转自“哲学门”
心灵的曙光
物质如何变得有意识并获得生命
作者：詹姆斯·库克（James Cooke, Ph.D.）![]()
【新书新译】心灵的曙光：物质如何变得有意识并获得生命（引言）
第一部分
由内而外
意识的哲学
第一章
意识
死胡同中的视角
“有意识的体验是这个世界上最熟悉的事物，同时又是最神秘的。没有什么比意识更直接地被我们所知，但如何将它与我们所了解的一切相调和却远不明朗。”
——大卫·查尔莫斯（David J. Chalmers）
内在知识与外在知识
INNER AND OUTER KNOWLEDGE
知识是一种强大的力量。在几乎生活的每个方面，拥有知识比缺乏了解时更能让我们有效地应对问题。可以说，掌握知识是人类最擅长的事情。现代分类学之父卡尔·林奈（Carl Linnaeus）似乎也这么认为。他为我们物种命名时选择了“智人（Homo sapiens sapiens）”。“Sapiens”源自拉丁语“sapere”，意为“知识（knowledge, sapere.）”。我们被命名了两次，似乎表明我们在“知（knowing）”这一能力上独具一格。然而，我们必须停下来问一个问题：我们到底拥有的是哪种知识？当今人类历史发展到一个特殊的时刻，我们对周围世界的知识已达到了惊人的水平。通过科学和哲学，我们不仅了解了宇宙的浩瀚广袤，也深入理解了亚原子粒子的运行。我们知道宏伟的山脉是如何形成的，知道元素如何组合成杜鹃花、斑马等万物，也知道自然选择的进化过程如何在数千年间将我们塑造成今天的模样。我们对自然世界的了解还为我们提供了惊人的控制力。我们的技术成就已经发展到能够利用自然界的基本力量来驱动令人难以置信的复杂计算设备，例如我们使用的手机，这些设备的计算能力是首次将人类送上月球的计算机的百万倍以上。我们对周围世界的理解似乎是无限的。
那么，对我们自身的了解呢？在可以将自己当作对象进行研究的领域（例如身体的研究中），我们取得了惊人的进步。我们可以编辑肉眼看不到的微小基因，可以在完整无损的情况下诊断和治疗发生在头骨内的神经问题。我们对身体作为一个物体的理解与我们对自然世界的理解同样成功。
然而，当我们转向主观知识，即对我们内在自我的了解时，科学和哲学却显得捉襟见肘。在试图理解我们体验生活的内在空间时，我们的进展与外在世界的理解和掌控形成了巨大的反差。当我们审视自我的核心，审视当下正在发生的存在体验时，科学和哲学根本没有达成任何共识。我们用来描述这种体验事实、描述心灵主观性质的术语是“意识（consciousness）”。它是我们存在中最重要的方面，因为它是使意义能够被体验的根本所在。如果没有意识，任何事情都将毫无意义；不会有快乐，也不会有痛苦，更不会有任何形式的意义存在。尽管意识如此重要，但科学家和哲学家至今仍未能就它是什么、为什么存在，以及它如何与世界相联系达成一致。
主观性与客观性
意识的主观性质和定性特征可以通过与外在世界的客观性和定量特征的对比来理解。当你做梦时，这种体验只发生在你身上，而不会发生在别人身上；它是私人化的，存在于内在空间中，是主观的。而一件物品，比如一件连衣裙，则是客观的；它存在于你我之间的空间里。连衣裙的形状是定量的，因为它可以用数字来描述，从而告诉你它可能适合的类型。起初，我们可能会认为颜色是连衣裙的另一个客观属性，类似于它的形状。然而，实际上，这件物理意义上的连衣裙仅仅是以某种方式反射光线。而连衣裙颜色的定性体验则发生在主观世界中，在个体的头脑中。
2015年，一张连衣裙的照片引发了一场关于颜色的广泛讨论，一些人认为它是黑蓝色，而另一些人则看到白金色，这种现象生动地展示了色彩并不存在于外部世界，而是存在于我们个体的心灵之中。许多人无意识地假设连衣裙的颜色是一个客观的视觉属性，因此当其他人对颜色看法不同时感到困惑和沮丧。事实上，连衣裙的颜色并非客观存在，而是对不同的人呈现出不同的感知；颜色是一种定性的主观体验，而非定量的客观属性。
定量与定性的关系
如果我们都同意意识是主观的和定性的，那么科学家们为什么会感到困惑？问题的根源在于定量和定性之间的关系。伽利略曾宣称：“自然之书是用数学的语言写成的。” 他指出，周围的客观自然世界可以用数学模型来精确描述。从这一方法出发，物理学、化学、生物学以及其他客观科学取得了惊人的成功。然而，我们的主观、定性体验同样是自然的一部分。研究心灵的科学如何用数字描述阳光洒在皮肤上的温暖感，或用数学解释恋爱的体验？这些定性特征如何融入我们的定量自然叙事中？这是那些试图真正理解意识的人所面临的根本问题。理解意识并不仅仅意味着对它进行描述；它涉及理解意识在自然世界图景中的位置。如果我们真的理解了意识，我们应该能够清晰地解释它存在的地方及其原因，就像我们对氧分子或草叶的理解一样。我们应该能够解释为何以及如何由定量的物质产生出定性的体验。然而，目前，我们离这样的理解还相去甚远。
THEDAWNOFMIND
HOW MATTER BECAME CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE
JAMES COOKE, Ph.D.
PART I
INSIDE OUTThe Philosophy of Consciousness
ONE
CONSCIOUSNESSThe View from a Dead End
Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is far from clear how to reconcile it with everything else we know.—DAVID J. CHALMERS1
INNER AND OUTER KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is a powerful thing. In practically every area of life, we are more effective when armed with knowledge than when we have little or no understanding. Knowledge is arguably what humans do best. The father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, certainly seemed to think so. When he gave our species its name, he settled on Homo sapiens sapiens. Sapienscomes from the Latin word for knowledge, sapere. We’re supposedly so good at knowing that we were named for it twice. We must stop and ask, however, what kind of knowledge do we possess?We live at a point in human history when our knowledge of the world around us has reached astounding levels. Through science and philosophy, we have come to understand not only the vast expanse of the cosmos but also the operation of subatomic particles. We know how the most majestic mountains were formed, how the elements combine to make everything from azaleas to zebras, and how the process of evolution by natural selection sculpted us over millennia into the beings we are today. Our knowledge of the natural world also gives us astounding control over it. Our technological prowess has reached a point where we can harness the power of the elemental forces of nature to run astoundingly complex computational devices like our mobile phones, devices that are more than a million times more powerful than the computers that first landed humans on the moon. Our ability to understand the world around us appears limitless.What about knowledge of ourselves? In areas where we can treat ourselves like an object, when studying the body, for example, we have made incredible advances. We can edit individual genes so small they are invisible to the naked eye. We can diagnose and treat neurological issues occurring within the dark cavern of the skull while leaving it completely intact. Our understanding of the body as an object is as successful as our understanding of the natural world around us.What about when we turn to subjective knowledge, to the knowledge of ourselves from within? In trying to understand the inner space that mediates our experience of life, science and philosophy fall drastically short. The contrast between our understanding and mastery of the outer world and our collective befuddlement at our inner world is truly dramatic. When we look at the very core of ourselves, at the fact that we are experiencing existence right now, scientific and philosophical consensus are nowhere to be found. The term we use to refer to this fact of experience, to the subjective, qualitative character of the mind, is consciousness. It is the single most significant aspect of our existence, for it is the very thing that makes the experience of significance possible. Without consciousness, nothing would matter; there would be no joy, no pain, no way for meaning to exist at all. Despite its importance, scientists and philosophers have failed to agree on what it is, why it exists, and how it relates to the world around us.The subjective and qualitative character of consciousness can be understood by contrasting it with the objective and quantitative character of the outside world. When you dream, the experience is happening to you and no one else; it is privately occurring in inner space. It is subjective. A piece of material like a dress, though, is objective; it exists for both of us in the space between us. The shape of the dress is quantitative in that it can be described using quantities—the numbers that give you an idea of the kind of fit it might have. We might initially think that color is another objective attribute of the dress, like its shape. In reality, the physical dress only reflects light in a certain way. The qualitative experience of the color of the dress takes place subjectively, in one’s mind.The widespread assumption that colors exist out there in the world and not in here in our individual minds was put dramatically on display in 2015, when a picture surfaced of a dress that some people reported as being black and blue, while others saw it as white and gold. Many people unconsciously assumed that the dress had an objective visual appearance, leading to exasperated confusion when others disagreed about what color the dress truly was. Rather than objectively being a certain color, the dress merely appeared differently to different people; the color was a qualitative, subjective experience, not a quantitative, objective one.If we all agree that consciousness is subjective and qualitative, then what are we scientists confused about? The issue comes down to how the quantitative and qualitative relate to each other. Galileo once proclaimed, “The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics.”2 He was observing that the objective natural world around us can be accurately described using mathematical models, and by starting out with this approach, the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and the rest of the objective sciences have had astounding success. We, too, are part of nature, though, as are our qualitative, subjective experiences. How are the fields of science that deal with the mind supposed to describe in numbers the feeling of the warm sun on one’s skin or account for the experience of being in love using mathematics? Where do such qualities fit into our quantitative story of nature?This is the fundamental problem faced by those who want to truly understand consciousness. Understanding consciousness does not mean simply describing it; it involves understanding where it fits into our picture of the natural world. If we all agreed that we understood consciousness, then we would be able to tell a compelling story about where it exists and why it exists where it does, the same way we can for oxygen molecules or blades of grass. We would be able to say how and why it is that quantitative matter gives rise to qualitative experience. At this point in time, however, we are far from agreeing on such an understanding.
