AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Doomsday is the last moment in time. Nothing comes after. In the recent literature on temporal metaphysics, several theories have been challenged by arguments invoking doomsday. In this talk I focus on the papers of Loss (2019), Andreoletti (2022), and Bigg and Miller (2024). A shared premise in these arguments is that it would be a problem or drawback for a theory of time, if it failed to allow for moments of undetermined doomsday. In this scenario, time ends, despite it not being determined to by the laws plus the state of the world. Each of these authors argues that this scenario is at least possible, so we should expect a good theory of time to make room for it. In this talk, I argue against this point. In general, if a theory of time is incompatible with undetermined doomsday, then that is merely an interesting but neutral consequence of that theory. More broadly, we can expect various theories of time to be incompatible with various doomsday scenarios, up to and including being incompatible with any doomsday at all. I argue that this is not a prima facie problematic stance to adopt.