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

根据蠕虫观（WV），只有那些作为人-阶段的最大集合体而存在的时空蠕虫才是连续的人，因此是道德行为体。然而，非最大化扩展的蠕虫，人格，除了舞台最大化之外，表现出所有看似必要的精神和身体品质，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人个性化。由于人的存在是突然而突然的，赋予人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，承认他们是道德行为者会导致WV的人格问题（PP）。本提案的重点是通过寻求一种集体主义的解决方案来解决这种有问题的相互作用，以便在不诉诸道德享乐主义的情况下捍卫WV。特别地，该解决方案建议将连续的人视为由许多人组成的组合，这些人共同协作以满足事实上成为集体态度的东西。此外，它旨在以这种集体主义的方式概念化跨时间繁荣的研究。这种对持续人的理解也有助于解释“我们”现象的最显著特征——在某些社会背景下，集体行动者能够作为“我们”行事。随着时间的推移，个人同一性的形而上学理论与伦理学直接相关。事实上，道德演算是建立在我们所认为的人的持久条件之上的。出于这个原因，一个基本问题潜藏在这种关系之下：我们应该如何面对一种特定的人的形而上学的不良伦理含义？我们应该改变我们的伦理还是形而上学？这些形而上学的问题可以通过把蠕虫视角作为一个范例来解决。

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.