The Worm View and the Personite Problem: towards a Collectivist Solution

根据蠕虫观点，只有那些作为人的阶段的最大集合体的时空蠕虫才是连续的人，从而是道德代理人。然而，非最大限度扩展的蠕虫，人格，呈现出所有看似必要的精神和身体素质，除了阶段最大化，被纳入道德演算。在一个连续的人的一生中，有可能在每一个足够长的时间间隔内使一个拟人个性化。由于人格的存在和消失都是突然而突然的，因此赋予人格一种道德地位，与任何不想落入伦理享乐主义范畴的伦理学都是不相容的。由于这些原因，承认他们作为道德代理人导致人格问题（PP）的WV。这一建议的重点是通过寻求一个集体主义的解决方案来解决这个问题的相互作用，以捍卫WV而不诉诸道德享乐主义。特别是，这个解决方案提出了查看连续的人作为我们的编队组成的许多personites，共同合作的满意度，什么事实上是集体的态度。此外，它的目的是概念化的调查跨时间繁荣在这种集体主义的时尚。这种对连续人的理解也有助于解释“我们”现象的最显著特征，这种现象涉及集体主体，在某些社会背景下，集体主体能够充当“我们”。关于个人同一性随时间变化的形而上学理论与伦理学直接相关。事实上，道德演算是基于我们所认为的人的持久性条件而形成的。因此，一个基本的问题隐藏在这种关系之下：我们应该如何面对一个特定的人的形而上学的不可否认的伦理含义？我们应该改变我们的道德观还是形而上学？这些形而上学的问题可以通过蠕虫视图（WV）作为一个范例的情况下解决。

According to the Worm View (WV), only those spacetime worms perduring as maximalaggregates of person-stages are continuant persons and thus moral agents. However, nonmaximally extended worms, personites, present all the seemingly necessary mental and physicalqualities, apart from stage-maximality, to be included into moral calculus. During a continuantperson's lifetime, it is possible to individuate a personite for every sufficiently extended timeinterval. Since they come into and go out of existence suddenly and abruptly, granting personitesa moral status turns out to be incompatible with any ethics that does not want to fall into thecategory of ethical hedonism. For these reasons, recognizing them as moral agents leads to thePersonite Problem (PP) for the WV. This proposal focuses on addressing this problematicinteraction by seeking a collectivist solution to the PP in order to defend the WV withoutresorting to ethical hedonism. In particular, this solution proposes to view continuant persons aswe-formations composed of many personites that jointly collaborate for the satisfaction of whatde facto turn out to be collective attitudes. Moreover, it aims at conceptualizing the investigationof cross-temporal flourishing in this collectivist fashion. This understanding of continuantpersons can also contribute to account for the most salient features of we-phenomena involvingcollective agents which in certain social contexts are able to act as a we.Metaphysical theories of personal identity over time are directly linked to ethics. Moral calculus,in fact, is shaped upon what we take to be the persistence conditions of persons. For thisreason, a fundamental question underlies this relationship: how should we face undesirableethical implications of a particular metaphysics of persons? Should we change our ethics or ourmetaphysics? These metaphilosophical questions can be tackled by taking the Worm View (WV)as a paradigmatic case.