Defending Backwards Causation against the Objection from the Ignorance Condition

Since Michel Dummett published “Can an effect precede its cause?” (1954), in which he argued for the logical consistency of backwards causation, the controversial concept has turned to a subject of all kinds of interpretations and misinterpretations. Some like Ben-yami, Peijnenburg and Gorovitz have wrongly ascribed to Dummett the view that the argument for the consistency of believing in backwards causation applies only in cases where the agent doesn’t know about the occurrence of the past effect. In this paper I defend Dummett’s argument by clearing up the confusion caused by ascribing the ignorance condition to Dummett.