What is ‘Grandfather paradox’ in philosophy?

  • This refers to a paradox used to emphasise the inconsistencies that arise in thought experiments that involve changing events of the past.
  • It states that a person who travels back in time to meet and kill his own grandfather would, through his act, manage only to eliminate the logical possibility of his own existence in the first place.
  • The grandfather paradox is used to emphasise that the present is inextricably linked to the past.
  • Philosophers have come up with various solutions to the paradox, including various ways in which the grandfather can be killed without affecting the causal chain that led to the time traveller’s birth.

Source:TH

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