Intrinsic survival, multiple survival, and vague survival

直到今天，仍有人因在第二次世界大战中犯下的罪行而受到起诉。一个人可能过了60年没有过错的生活；他们现在的性格可能完全没有恶意；他们可能对自己犯下的罪行几乎没有记忆。然而，我们认为他们在道德上和法律上对过去的事件负有责任。这种做法的一个自然的合理解释是，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初步的理由，让他们对以前的行为负责。哲学家、律师和普通公众就此类案件的是非曲直展开辩论。哲学家们尤其纠结于这个问题的核心：一个人活到更晚的时间点意味着什么？有些人认为，如果1940年的战犯和2006年的老人是同一个人，那么两人之间至少必须有重要的心理联系——也许是记忆，也许是共同的目标和项目。如果这是正确的，这将是一个实质性的问题——一个关键的法律和道德主张应该转向的问题——老人是否真的与（我们通常所说的）他的“早期自我”处于正确的心理关系中。根据这种观点，如果没有这些关系，我们就不再有人在道德上或刑事上对这些罪行负责（只要目前的道德和法律实践不符合这一点，它就需要修订）。德里克·帕菲特（Derek Parfit）是这种个人生存心理约束的主要捍卫者；他在开创性的《理性与人》中对这些问题的讨论是这个项目的起点。这个项目关注的是关于生存的形而上学问题：特别是关于帕菲特主张的本质和后果，我称之为“内在生存原则”。从根本上说，这个观点认为生存与道德或刑事责任问题相关不能依赖于人自身外部发生的事情。要确定这位老人是否是幸存的战犯，从而可以对战争罪行负责，我们应该只看这位老人与犯下这些罪行的年轻人的身体和心理关系。这一原则排除了那些将生存事实依赖于周围环境、他人的活动和意见等事实的理论。这是一个实质性的、有争议的原则，但帕菲特认为这是任何值得称之为个人生存的核心。该项目的核心是提供内在生存原则的精确表述，尽管它具有影响力和直观的吸引力，但并未得到应有的关注。这为评估原则的结果提供了基础，结果对其精确的表述是敏感的（首先，一个问题可能涉及原则的范围：它是否只支配人的生存，或者它是否同样限制其他自然物体和人工制品的持久性？）我将这一锐利的工具用于研究哲学中关于持久性、模糊性和个人同一性的基本问题。特别是，我认为，在其后果中，关于人的本质的主张是如此极端，以至于许多人宁愿拒绝原则本身，也不愿接受其含义。通过这种方式，该项目可以对内在生存原则本身进行评估，并追踪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.