Consider this sequence of events:
2000: Alice marries Bob.
2010: Bob dies.
2020: Alice marries Carl.
2030: Alice and Carl invent time machine and travel to 2005 where they meet Bob.
Then, in 2005, Alice is married to Bob and Alice is married to Carl. But she is not a bigamist.
Hence, marriage is not defined by external times like 2005, but by internal times, like “the 55th year of Alice’s life”. To be a bigamist, one needs to be married to two different people at the same internal time. A marriage taken on at one internal time continues forward in the internal future.
And while we’re at it, the twin paradox shows that it is possible for two people to be married to each other and for one to have been married 10 years and the other to have been married 30 years. Again, it’s the internal time that matters for us.
20 comments:
Alex
Are we talking about the 2005 Alice or the 2030 Alice who visits 2005? Because it seems to me that the 2005 Alice is married to Bob and the 2030 Alice is married to Carl.
So external or internal time doesn't seem to matter, because the 2005 Alice is married to Bob in 2005, which is the 30th year of her life and the 2030 Alice is married to Carl in 2030, which is the 55th year of her life.
Alice would not have married Bob.
It's even stronger: Alice and Bob would never have met.
Gertrude marries Harry in 2000. The day after their wedding, she is abducted by aliens and put into a deep sleep so that she ages very slowly. (Subjective time passes for Gertrude and she has a few dreams, which she never remembers.) In 2010, Harry dies. In 2011, the aliens put Gertrude into a time machine, sending her back to the day they abducted her in 2000. She wakes up, not realizing any of this has happened. Harry doesn’t know either. Gertrude and Harry live happily together until 2007, at which point their relationship begins to sour. The aliens then inform Gertrude of everything that has happened. She concludes that, since Harry has died according to her subjective time, she is free to leave him and marry another, which she does right away.
And I guess Harry dies of heartbreak or something.
Gertrude and Harry would never have never met.
They are not Fermions.
Dr Pruss
Indeed, time travel thought experiments are interesting but complex theoretically. For one thing, one requires a model of time; time travel thought experiments can lead one to this.
However, consider this; if time travel is possible in the manner you picture it, then it is possible for a person to go back into time and prevent Christ's crucifixion, right?
However, the manner in which the Bible defines time it would be impossible to prevent the crucifixion of Christ even granting the possibility of time travel (this is one way of building a cohesive model of time), then one has three considerations:
1/ Time travel is impossible.
2/ Coincidences occur all the time.
3/ The past loses information.
Is it possible that you are using philosophy as an idol?
The trajectory of your blog post suggests that the Bride of Christ can be two; a form of universalism in which two Brides of Christ exist, i.e. Believers & Non-believers.
The epistle of Jude considers such an arrangement (and it's not good).
Interestingly... there is one thing (and one thing only) that would have prevented the crucifixion of Christ; the answer to this demonstrates Free-Will and at the same time the impossibility of the crucifixion being avoided.
Dr Pruss
Here's at thought experiment for you:
Consider this sequence of events:
•2000: Alice marries Bob and Carl marries Donna at a joint wedding ceremony on the beach of the Dead Sea. Both couples decide to live next to each other in beach houses next to the Dead Sea.
•2010: Alice and Bob move to Denver, USA while Carl and Donna remain in a beach house next to the Dead Sea.
•2020: Which couple has been married the longest?
The twin paradox's real insight (as can be seen here) is that reality is composed of local reality and global reality and that the observer is part of the phenomenon being observed.
Alice & Bob observe their local-reality and Carl & Donna observe their local-reality...the question is: Who observes the global reality?
If Alice met Alice as well as Bob, in 2005, it would then be clear that Alice was not the same person as Alice!
Dr. Pruss, what do you think about the compatibility of perdurantism and your theory of marriage?
If promises are made by the temporal parts, then that's a problem for everyone, since a promise is only binding on the one who made it.
Dr Pruss
Interestingly, God in Genesis 15:6-21 made a unilateral covenant(promise) to Abraham, i.e. no performance was required from Abraham.
This promise is binding on God only.
What is interesting is that God has thrown down the gauntlet at Secularism in Jeremiah 31:37.
Or how about this: marrying again after your first spouse dies is compatible with monagamy only BECAUSE time travel of this sort is not feasible. Otherwise, Alice cannot conclude after Bob dies that her earthly relationship with Bob is completely over, because there is the possibility of continuing to interact in a marital way with Bob in (her own personal internal time's) future. Thus, if time travel like this were feasible, the Church's rule that Alice can remarry Carl would be morally incorrect. But it can still be correct in the real world where time travel is not feasible.
That's possible, too.
2000: Alice marries Bob.
2010: Bob dies.
2020: Alice marries Carl.
If the worm theory is correct, then some of Alice's temporal parts are married to Bob, and some are married to Carl. If Alice is a four-dimensional worm, then she (as a worm) is married both to Bob and Carl, which contradicts to the idea of monogamy. It means that it is wrong for Alice to marry the second time in this case.
So, we have an incompatible set of propositions:
(1) worm theory is true
(2) one can have only one spouse at one time
(3) one can have different spouses at different times
To make it compatible, we should deny one of those propositions. I am not sure that (2) and (3) are incompatible with perdurantism in general, but it seems that they are incompatible with the worm view.
Worm theory makes the addition of 'at a time' useless because Alice is married or not married simpliciter since she is a four-dimensional worm. So, I think that if one believes that it is not immoral to marry twice (for some good reason), then he/she should presuppose endurantism.
If Alice is a 4D-worm, then she is married to Bob and Carl, but at different times. Being married, like being tall or short or in the pink of health, are temporally indexed properties.
This was a great post which helps me sharpen up a thought I shared on my own blog years ago (https://thirdmillennialtemplar.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/marriage-and-time-travel/). I may want to revisit that thought in light of what you have said here.
Thank you.
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