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.）![]()
内容简介
《心灵的曙光：物质如何变得有意识并获得生命》（The Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive） 是詹姆斯·库克博士（James Cooke, Ph.D.）对意识和生命本质的一次深刻探索。这本书试图回答一个亘古难题：物质如何从无生命的状态中诞生出有意识的生命体？库克博士从哲学、神经科学、生物物理学和进化理论出发，提出了“生命之镜”（Living Mirror Theory）理论，主张意识的产生并非单纯依赖于复杂的大脑结构，而是与生命的本质密不可分。通过将科学发现与哲学反思相结合，库克博士打破传统科学与宗教的二元对立，以一种“非二元自然主义”的视角重新审视人类的存在。他深入探讨了意识的起源、其与物质世界的关系，以及我们对现实的认知方式，并且对现代科学世界观中的一些核心假设提出了挑战。这本书不仅面向学术界，也为普通读者提供了一种独特的视角，帮助他们更好地理解自己的内心世界与现实世界的联系。作者简介
詹姆斯·库克博士（James Cooke, Ph.D.） 是一位神经科学家、哲学家和作家，专注于意识与生命本质的研究。他在青少年时期经历了一次深刻的灵性觉醒，这让他感受到灵性状态的真实性，并由此开始探索科学与灵性之间的联系。他在 牛津大学 完成了全部学术训练，分别获得实验心理学学士（BA in Experimental Psychology）、神经科学硕士（MSc in Neuroscience）以及神经科学博士（PhD in Neuroscience）学位。库克博士在全球多所顶尖学术机构从事研究工作，包括牛津大学、加州大学伯克利分校、伦敦大学学院（UCL）、都柏林三一学院以及东京理化学研究所脑科学研究中心（Riken Brain Sciences Institute）。他的研究涉及神经科学、意识哲学和复杂系统科学，并在多个国际学术期刊上发表论文。他最新出版的著作 《心灵的曙光：物质如何变得有意识并获得生命》（The Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive），他在研究中融入了复杂性科学、生物物理学和进化论的视角，致力于打破科学与哲学之间的界限。通过整合科学与灵性的洞见，为意识的“困难问题”（Hard Problem of Consciousness）提出了一种全新的解决方案。他的学术背景使他能够从多学科的角度分析意识的起源及其意义。库克博士的研究不仅受到学术界的认可，还引起了公众对意识研究的广泛兴趣。他同时也是一位热衷于公共科学传播的教育家，致力于将复杂的理论以易于理解的方式呈现给大众。这本书不仅面向学术界，也为普通读者提供了理解意识和现实本质的独特视角。引言
你是什么？根据科学的说法，你是由物质粒子组成的一个集合体，是一个复杂的机器，完全没有任何内在意义。根据某些宗教的说法，你是一个神圣而有意识的灵魂，能够感知和爱，赋有意义和宇宙的独特地位。我们是如何得出如此截然相反的关于人类本质的结论的？答案部分在于，人类可以从两种视角来理解：内在的和外在的。从内在来看，作为你，会有一种特定的感受。无论你在物理上是什么，在心理层面上，你是一个有意识、有感知的存在。你闻到雨后泥土的气息；你看到日出的壮丽；你体验到各种深刻且多样的情感。这种通过直接经验来认识自我的方式，早在我们拥有科学工具研究心灵之前，就已被神秘主义者探索了数千年。通过冥想、沉浸于狂喜的舞蹈或连续数日的禁食和祈祷，这些内在世界的探索者获得了关于我们本质及我们与现实之间关系的深刻洞见。从外在来看，科学告诉我们，我们是由分子组成的物质身体，这些分子由原子构成，而原子又由亚原子粒子组成。构成我们身体的物质遵循不可打破的物理定律，似乎使我们成为仅仅根据进化赋予的欲望而行动的发条自动装置。或许令人敬畏的是，我们身体的许多元素是在爆炸的恒星中产生的，或者我们存在于数十亿亚原子粒子的狂乱活动中，但科学无法解释这种敬畏感；意识和感知无法融入当前的科学世界图景中。科学方法在帮助我们理解外部世界方面做出了惊人的成就，但你的内在世界的存在对科学来说仍然是一个谜。当我们谈到意识时，我们指的是经验的事实本身。意识不是你脑海中的声音，也不是你自我意识的能力，尽管这些都依赖于意识。它是对任何事物有所感知的能力。想象一下成熟草莓的味道、阳光照在皮肤上的温暖或深深的渴望。这些如此生动而私密的体验，都是意识的表现。意识并不需要思维或自我反思的能力；只要有任何形式的感知，从看到天空的蓝色到想象十年后的生活会是什么样子，都存在意识。哲学家托马斯·内格尔（Thomas Nagel）提出的一个有影响力的定义认为，我们可以将某物视为有意识的，如果“成为那物体有某种感觉”（if there is “something it is like” to be that thing ）。例如，如果我重新排列你的原子，将你变成一块石头，那么我们可以假设“成为那块石头没有任何感觉”，这也就是说，石头是无意识的。在将你的原子混合为矿物对象的过程中，某个时刻，意识将被熄灭，体验的光芒将消失。那么，猿猴、松鼠、白蚁或细菌呢？“成为它们有某种感觉”吗？也就是说，它们有意识吗？科学面临的挑战是理解我们对诸如原子的物理现象的客观描述，如何与意识的主观质性（the subjective qualitative）体验——成为某物的感觉本身——相联系。我们可以将意识比作一种模拟。当你看到彩虹时，彩虹存在于你对世界的模拟之中，即你的意识，而不在物理世界本身中。我们知道，在那一刻的客观世界描述中，并不存在某种彩色的弧形物理结构。你在模拟的世界中体验到某些事物，而我体验到的则不同。为了理解意识，我们必须解释为什么你和我会模拟周围的世界，以及是什么导致我们的模拟内容不同。尽管计算机能够进行模拟，但我们并不认为它们因此具有意识，这引出了意识的核心谜题。为什么我们的模拟不是在黑暗中进行的一种物理程序？为什么我们的脑不像计算机那样仅仅在物理上处理必要的信息，而没有附加的体验？计算机可以分析与你看见彩虹的有意识体验相同的视觉信号，而无需体验本身。那么，为什么我们的情况不同？为什么我们的模拟是“点亮的”？为什么你的模拟被照亮了，而这种光亮的来源又是什么？这种光亮的性质被称为觉知（awareness），它是意识的核心特质。换一种方式思考，觉知可以理解为“知晓性”（knowingness）。当你体验香蕉的味道时，你知晓那种味道。当你无意识地做某件事时，就没有那件事发生的体验性知晓。要完全解释我们称之为意识的这种内在模拟，我们必须解释这种神秘的觉知特质，这使得模拟被实际体验到，而不是仅仅通过盲目、无意识的机制在黑暗中运行。尽管关于意识的起源和本质的推测层出不穷，但在意识在现代科学的自然世界叙事中应该占据什么位置的问题上，并没有达成共识。事实上，我们没有公认的解释来说明为什么意识应该存在。它是像我们这样复杂动物大脑的产物吗？它是现实的基本特性吗？它可能是一种幻觉吗？目前，多位著名哲学家和科学家对这些相互矛盾的立场中的每一种都持支持态度。要说关于意识问题没有共识，实属轻描淡写。有关意识的问题不仅对理解我们自身的头脑至关重要，对理解整个现实也有重要意义。审视体验的本质迫使我们面对科学、哲学和宗教都试图回答的或许最根本的问题：到底发生了什么？我们是否发现自己处于一个偶然产生动物大脑的机械宇宙中，这些大脑像无用的气体一样毫无理由地排放意识？我们是否处于一个矩阵或某种模拟中？我们是否是一个宇宙意识的梦？对意识问题的立场必然要求我们也对现实的本质采取某种立场。关于意识的理论及其相关的世界观是一体的。这本书中，我提出一种对意识的思考方式，我称之为“生命之镜”理论，并在《意识研究杂志》（Journal of Consciousness Studies）中首次发表。其核心观点是，生命与意识本质上是相连的——我们之所以有体验，不是因为我们有大脑，而是因为我们是活着的。大脑当然参与了人类意识，但它在生命过程中只是一个次要角色。大脑的进化并没有带来意识的产生；生命的出现才是。大脑只是将体验的内容扩展到了我们物种无疑令人眼花缭乱的高度。“生命之镜”理论完全符合科学视角，受到达尔文理论、热力学、复杂性理论、生物物理学和当代神经科学的影响。正如我们在科学中获得洞见时的典型情况一样，接受一种理论往往会带来许多有趣且有时是反直觉的启示。达尔文的进化论告诉我们，由于生命之网的连续性，我们与香蕉有共同的祖先。哥白尼革命揭示了这样一个事实：我们并不处于宇宙的中心，而是“生活在一颗平凡恒星的无足轻重的行星上，这颗恒星隐藏在某个被遗忘的角落，而这个宇宙中存在的星系比人类还多得多，”正如天文学家卡尔·萨根所说的那样。接受“生命之镜”理论也意味着接受关于我们是什么的某些令人惊讶的启示。为了让这一理论变得有意义，我必须将其置于一个令人信服的世界观框架之中。目前科学中占主导地位的世界观认为，只有物理学的物质粒子才是真正存在的，这一世界观使我们在意识问题的思考上陷入了死胡同。为了理解意识，我们首先必须检视并拆解这一主流科学世界观中的错误假设。只有这样，我们才能对我们的内在世界及其在现实中的位置形成新的理解，从而调和科学和宗教在“我们是什么”这一问题上的分歧。虽然灵性和宗教的领域自然会让一些具有科学思维的人感到不安，但我相信这些传统中蕴藏着关于我们存在处境的宝贵洞见。尤其是，许多宗教似乎都包含一个神秘主义核心，它反映了一种人类一直以来都深深信服的基本洞见：我们并不真正与周围的世界分离，事实上，我们深深地属于这个存在之中。在宗教传统中，这种洞见通常不是通过研究我们周围的世界发现的，而是通过意识体验本身得以揭示的。在我看来，对这种体验的深刻理解是对当前阻碍我们理解意识的假设的一剂解药。我使用“非二元自然主义”这一术语来描述我提出的世俗灵性世界观。“非二元”指的是这样一种洞见：现实并非根本分裂为主观与客观、心灵与物质，而是整体的。“自然主义”指的是一种科学视角，它不接受超自然现象的存在，而是依赖哲学和科学来描绘一个一致的宇宙图景，在这个图景中，世界本身包含了解释自己的答案。这两种视角的结合形成了一种世界观，其中一部分核心的灵性体验——那些与科学发现相一致的体验——被认为是有效的。这些体验包括感受到自己完全是自然的一部分（正如达尔文所揭示的那样）以及发现自我并非一个具有独立存在的实体；相反，个体的分离自我感是一种心理体验（这也正是现代神经科学所主张的）。最后，关于术语的说明。本书探讨的是我们存在的核心事实：体验正在发生。当我使用诸如“意识”“体验”“主观性”“感受”“感知”或“心灵”这样的术语时，我指的始终是这一简单而显而易见的事实。皮肤上的触觉、咖啡的香气、对美丽风景的感知——这些主观事件根据我们当前的科学世界图景不应存在，而这些现象正是我在使用“意识”及相关术语时所指的内容。“觉知”这一术语则保留用来指意识的核心特质，即体验的内容得以被照亮的特性，用以区分这一点与意识的具体内容。以上所有内容将在本书中进一步展开，我还包括了一个术语表，以帮助读者追踪后续章节中使用的不同理论和专业术语。在撰写这本书时，我不仅仅出于对意识本质的智识好奇。对我而言，此刻我们的主流全球文化显得困惑而迷失。世界上存在许多不必要的痛苦，而这些痛苦来自我们与自己以及自然界的关系。我希望通过更深入地了解我们自己和我们在存在中的位置，我们能够更有效地指引自己走向一个痛苦更少的世界。正因为如此，我努力使这本书既能被普通读者理解，也能为与意识相关领域的学者提供参考。科学，若能被明智地运用，在这场寻求真相的探索中可以充当黑暗中的一盏明灯。通过更深刻地理解我们自己及我们的处境，我希望我们能够集体向内在与外在更大的和平方向迈进。即便这本书未能推动我们朝这个方向前进，我也非常感谢你愿意与我一同踏上这段旅程。THEDAWNOFMIND
HOW MATTER BECAME CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE
JAMES COOKE, Ph.D.
INTRODUCTIONWhat Are You?
What are you? According to science, you are a collection of material particles, a complex machine, completely devoid of any inherent meaning. According to certain religions, you are a divine, conscious soul with the capacity to feel and love, imbued with meaning and cosmic significance. How did we arrive at such seemingly opposite conclusions on what it is to be a human being? The answer lies, in part, in the fact that a human being can be understood from two perspectives: the inner and the outer. From the inside, it feels a certain way to be you. Whatever you might be physically, mentally you are a conscious, feeling thing. You smell the scent of the earth after it rains; you see the glory of a sunrise; you experience feelings of great variety and depth. This is the way of knowing ourselves through direct experience, the way that mystics have explored for millennia, long before we had scientific instruments with which to study the mind. Sitting in meditation, lost in ecstatic dance, or fasting and praying for days, these explorers of inner space received profound insights into our nature and our relationship to the rest of reality.Looking from the outside, science tells us we are physical bodies made of molecules that themselves are made of atoms, which in turn are made of subatomic particles. The material substance that forms our bodies obeys laws of physics that cannot be broken, seeming to make us clockwork automatons that merely act out the desires programmed into us by evolution. It may be awe inspiring that many of the elements of our bodies were cooked up in exploding stars or that we exist through the combined riot of billions of subatomic particles, but science has no way of accounting for this feeling of awe; consciousness and feeling do not fit into our current scientific picture of the world. The scientific method has done an incredible job of helping us to understand the outer world, but the very existence of your inner world remains a mystery to science.When we speak of consciousness, we are speaking of the very fact of experience. Consciousness is not the voice in your head or your ability to be self-aware, although these do depend on consciousness. It is the capacity to be aware of anything at all. Imagine the taste of a ripe strawberry, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, or deep pangs of longing. These experiences, so vivid and intimate, are all manifestations of consciousness. Consciousness does not require thought or the ability to self-reflect; where there is feeling of any kind, from the experience of seeing the blue of the sky to imagining what your life will be like a decade from now, there is consciousness.An influential definition of consciousness comes from philosopher Thomas Nagel, who suggests that we consider something to be conscious if there is “something it is like” to be that thing.1 For example, if I rearranged your atoms to change you into a rock, then we might presume that there would be “nothing it is like” to be the rock, which is another way of saying that rocks are not conscious. As I mixed up your atoms to turn you into a mineral object, at some point in the transition, consciousness would be extinguished, and the light of experience would go out. What about an ape or a squirrel, a termite or a bacterium? Is there “something it is like” to be them? That is, are they conscious? The challenge science faces is in understanding how our objective description of the arrangement of such physical phenomena as atoms connects to the subjective qualitative experience of consciousness, of it being like something to be that thing—of experiential feeling itself.We can think of consciousness as being like a simulation. When you have the experience of seeing a rainbow, the rainbow exists in your simulation of the world, your consciousness, not in the physical world itself. We know there is no colorful arched physical structure in the objective description of the world in such moments. You experience certain things in your simulation of the world around you, and I experience something different. To understand consciousness, we must explain why you and I simulate the world around us and what leads to the content of our simulations being different. Computers are capable of simulating things, however, yet we do not necessarily think that this makes them conscious, which takes us to the core of the mystery of consciousness. Why isn’t our simulation just a physical procedure that occurs in the dark? Why do our brains not simply function like a computer and physically process the necessary information without the added experience? A computer can analyze the same visual signals that give you the conscious experience of seeing a rainbow with no need for the experience. Why, in our case, are the lights on? Why is your simulation illuminated, and what is the source of this illumination?This quality of illumination is known as awareness, and it lies at the core of consciousness. Another way to think about awareness is as knowingness.2 When there is an experience of the taste of banana, there is the knowing of that taste. When you perform an act unconsciously, there is no experiential knowing of that act having occurred. To fully explain this inner simulation that we call consciousness, we must account for this mysterious quality of awareness that results in the simulation actually being experienced rather than merely operating in the dark through a blind, unconscious mechanism.Though there is no shortage of speculation regarding the origin and nature of consciousness, there is no consensus on where consciousness fits into the modern scientific story of the natural world. In fact, we have no generally accepted explanation of why consciousness should exist at all. Is it the product of complex animal brains like our own? Is it the fundamental nature of our reality? Could it be an illusion? Every proposal in this array of mutually contradictory positions is held by multiple prominent philosophers and scientists today. To say there’s no consensus on the issue of consciousness is an understatement.The issue of consciousness is consequential for understanding not only our own minds but also reality itself. Reckoning with the nature of experience forces us to confront what is perhaps the most basic question that science, philosophy, and religion all try to answer: What is going on? Do we find ourselves in a clockwork universe that happened to produce some animal brains that excrete consciousness like a useless gas for no apparent reason? Are we in a matrix or some kind of simulation? Are we a dream in a cosmic mind? Taking a stance on the issue of consciousness necessarily requires us to also commit to a stance on the nature of reality. Consciousness theories and their associated worldviews are a package deal.In this book, I lay out a way of thinking about consciousness that I previously published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies as the living mirror theory of consciousness.3 The core claim is that life and consciousness are fundamentally linked—we do not experience primarily because we have brains; we experience because we are alive. The brain is certainly involved in human consciousness but as a secondary player to the life process. The evolution of the brain is not what brought consciousness into existence; the emergence of life did. The brain merely elaborates the contents of experience to admittedly dizzying heights in our species.The living mirror theory is entirely aligned with the scientific perspective, being influenced by Darwinian theory, thermodynamics, complexity theory, biophysics, and contemporary neuroscience. As is typical when we gain scientific insight, accepting a theory comes with many interesting and sometimes counterintuitive implications. Darwinian evolution tells us that, due to the continuity of the web of life, we share an ancestor with a banana. The Copernican revolution in astrophysics led us to the realization that, rather than being at the center of the universe, “we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people,” as astrophysicist Carl Sagan put it.4 The living mirror theory comes with its own surprising implications for what we are.For the theory to make sense, I must frame it within a compelling world-view. The current dominant worldview in science, in which only the material particles of physics are thought to truly exist, has left us facing a dead end when it comes to thinking about consciousness. To make sense of consciousness, we must first examine and dismantle the flawed assumptions in this predominant scientific worldview. Only then can a new understanding of our inner world and its place in reality come into focus, reconciling the scientific and religious perspectives on the question of what we are.While the domain of spirituality and religion understandably makes some scientifically minded people uncomfortable, I believe there are valuable insights into our existential situation to be found in these traditions. In particular, there appears to be a mystical core to many religions that reflects a fundamental insight that people have found compelling throughout time: that we are not truly separate from the world around us and that we are in fact deeply at home in existence. In religious traditions, this is typically not something that one discovers by studying the world around us but instead through conscious experience itself. It seems to me that a deep understanding of this experience is an antidote to our current assumptions that block us from understanding consciousness.I use the term nondual naturalism for the secular-spiritual worldview I present. Nondual refers to the insight that reality is not fundamentally split into subject and object, mind and matter, but is instead whole. Naturalism refers to a scientific perspective on reality that does not accept the existence of supernatural phenomena but instead relies on philosophy and science to map out a consistent picture of the universe, one in which the world around us contains its own explanations. The combination of the two perspectives results in a worldview in which a subset of core spiritual experiences that are in alignment with scientific findings are held to be valid. These include feeling oneself to be fully part of nature (as Darwin showed us we are) and discovering that the self is not an entity with its own independent existence; rather, one’s sense of being a separate self is a psychological experience (as modern neuroscience also claims).Finally, a note on terminology. This book deals with the central fact of our existence, that there is an experience happening. When I use such terms as consciousness, experience, subjectivity, feeling, sentience, or mind, I always refer to this simple and readily apparent fact. The feeling of touch on your skin, experiencing the scent of coffee, your perception of a beautiful landscape scene—these subjective events should not exist according to our current scientific picture of the world, and it is these phenomena that I address when I use the term consciousness, as well as these related terms. The term awareness is reserved for the core characteristic of consciousness by which the content of experience is illuminated in order to differentiate between this and the specific contents of consciousness. This all is unpacked throughout this book. I include a glossary of key terms to help keep track of the different theories and terms of art used in later chapters.In writing this book, I am driven by more than an intellectual curiosity into the nature of consciousness. It seems to me that, at this moment, our dominant global culture is confused and lost. There is so much unnecessary suffering in the world that is caused by both our relation to ourselves and to the natural world, and it is my hope that, through greater understanding of ourselves and our place in existence, we will be able to navigate more effectively to a world with less suffering. For this reason, I have written this book to be accessible to a general audience, as well as to academics in fields relevant to consciousness. Science, when wielded wisely, can function as a light in the dark in this quest, leading us toward truth. Through greater understanding of ourselves and our situation, I hope we can move collectively in the direction of ever greater peace, both inner and outer. Even if this book fails to move us in this direction, I deeply appreciate your coming on this journey with me.
