Intrinsic survival, multiple survival, and vague survival

时至今日，人们仍因在第二次世界大战中犯下的罪行而受到起诉。一个人可能已经过了六十年的无可非议的生活；他们现在的人格可能完全没有恶意；他们可能几乎不记得自己犯下的罪行。然而，我们认为他们对过去的事件负有道义和法律责任。这种做法的一个自然合理性是，今天的人就是犯下那些罪行的同一个人：这一事实至少创造了一个表面上的理由，要求他们对早先的行为负责。哲学家、律师和普通公众就此类案件的是非曲直展开了辩论。尤其是哲学家们一直在为这个问题的核心而苦苦挣扎：一个人要活到后来的时间点是什么？有些人认为，对于1940年的战犯和2006年的老人来说，至少必须有重大的心理联系-也许是记忆，也许是共同的目标和计划-两者之间至少有显著的心理联系。如果这是正确的，这将是一个实质性的问题-也是一个关键的法律和道德主张应该转向的问题-老人是否真的处于一种正确的心理关系中(我们通常会称之为)他以前的自己。根据这种观点，如果没有这些关系，我们就不再有一个在道德上或刑事上对这些罪行负有责任的人(就目前的道德和法律实践而言，它不符合这一点，它需要修改)。德里克·帕菲特是这种个人生存心理约束的主要捍卫者；他在开创性的《原因与人》中对这些问题的讨论是这个项目的起点。这个项目专注于关于生存的形而上学问题：特别是关于帕菲特的一种我称之为内在生存原则的主张的性质和后果。从根本上讲，这一观点认为，在与道德或刑事责任问题相关的意义上，生存不能取决于一个人本身发生了什么。要确定老人是否是幸存的战犯，从而可以对战争罪承担责任，我们只应该看看老人与犯下这些罪行的年轻人在身体和心理上的关系。这一原则排除了那些让生存事实依赖于周围环境、他人的活动和观点等事实的理论。这是一个实质性的和有争议的原则，但帕菲特认为这是任何值得称为个人生存的事情的核心。该项目的核心是提供内在生存原则的准确表述，尽管它具有影响力和直觉吸引力，但没有得到应有的重点关注。这为评估该原则的后果提供了基础，事实证明，该原则对其确切表述很敏感(首先，一个问题可能与该原则的范围有关：它是否应该只管理人的生存，或者它是否同样限制了其他自然物体和人工制品的持久性？)我用这个锋利的工具来处理坚持性、模糊性和个人认同感的哲学中的基本问题。特别是，我认为，在它的后果中，关于人的本质的主张是如此极端，以至于许多人宁愿拒绝这一原则本身，也不愿接受其影响。通过这种方式，这个项目提供了对内在生存原则本身的评估，以及追溯其对其他哲学辩论的影响。

Up to the present day, people are being prosecuted for crimes committed in the second world war. A person might have led a blameless life for sixty years; their current personality may be entirely without malice; they may have little memory of the crimes they committed. Yet we hold them morally and legally responsible for those past events. One natural rationalization for this practice is that the person today is the very same individual who committed those crimes: this fact creates at least a prima facie case for holding them responsible for the earlier actions.Philosophers, lawyers and the general public debate the merits of cases such as these. Philosophers in particular have struggled with the question at the heart of the matter: what it is for one person to survive to a later point in time? Some have thought that, for the war criminal in 1940 to be the very same person as the old man in 2006, there must at least be significant psychological connections---perhaps memories, perhaps shared goals and projects---between the two. If that is right, it will be a substantial question---and one on which key legal and moral claims should turn---whether the old man really stands in the right kind of psychological relations to (what we would usually call) his 'earlier self'. On such a view, absent these relations we no longer have someone morally or criminally resonsible for the crimes (and insofar as current moral and legal practice fails to fit with this, it stands in need of revision). A leading defender of such psychological constraints on personal survival is Derek Parfit; and his discussion of these issues in the seminal 'Reasons and Persons' is the starting point for this project.This project focuses on metaphysical questions about survival: and in particular, on the nature and consequences of a Parfittian claim I call the 'principle of intrinsic survival'. This is, at basis, the idea that survival in the sense in which it is relevant to issues of moral or criminal responsibility can't be something that depends on what goes on 'external to' the person themselves. To determine whether or not the old man is the surviving war criminal, and so can be held responsible for war crimes, we should look only to the bodily and psychological relations the old man bears to the young man who committed those crimes. This principle rules out theories which would make facts about survival depend on facts about the surrounding environment, the activities and opinions of others, and so forth. It is a substantive and disputable principle, but one that Parfit holds to be at the core of anything worth calling personal survival. The core of the project is to provide an exact formulation of the principle of intrinisic survival, which despite its influence and intuitive appeal has not received the focused attention it deserves. This provides the basis for evaluating the consequences of the principle, which turn out to be sensitive to its exact formulation (to begin with, one question might concern the scope of the principle: should it just govern the survival of persons, or does it equally constrain the persistence through time of other natural objects and artefacts?) I bring this sharpened tool to bear on fundamental questions in the philosophy of persistence, vagueness, and personal identity. In particular, I argue that among its consequences are claims about the nature of persons so extreme that many will prefer to reject the priniciple itself, rather than accept its implications. In this way this project makes available an evaluation of the principle of intrinsic survival itself, as well as tracing its implications for other philosophical debates.