  It looks, then, as if the only way to bolster support for  utilitarianism (with a version of this argument, anyway) is  to adopt the extreme view, that the ethically significant metaphysical  units are momentarily-existing person-atoms. But this is implausible, for it is very difficult even to make sense of a momentary  agent. Agents, after all, have interests and projects they  seek to advance that necessarily project them into the future. In  order to be what one is at any moment, then, one must identify with  one's future. “When the person is viewed as an agent, no clear  content can be given to the idea of a merely present self”  (Korsgaard 1989, 114; see also Williams 1976, 204–207, and Brink  1997b, 112–113). But if one moves away from atoms as the basic moral  units for these sorts of practical reasons, the separation between  selves/persons and sets of lives becomes more distinct.