MIND is a philosophical concept normally contrasted with the concept of body. Both concepts have acquired their meanings through so long-standing a set of metaphysical disagreements that neither can be defined in isolation from the controversial theories in which each is historically embedded. Most modern theories of mind and body are responses to distinctions laid down in the 17th century by Rene Descartes, who supposed the universe to be divided between two fundamental and irreducible sorts of substances, roughly corresponding to minds and bodies. These substances may be considered from a psychological perspective concerned with how the minds works or a metaphysical perspective concerned with its nature.,下面我们就来说一说关于mind思维英语?我们一起去了解并探讨一下这个问题吧!

mind思维英语(精神MIND是个哲学概念)

mind思维英语

MIND is a philosophical concept normally contrasted with the concept of body. Both concepts have acquired their meanings through so long-standing a set of metaphysical disagreements that neither can be defined in isolation from the controversial theories in which each is historically embedded. Most modern theories of mind and body are responses to distinctions laid down in the 17th century by Rene Descartes, who supposed the universe to be divided between two fundamental and irreducible sorts of substances, roughly corresponding to minds and bodies. These substances may be considered from a psychological perspective concerned with how the minds works or a metaphysical perspective concerned with its nature.

精神是个哲学概念,通常与身体的概念形成对照。两个概念通过一系列存在已久的形而上学的分歧获得了它们各自的含义,以至于两者都无法从历史发展而来的这些有争议的理论中孤立地来定义。大多数精神与身体的现代理论都是对勒奈·笛卡尔于17世纪提出的种种差别的回应,笛卡尔认为,宇宙被分为了两种根本的和不可削减的物质,大致对应于精神和身体。这些物质可从心理学的角度来考虑精神是如何运作的,或者从形而上学的角度来考虑它的性质。

PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Thought as a Criterion of Mind. Descartes claimed that thought was the essential property of mind which he appropriately termed res cogitans, or “thinking thing.” The essential properties of a thing are those it cannot coherently be conceived of as lacking. Descartes could not think of himself as lacking thought, since in the very effort to do so he must be thinking. But he could, he claimed, coherently conceive of himself as lacking a body, since he might only be dreaming that he had one. Hence, having a body occupying space—that is, a res extensas, or “extended thing”—is not essential to a thinking thing. In his view, bodies and minds are fundamentally different: bodies cannot think, and minds are un-extended in space. Since each can be conceived of as logically independent of the other, the mind can in principle survive the death of the body. While this conclusion is no proof of immortality, the hope of such a proof was never far from Descartes’ intentions, which shows that his concept of mind inherited certain features of the Christian concept of soul. But the logical separation of bodies from minds—or souls—immediately gives rise to problems. One is that the use of the concept of thought can be immediately considered as irrelevant to the understanding of bodily behavior.

心理学的方法

作为精神标准的思想。笛卡认为,思想是精神的本质属性,他恰当地将其称为思维实体,或“思想物”。一个事物的本质属性是那些被认为是相互偶合的不可缺乏的属性。笛卡尔不可能认为他自己缺乏思想,因为在这种努力中他一定在思考。但他声称,他可以连贯地想象他自己没有身体,因为他可能只是在做梦他拥有一个身体。因此,拥有一个占据空间的身体---换言之,是一个延伸,或者“延伸的事物”---对一种思考的事物并不是必不可少的。在他看来,身体和精神从根本上是不同的:身体不能思考,而精神是无法在空间中延伸的。因为,在逻辑上各自都可被构想成对彼此的独立,原则上精神在身体死亡后可以继续存在。虽然这个结论并不是永生的证据,但对这种证据的希望从未远离笛卡尔的意图,它表明他的精神概念继承了基督教灵魂概念的某种特征。不过是身体从精神---或者灵魂符合逻辑的分离---于是立刻引发了种种问题。问题之一就是使用思想的概念会立刻被认为与对身体行为的理解无关。

We often refer to thought in explaining someone’s conduct—for example, a man’s digging is explained by reference to his thinking that there is gold in the ground. We also say that a dog is digging because he thinks there is a bone. Theologians would be reluctant to attribute souls to animals, and Descartes hesitated even to allow them minds. This means that however similar to human conduct animal behavior is, it must be possible to explain the latter without reference to mind or thought. But because the similarities are so great, the question arises as to whether we need to refer to thought at all in explaining human conduct. This problem was rendered acute through Descartes’ concession that what he believed to be other men acting as they do might not be men at all but cleverly designed automata. Moreover, he reasoned, since my own body is distinct from my mind, perhaps all bodily conduct can be explained through the same mechanical principles that cover animals or machines.

我们在解释某人的行为时常常涉及思想---例如,一个人的挖掘可参照他认为地下有金子来解释。我们也可以说一只狗在挖掘,因为它认为那里有骨头。神学家不愿意把灵魂归于动物,而笛卡尔甚至不允许它们拥有精神。这意味着无论人类的行为举止与动物的行为多么相似,在不涉及精神或思想的情况下,解释后者的行为是完全可能的。但由于这种相似性是如此之高,出现的问题就是,在解释人类行为时究竟我们是否需要涉及到思想。通过笛卡尔的让步,尖锐地提出了这一问题,以至于他认为其他人类做出的行为根本不可能是人类的行为,而是设计巧妙的自动装置。而且他推断,由于我自己的身体与我的精神是全然不同的,也许所有的身体行为都可以通过包括动物或机器相同的机械原理来解释。

These considerations immediately deprive the concept of thought of its common explanatory role, a consequence Descartes evidently was prepared to accept. So was Benedict de Spinoza, who argued that the belief that we cannot explain bodily behavior purely in bodily terms is simply owing to the fact that we do not yet know enough about bodies. This conjecture is strikingly confirmed by modern servomechanisms, machines to which we would be reluctant to ascribe minds, much less souls, but whose computational powers resemble and amplify human ones. Machines of this sort are different, no doubt, from bodies as conceived of by Descartes. But because our knowledge of electric circuit appears sufficient to account for the behavior of machines, reference to mind and to thought appear decreasingly relevant to our understanding the physical universe, including the human body.

这些考虑直接使思想的概念丧失了它常见的解释作用,而笛卡尔显然是准备接受这一结果的。本尼迪克特·德·斯宾诺沙也是如此,他认为,我们无法纯粹用身体的术语来解释身体行为的信念,仅仅是由于事实上我们对身体尚未足够的了解。这一推测被现代的自动控制装置惊人地确认了,那是我们不愿意归因于精神的,更不要说归因于灵魂的机器,但那些机器的计算能力类似和增强了人类的能力。毫无疑问,这类机器与笛卡尔设想的身体是不同的。但由于我们对电路的了解似乎足以解释机器的行为,因此关于精神和思想,似乎与我们对物质世界的理解,包括人类的身体愈发地缺乏了相关性。

Behaviorist View. This seeming irrelevance of thought is reinforced by the claims, and in some measure by the results, of behaviorist psychology, which allegedly eliminates all mentalistic explanation in favor of descriptions of differential responses to stimuli. Even verbal behavior is said to require nothing save an appropriate history of conditioning.

行为主义者的观点。思想的这种表象的非相关性受到了这些主张的强化,而且在一定程度上是由行为主义者心理状态的结果强化的,据称它消除了所有精神作用的解释,支持对刺激不同反应的描述。据说,即使言语行为也不需要什么,仅需要一种适当的条件作用的历史。

Behaviorists see the world not as divided into minds and bodies but as divided into two sorts of bodies: those that can be modified by “learning” and those that cannot. The latter are the province of the non-psychological sciences. The former are subject to the laws of psychology, which are merely law of conditioning, irreducible to non-psychological laws.

行为主义者认为世界不可划分为精神和身体,而应分为两种身体:能够通过“学习”改进的和无法改进的。后者是心理学的领域。前者则遵从心理学的法则,它只是条件作用的法则,不能还原到非心理学的法则。

Behaviorism is thus vulnerable to attack from two sides. The extent to which its laws may be reduced to those of physiology challenges its autonomy. And the degree to which it can in fact account for such things as linguistic mastery—not to mention concept formation and even perception—without postulating something like an internal representational structure, is a challenge to its adequacy. But even if cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics should rehabilitate the pattern of explanation in which what we do is explained through what we think, this would not automatically reinstate Cartesianism. For the intuition of the behaviorist that there are two sorts of body thinks, and one sorts does not. Our bodies may just be the former sort. This makes it imperative to determine how Descartes construed thought, since he denied that bodies are able to think.

因此,行为主义者容易受到来自两方面的攻击。在很大程度上,其法则可能会变成挑战其自主性的那些生理学。以及在多大程度上,确切地说它能够解释像语言的把握这样的事物---更不用说概念的形成,甚至认识能力---而不是去假定像内在的表征结构的东西,这都是对其充分性的挑战。但即使是认知心理学和语言心理学应该恢复解释的模式,其中我们的行为是通过我们思考来解释的,这也不会自动恢复笛卡尔主义。因为,行为主义者的直觉有两种身体的思考,而其中一种是无法思考的。我们的身体可能只是前者。这就使我们必须确定笛卡尔是如何解释思想的,因为他否认身体能够思考。

Faulty Criteria of Mind. Certain activities, such as judging, inferring, and deciding, exemplify what we commonly mean by “thinking.” But Descartes defined “thought” so widely that everything mental must be an instance of it---for example, feeling, willing, and imagining. And though subsequent philosopher often relegated these activity to distinct “faculties,” the question remains as to what makes each faculty “mental,” or if “being mental” is synonymous with “being a mode of thought,” then what must the faculties have in common to qualify as modes of though?

有缺陷的精神标准。某些活动,如判断、推理和抉择,举例说明了我们通常所指的“思考”。但是,笛卡尔定义的“思想”是如此广泛,以至于一切精神的东西都是它的实例---例如,感觉、愿望和想象。虽然后来的哲学家把这些活动置于独特“能力”的次要地位,但问题依然是,什么使每种能力成为“精神的”,或者如果“精神的存在”与“思想模式的存在”是相同的,那么这些能力必须有什么共同之处作为思想的模式?

Two epistemological criteria have at times been held central. (1) To be in any mental state M is to be immediately aware that one is in M, whereas one can be in a bodily state without being aware that one is. Moreover, we are never directly aware that we are in a bodily state but come to know this only on the basis of inference from evidence. (2) Since evidence is irrelevant to knowledge of our own mental states, our beliefs about our own minds are incorrigible—that is, they are not subject to revision or rejection in the light of future evidence. We cannot be mistaken concerning our own mental states.

有时位于中心的有两个认识论的标准。(1)处于任何精神状态的M会立刻意识到M中的一个中心,而处于身体状态中的一个中心却未意识到自己是中心。此外,我们从未直接地意识到我们身体的状态,而只是在证据推断的基础上来认识这点。(2)由于证据与我们对自身精神状态的理解无关,因此,我们对有关我们自身精神的信念是无法改变的---换言之,根据未来的证据,它们无法修改或拒绝。关于我们自身的精神状态,我们是不会出错的。

There are difficulties with both criteria. It is objected to (1) that the mental has been identified with the conscious. But there may be mental states of which we are unconscious, as Freud held. And not only are we not “immediately aware” of these unconscious states, we may encounter great difficulties in finding out about them at all. And when we do, it will be by way of inference and hypothesis, in much the same way as we find out about the mental states of others, or, for that matter, about our own bodily states.

关于这两个标准仍存在着一些困难。反对(1)的理由认为精神并不等同于意识。就像弗洛伊德认为的,我们所拥有的精神状态可能是无意识的。我们不仅不能“立刻意识到”这些无意识的状态,而且我们在完全了解它们时还可能遇到巨大的困难。并且在我们这样做时,只能通过推理和假设,说到这件事,差不多就像我们了解其他人的精神状态一样,或者就像了解我们自己的身体状态一样。

The objection to (2) is that there may be redescriptions, even of conscious states, that must be given in the light of unconscious beliefs and feelings, and until we know about the latter, we can easily be mistaken about the former. Even without recourse to the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious, however, it is possible to argue that no description of a mental state is immune to revision in the light of future observations, unless we merely decide to hold it immune. But we could do that with any description of anything. There may be instances where it is difficult to see how our beliefs about being in certain mental states—pain is a favored example—could be in doubt. Even if this is allowed, the instances would then be too special to allow the immediacy of access or the incorrigibility that would enable us to define “the mental” as a class.

反对(2)的理由是,即使有意识的状态,可能也存在重新描述的情况,也必须根据无意识的信念和感觉,而且,在我们了解后者之前,我们很容易对前者会产生误解。然而,即使不依靠无意识的精神分析概念,人们也有可能根据未来的观察,对精神状态的描述不得不产生修正的争论,除非我们决定对其不加以修正。不过我们可以对任何事情进行描述。可能有些例子很难使我们明白在某些精神状态中我们对存在的信念---痛苦就是个很不错的例证---可能会受到怀疑。即使允许,那么这些例子也会太特殊,不允许直接访问或难以矫正,以至于我们不可能将“精神的”定义成一类。

Intensionality as a Criterion. A more promising criterion of mind is that mental states, in contrast to bodily states, are intensional—that is, they always have “objects” and so always are “of” or “about” something. This observation, if true, entails a logical difference between psychological descriptions, which are intensional, and non-psychological (physical) descriptions, which are extensional. A sentence is extensional when any term occurring in it may be replaced by another term without changing the truth-value of the sentence if the two terms stand for the same thing. This is not so of an intensional sentence. Thus even though “morning star” and “evening star” stand for the same thing (the planet Venus), it will not follow that because Smith believes the morning star is a star, he also believes the evening star is a star. For he might believe the evening star is a planet and not know that it is the same as the morning star.

作为标准的内涵性。在与身体状态形成的对照中,一个更有前途的精神标准就是心理的状态,它们都是内涵性的---就是说,它们总是有“对象”,所以它们总是 “…的”或“关于”某事的。如果是真的,那么这种观察在心理学的描述之间就蕴含了逻辑上的差异,就是内涵的,而非心理学的(物理的)描述,就是外延的。当一个句子中出现的任何术语可由另一个术语替代而不改变该句子的真值,如果两个术语代表了同样的东西时,那么它就是外延的。这并不是一个外延的句子。因此,即使“晨星”与“暮星”代表了同一个事物(行星维纳斯),它不可能因为史密斯相信晨星是一颗星,他就会相信暮星也是一颗星。因为,他可能认为木星是颗行星,而不知道它与晨星是一样的。

There are further differences between intensional and extensional descriptions. The objects of mental states need not exist---that is, one can fear, or hate, or believe in something that is not real. So it will not follow that because Smith believes in elves, elves in fact exist. In extensional description, by contrast, it is always valid to infer from the truth of the sentence “a is F” that something is F. If the sentences and descriptions of psychology then refer to mental states, and if the latter are indeed intensional, then the descriptions of psychology will have special logical features differentiating them from physical, or extensional, descriptions. Then the efforts to define such concepts as “belief” in term of dispositions to behave, or to respond in certain ways, would be doomed, since these descriptions are extensional.

在内涵与外延的描述之间还存在进一步的差别。精神状态的对象不一定存在---换句话说,人可能恐惧,或者憎恨,或者相信不存在的东西。因此,事情不会因为史密斯相信精灵的存在,精灵在事实上就存在。在外延的描述中,相比之下,从“小写的a 是大写的F”中推导出某物是大写F这句话的真实,总是有效的。如果这句话对心理学的描述指的是精神状态,而且如果后者确实是内涵的,那么心理学的描述就会有别于物理的,或外延描述的特殊逻辑特征。那么根据行为倾向,或者以某种方式的回应将这样的概念定义为“信念”的种种努力就注定要失败,因为这些描述都是外延的。

This argument may furnish cognitive psychology with the basis for a critique of behaviorism, which can be brought out by considering under what conditions a piece of behavior is an action. It is an action when it is explained through the agent’s reasons. Whatever may be the connection between reasons and conduct—for example, whether the connection is causal—reasons, when they explain conduct, are themselves intensional. And while the behaviorist may say that the concept of action is one his program means to replace, “replacement” is itself a kind of action, so that if the behaviorist can have reason for doing things, so might his subject. And if psychology itself is intensional, it is unclear that intensionality can be eliminated without eliminating psychology. In any event, intensionality seems a better basis for asserting the autonomy of psychology than conditioning is.

这一论据可以为行为主义的批判提供认知心理学的基础,它能通过判断得出在什么条件下一种举止成为一种行为。当通过中介的原因获得解释时它就是一种行为。无论在原因与行为之间有什么联系----例如,联系是否是因果关系---原因,当它们解释了行为时,它们自身就是内涵的。虽然行为主义者会说,行为概念是人计划的替代手段,“替代”本身就是一种行为,因此,如果行为主义者能够有理由去做一些事情,那么他的主体也能这么做。而且如果心理学本身是内涵的,那么在没有排除心理学的情况下,能否排除内涵性尚不清楚。不管怎样,相比条件作用,内涵性对于主张心理学的自主性似乎有更好的基础。

Representation as a Criterion. It can be argued that not everything mental is intensional (Pain and other sensations may not be) and that not everything intensional is a mental state (pictures are always ”of” something). But even if they are not the criterion for the mental, the fact that mental states are intensional at all must say something important about the mind. No issue in contemporary philosophy is more complex than the analysis of intensionality.

作为标准的再现。也许有人会说,不是所有的精神活动都是内涵性的(痛苦以及其它的感觉可能就不是),并不是所有的内涵都是一种精神状态(图片总是有关某事的)。但即使它们不是精神的标准,但精神状态是内涵的事实完全应该说明了精神状态某些重要的事情。当代哲学中的问题没有比对内涵性的分析更复杂了。

But it has been argued that intensionality would have natural explanation if mental states were representations of the world, inasmuch as the logical features to which intensionality gives rise are typically found in descriptions of representations—for example, descriptions of sentences, pictures, and the like. And this would suggest that explanation in psychology would make an essential reference to the way the subject represented his world.

不过有人认为,如果精神状态是世界的再现,那么内涵性就会具有自然的解释能力,因为通常在再现的描述中可以找到内涵性引起的逻辑特征---例如,对句子、图片等等的描述。这表明,心理学的解释会对主体代表其世界的方式做出重要的参考。

With this suggestion, however, the intensional analysis of mind connects with the explanatory role we noticed in connection with “thought”; for, explaining a man’s actions with reference to his thinking is pretty much to say that we have to take account of how he represent his situation. But representation, finally, cannot be very far from what Descartes thought minds were: he believed that the task of a res cogitans is to arrive at a true representation of the world. His life as a scientist was to find this representation, and his life as a philosopher was to convince himself of its certainty.

然而,伴随这种意见,对精神的内涵分析就与我们注重的有关“思想”的解释作用相关联;因为,参考其想法来解释一个人的行为差不多是说,我们不得不考虑他是如何描述其处境的。但再现,最终不会与笛卡尔认为的心灵很远:他认为,思维实体的任务是对世界的一种真实再现。他作为科学家的一生就是寻找这一再现,而他作为哲学家的一生就是使他自己相信其必然。

METAPHYSICAL APPROACHES

We have thus far examined the mind-body problem from the perspective of philosophical psychology. But the problem has traditionally been viewed as a metaphysical one, and indeed as the basic metaphysical problem, for the joining of mind and body---or of consciousness and its objects—was epitomized by Arthur Schopenhauer as the World-knot. It is a knot so densely inter-looped that philosophers have of often despaired of unraveling it and have sought instead to cut through it by insisting that the entire issue is nonsense of some deep sort.

形而上学的方法

截止目前,我们已从哲学心理学的视角审视了精神-身体的问题。但在传统上该问题一直被看作一个形而上学的问题,为了精神与身体的结合,甚至被看成一个基本的形而上学问题,或者由阿瑟·叔本华概括为世界结---意识与其对象的问题。那是一个如此密集的相互交织的结,以至于哲学家常常对解开它感到绝望,而坚持认为整个问题都是无稽之谈来避开它。

Dualist Theories. Be that as it may, the World-knot may be a tangle less because the components themselves are mental and physical than because each of them was defined from the beginning as a distinct substance. “Substance” is a term hardly used in technical philosophy today. It belongs to a family of largely abandoned concepts. But it was very vital in Descartes’ time, and certain features lingered on to complicate philosophy when the central concept had all but disappeared. Substances were by definition independent of one another in such a way that any causal interaction between them was impossible. Nevertheless, bodies and minds appear to interact: my arm normally moves when I want it to, I feel pain when I touch a hot trying pan.

二元论理论。尽管这样,由于它们自身的组成是精神与物理的,而不是由于它们中每一个从开始就被定义成的一种独特实质,因此世界结也许没有那么纠结。在当今的技术哲学中已几乎不再使用“实质”这一术语。在很大程度上,它属于一个已被抛弃的概念家族。但在笛卡尔的时代它是非常重要的,而且在中心概念几乎消失时,某些特征仍纠缠着复杂的哲学。按照定义,实质是相互独立的,这样,在它们之间任何因果关系的相互作用都是不可能的。然而,身体与精神似乎是相互作用的:我的手臂在我想让它活动时通常就会活动,当我触摸到热锅时我会感觉到疼痛。

These intuitions appear to support the theory of interactionism, but that theory is ruled out conceptually in that bodies and minds are distinct substances. Where it not for the concept of substance, there would be no problem, and as it is there can be no solution. Certainly it would not be helpful to insist, with epiphenomenalism, or “one-way interactionism,” that bodies can act on minds but minds cannot act on anything. For apart from raising the question of why minds should be causally impotent, epiphenomenalism appears only to have revised the rules of meaning for “substance.”

这些直觉似乎支持相互作用论的理念,但该理论在概念上排除了身体与精神是独特的实质。假如不是实质的概念,就不存在问题,而现在的情况是不可能有解决的办法。运用副现象论或者“单向相互作用论”来坚持身体可以作用于精神,而精神无法作用于任何事情的观点,当然不会有任何帮助。因为,除了提出为什么精神应该是因果的无效问题之外,副现象论似乎只是修正了“实质”含义的规则。

There is left only one possible theory, namely parallelism, according to which mental and bodily events form parallel series with no events in common. That leaves the intuitions to be accounted for, which would seem to favor interactionism. A number of quite ingenious solutions were advanced in the 17th century, most of which relegated to God the task of mediating between the two series. It is a standing miracle, and evidence of constant divine intervention, that a person’s arm should go up when he want it to. God causes the idea of warmth to form in a person when his body is close to the fire, and so on. This position is occasionalism, as defended by Arnold Guelincx and Nicholas de Malbranche, who used a rhetorical image for representing the two series. They are like two clocks, one of which strikes the hour when the other marks it, not because there is any causal interaction between the clocks but because they were designed to function in phase.

只剩下了一个可能的理论,即平行论,据此,精神的与身体的活动形成了没有任何共有活动的平行系列。这就留下了需要解释的直觉问题,它似乎有利于相互作用论。在17世纪出现了许多很巧妙的解决方案,其中大部分都将调停这两个系列的任务委托给了上帝。这是一个永恒的奇迹,而且是神圣不断干预的证据,因为人的手臂在神想要它活动时就会举起。当一个人的身体接近火时,诸如此类,是上帝使人形成了温暖的念头。这一观点就是偶因论,是由阿诺德·奎林克斯和尼古拉斯·德·马尔布兰奇辩护的,他们用了一种夸张的意象来表现这两个系列。他们就像两座时钟,一个时钟报时,另一个也跟着报时,这并不是因为在两个时钟之间存在什么因果关系的相互作用,而是因为它们被设计成了相同的功能。

G. W. Leibniz exhaustively elaborated on occasionalism, but it and all the classical positions mentioned simply vanish when substance is given up as a relevant concept. When it goes, all that remains is to note that arms move when men want them to, and so on, and that the constant conjunction of volition and movement is like any causal connection to be found anywhere in nature. The relationship between mind and body, or between mental and bodily events, is no more (though certainly no less) difficult to analyze than any causal connection. John Locke and David Hume made an effort to discover the laws by which mental events are related to one another, on the assumption that such laws are similar to the law of physics.

G. W. 莱布尼兹详尽地阐述过偶因论,但当实质作为相关的概念被放弃时,偶因论和所有提到的古典观点都消失了。当它消失时,剩下的一切就是当人想让手臂移动时,注意手臂的移动等等,以及意志和运动的不断结合,就像在自然中发现的任何因果关系那样。在精神与身体之间,或者在精神的与身体的活动之间的关系,并不比任何因果关系分析起来更加困难(尽管肯定不少)。约翰·洛克和大卫·休谟在假定这些规律与物理定律相似的情况下,为发现心理活动之间相互关联的规律做出了努力。

Monist Theories. Even to speak of causal relations between two kinds of events, mental and physical, may be regarded as implying a metaphysical stand at the outset. For philosophers known as monists have often insisted that there is only one kind of event because there is only one kind of thing out of which the universe in made. This one thing may be mental, in which case the position is idealism. It may be material, in which case the position is materialism. Or it may be neutral as to the distinction between mental and material, a view known as neutral monism and vigorously defended by William James. Each of these positions has the complex task of showing how the obvious distinctions between mental and material are to be explained.

一元论者的理论。甚至值得一提的是,在精神与物理两种活动之间的因果关系可被视为在一开始就隐含着形而上学的立场。因为被称为一元论者的哲学家通常坚持认为只有一种结果,因为只有一种情况创造了宇宙。这一东西可能是精神上的,在这种情况下,立场就是唯心主义。这一东西可能是物质的,在这种情况下,立场就是唯物主义。至于精神与物质的区别它可能是中立的,一种被认为是中立一元论的观点,而且威廉·詹姆斯对此进行了有力的辩护。这些观点中的每一种观点都有复杂的任务,就是展示出如何解释精神与物质之间明显的区别。

Currently the most actively discussed position is a form of materialism known as central-state identity theory, according to which mental states are simply identical with certain states of the brain or of the central nervous system. They are identical in the way in which a stroke of lightning is identical with a shower of electrons. In part this theory is subject to scientific confirmation, but in part it is more than a scientific itself encapsulates virtually every philosophical problem there is. To the degree that mental states are intensional, however, then so must brain-states be intensional, since mind and brain are one.

目前讨论最为活跃的观点是一种被称为中心状态同一论的唯物主义的形式,据此,精神状态与大脑或中枢神经系统的某种状态完全相同。它们的相同如同闪电与电子雨阵的相同一样。在某种程序上,这一种理论得到了科学的证实,但在某种程度上,它不仅仅是一门科学,实际上它自身还囊括了各种哲学的问题。然而,事实上精神状态是内涵性的,那么大脑的状态也一定是内涵性的,因为精神与大脑是一体的。

This conclusion, if true, entails that the human body, and any body that has a brain or a nervous system, must have many of the features commonly attributed to minds and be organized in ways that are very complicated indeed. And the laws of explanation that cover human behavior must still take into consideration the way the organism represents its own situation, even if the representing is finally done by the brain.

如果是真的,那么这一结论就包括了人类的身体,以及具有大脑或神经系统的任何部分,就必须具有通常属于精神的并且以非常复杂的方式构成的许多特征。而解释涵盖人类行为的这些规律还必须考虑到有机体表现其自身处境的方式,即使这种表现最终是由大脑完成的。

The identity theory, of course, entails that the mind and body are inseparable, a position that will raise severe questions for those who are concerned with whether there is survival after death. The death of the body would be just the death of the mind, since body and mind are the same, but there is still conceptual room for bodily resurrection and hence for resurrection of the mind.

当然,同一论蕴含的精神与身体是不可分的,对于那些关心死后是否还能生存的人来说,一种观点会提出严重的问题。身体的死亡就是精神的死亡,因为身体与精神是同一的,但对于身体的复活在概念上仍然是有余地的,因此对于精神的复活也是如此。

A further aspect of the identity theory lies in its therapeutic implications. Inasmuch as mental disorders would ipso facto be brain disorders, so modification of the brain would be modification of the mind. On the other hand, modification of the mind is just modification of the train, and our mode of access to the brain might in part lie through the understanding of the patient. Some room still remains for the “talking cure” of the sort variously pursued in psychoanalysis, as well as for the chemical treatment of depression and other pathologies. The identity theory is as entangled and debated a matter as everything in this subject has been form the beginning.

同一论更进一步的方面在于它治疗的影响。因为,精神障碍实际上就是大脑紊乱,因此对精神的修复就是对大脑的修复,另一方面,对精神的修复就是对大脑的修复,而我们接触大脑的方式在某种程度上是通过对病人的了解。在精神分析中追求各种不同的“谈话疗法”,以及对抑郁症和其它精神异常的化学治疗仍有某些空间。同一论作为一个被纠缠和受到争论的问题,就像这个学科中的一切那样一开始就是如此。

ARTHUR C. DANTO

Author of “Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge”

亚瑟·C. 丹托

“知识的分析哲学”作者

2021年8月2日译

(译者注:该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版,第19卷,第148页至151页)

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