Thomson's lamp toggles each time you press the button and nothing else affects its state. The lamp is on at noon, and then a supertask consisting of infinitely many button presses that completes by 1 pm, and the question is whether the light is on or off at 1 pm. There is no contradiction yet. But now add these two claims:
- The state of the lamp at 1 pm would not be affected by shifting the times at which the button presses happen, if (a) all the button presses happen between noon and 1 pm, and (b) we ensure that no two button presses happen simultaneously.
- If we removed one button press from the sequence of button presses between noon and 1 pm, the state of the lamp at 1 pm would not change.
So if we think Thomson's lamp is possible--which I do not--we need to deny at least one of the two counterfactuals. I think the best move would be simply to deny both (1) and (2), on the grounds that the connection between the state of the lamp at 1 pm and the button presses must be indeterministic.
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