Retrocausality

Retrocausality (also called retro-causation, retro-chronal causation, and backward causation) is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause.

Retrocausality is primarily a thought experiment in philosophy of science based on elements of physics, addressing whether the future can affect the present and whether the present can affect the past. Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, although the two terms are not universally synonymous.

While some discussion of retrocausality is confined to fringe science or pseudoscience, a few physical theories with mainstream legitimacy have sometimes been interpreted as leading to retrocausality. This has been problematic in physics because the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level within the field of physics.

Philosophical efforts to understand causality extend back at least to Aristotle's discussions of the four causes. It was long considered that an effect preceding its cause is an inherent self-contradiction because, as 18th century philosopher David Hume discussed, when examining two related events, the cause, by definition, is the one that precedes the effect.

In the 1950s, Michael Dummett wrote in opposition to such definitions, stating that there was no philosophical objection to effects preceding their causes. This argument was rebutted by fellow philosopher Antony Flew and, later, by Max Black. Black's "bilking argument" held that retrocausality is impossible because the observer of an effect could act to prevent its future cause from ever occurring. A more complex discussion of how free will relates to the issues Black raised is summarized by Newcomb's paradox. Essentialist philosophers have proposed other theories, such as proposing the existence of "genuine causal powers in nature" or by raising concerns about the role of induction in theories of causality.

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