonny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.

Basically Marty needs to ensure that his actions in the past do not erase the reality of himself in the future. As Lewis describes, “a time traveler, like anyone else, is a streak through the manifold of space-time, a whole composed of stages located at various times and places” (493). As Marty travels back in the past his streak is a zig-zag doubling back on himself, actually so far back on himself that it is before he was born. Lewis explains, “you cannot change a present of future event from what it was originally to what it is after you change it. What you can do it change the present of future from the unactualized way they would have been without some action of yours to the way the actually are” (497). This quote ties in directly with Back to the Future because it explains the desire to want to go back and change something in your past to more readily set up your future. Although Marty does not intentionally go back to the future to change something, he has to make sure his parents do in fact end up together so that his life and his brother and sisters lives can be saved.

Now it is time for some personal reflection… Do you think that time exists in this four dimensional sense? If time travel did/does exist and you could travel back to a point in your past would you? Would it be ethical?? My first response is YES I want to go back but then I realize that all the reasons I would want to return are purely motivated by greed or some other poor emotion. Do you think the past is what makes us who we are today? If we could change that past then would we be risking changing who we are for the worst? What do you think other philosophers would say to potential ability to change our pasts?

If you have not yet seen this movie… I highly suggest it and I am hoping that most, if not all, of you have seen it. This was probably my millionth time watching this film. It comes on TV all the time if I am not mistaken. So watch it!