[O]ne way of characterizing Parfit’s reductionism would be as a kind of illusionism or anti-realism about personal identity: you could say that we don’t really persist through time at all—we can just talk as though we do, for convenience.
Here’s a crucial question: is it rational to anticipate experiences that will be felt by some “future self” to whom you are strongly R-related? Or does anticipation implicitly presuppose a non-reductionist view of identity? Parfit (1984, 312) does not commit himself either way, suggesting that it “seems defensible both to claim and to deny that Relation R gives us reason for special concern.” Of course, your “future selves” (or R-related continuants) are as closely-related to you as can be, so if we have reason to be partial towards anyone, we presumably have reason to partial towards them. But it would still seem a significant loss if we could no longer think of our future selves as ourselves: if they became mere relatives, however close.
I don’t think such a bleak view is forced on us, however. The distinction between philosophical reduction and elimination is notoriously thorny, and analogous questions arise all over the philosophical map. Consciousness, normativity, and free will are three examples for which it is comparably contentious whether reduction amounts to elimination. …
I find it tempting to give different answers in different cases. Consciousness and normativity strike me as sui generis phenomena, missing from any account that countenances only things constituted by atoms. For free will and personal identity, by contrast, I’m inclined to think that the “non-reductive” views don’t even make sense (the idea of ultimate sourcehood, or originally choosing the very basis on which you will make all choices—including that first one!--is literally incoherent). Reductive accounts of these latter phenomena can fill their theoretical roles satisfactorily, in my view.
Other readers may carve up the cases differently. However you do it, my suggestion would be that reductionists can more easily resist eliminativist pressures if they think there is no coherent possibility there to be eliminated. If ultimate sourcehood makes no sense, it would seem unreasonable to treat it as a requirement for anything else, including moral desert.^[To avoid amounting to a merely verbal dispute, I take it that reductionists and eliminativists must disagree about whether some putative reduction base suffices to fill an important theoretical role associated with the original concept.] So we might comfortably accept a compatibilist account as sufficing to make one responsible in the strongest sense, as there simply is nothing more that could be required. Perhaps a similar thing could be said of personal identity. If we think that “Further Fact” views are not merely theoretically extravagant, but outright impossible, it might be easier to regard relation R as sufficient to justify anticipation. What more could be required, after all?
This reasoning is not decisive. Eliminativists could insist that anticipation is *essentially* irrational, presupposing something that could not possibly be. Or they could insist that the Further Fact view is not incoherent, but merely contingently false. Even so, their side too seems to lack decisive arguments. As is so often the case in philosophy, it is up to us to judge what strikes us as the most plausible position, all things considered.
The non-eliminative, reductionist view is, at least, much less drastically revisionary. (If our future selves are better regarded as entirely new people, there would seem no basis for distinguishing killing from failing to bring into existence.You would have to reconceive of guns as contraceptive agents. Nobody survives the present moment anyway, on this view, so the only effect of lethally shooting someone would be to prevent a new, qualitatively similar person from getting to exist in the next moment. Not so bad!) Though even if Parfit’s reductionism can vindicate ordinary anticipation and self-concern, it certainly calls for some revisions to our normative thought....
“Failing to bring in existence” seems an odd way of putting it. I would rephrase as “preventing from coming into existence,” and I think that makes a big difference.
E.g., choosing not to have a child (or choosing not to help someone else have one) is not a crime, but any action that deliberately caused an unwanted miscarriage would be.
Beyond that, I think there is plenty of room (if one wants) to define the relationship between past and future selves as “something special”—such that it is a special kind of tragedy when someone loses their opportunity to have future selves, even exactly on par with how tragic we normally think of murder as being—without giving up the benefits of the view I outlined.
I think it is tragic for someone’s life projects and relationships to be forcibly cut off—even when we imagine this as “cut off via the prevention of their future selves coming into existence to continue these projects and relationships”—in a way that “a life not coming into existence” isn’t. (I am pretty lukewarm on the total view; people who are more into that view might just say these are equally tragic.) In addition to how tragic it is, it seems like a quite different situation w/r/t whether blame and punishment are called for.
Cf. section 6.3 of Parfit’s Ethics:
“Failing to bring in existence” seems an odd way of putting it. I would rephrase as “preventing from coming into existence,” and I think that makes a big difference.
E.g., choosing not to have a child (or choosing not to help someone else have one) is not a crime, but any action that deliberately caused an unwanted miscarriage would be.
Beyond that, I think there is plenty of room (if one wants) to define the relationship between past and future selves as “something special”—such that it is a special kind of tragedy when someone loses their opportunity to have future selves, even exactly on par with how tragic we normally think of murder as being—without giving up the benefits of the view I outlined.
I think it is tragic for someone’s life projects and relationships to be forcibly cut off—even when we imagine this as “cut off via the prevention of their future selves coming into existence to continue these projects and relationships”—in a way that “a life not coming into existence” isn’t. (I am pretty lukewarm on the total view; people who are more into that view might just say these are equally tragic.) In addition to how tragic it is, it seems like a quite different situation w/r/t whether blame and punishment are called for.