Does artistic value pose a special problem for time travel theories?

Abstract

Michael Dummett and Storrs McCall have claimed that time travel scenarios in which an artist copies an artwork from a reproduction of it that has been sent from the future introduce a causal loop of a new kind: one involving artistic value. They have suggested that this poses a hitherto unacknowledged challenge to time travel theories. I argue that their conclusion depends on some unstated essentialist assumptions about metaphysics of art and the status of representations. By relaxing these assumptions, I show that Dummett and McCall’s scenarios contain no causal loop involving artistic value, and thus pose no new problem for time travel theories.