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.