25 | 大卫·查默斯谈意识、难题与模拟人生

大家好，欢迎收听《心灵景观》播客。我是主持人肖恩·卡罗尔。如果你们中有人读过我最近出版的《大图景》一书，就会知道作为试图理解经验世界的自然主义者，我们必须思考的现象之一就是意识。其实即便没读过那本书，大多数人可能也知道这个相当著名的事实。

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. If any of you have read The Big Picture, my most recent book, you know that one of the things we have to think about if we're naturalists trying to come to terms with the world of our experience is the phenomenon of consciousness. Actually, most of you probably know that even if you haven't read that book, it's a pretty well known fact.

问题当然在于，意识这一事实对我们提出了什么要求？我们能否仅用解释其他事物的工具来解释意识？那些遵循物理定律、标准模型和核心理论运动的原子和粒子？还是我们需要某种额外的东西来帮助解释意识的本质及其起源？我个人认为我们不需要其他东西。

The question of course is what is demanded of us by the fact of consciousness? Can we simply hope to explain consciousness using the same tools we explain other things with? Atoms and particles moving according to laws of physics, according to the standard model and the core theory? Or do we need something else somehow that helps us explain what consciousness is and how it came about? So I'm someone who thinks we don't need anything else.

我认为只需理解物质运动与相互作用，意识就会作为更高层次的现象涌现。今天的嘉宾是大卫·查默斯，他可能是对立阵营中最著名且备受尊敬的代言人——那些认为需要超越现有物理定律才能解释意识的人。正是这位哲学家创造了'意识的难题'这一术语，所谓简单问题包括视觉感知、行为反应或心算过程，而难题则指向我们独特的个人体验。

I think it's just understanding the motion and interactions of physical stuff from which consciousness emerges as a higher level phenomenon. Our guest today is David Chalmers, who is probably the most well known and respectable representative of the other side, the people who think that you need something beyond just the laws of physics as we currently know them to account for consciousness. David is the philosopher who coined the term the hard problem of consciousness. The idea being that the easy problems are, you know, how you look at things and why you react in certain ways, how you do math problems in your head. The hard problem being our personal experience.

成为你或我而非他人的第一人称主观体验究竟是什么——这才是真正的难题。像我这样的人会想：'我们终将解决它，这只是表述方式和哲学理解的问题'。

What it is like to be you or me rather than somebody else. The first person subjective experience. That's the hard problem and someone like me thinks, oh, yeah. We'll we'll get there. It's just a matter of words and understanding and philosophy.

而像大卫这样的学者则认为需要根本性改变世界观。他自认是自然主义者（相信自然世界而非超自然，也非主张脱离肉体的二元论者），但并非物理主义者。他认为自然界不仅具有物理属性，还具有心理属性。可以说他确信难题的存在，但不对任何特定答案固执己见——大卫·查默斯是位即便反对者也尊重的哲学家。

Someone like David thinks we need a real change in our underlying way of looking at the world. So he describes himself as a naturalist, someone who believes in, you know, just the natural world, no supernatural world, not a dualist who thinks it's a disembodied mind or anything like that, but he's not a physicalist. He thinks that the natural world has not only natural properties, not only physical properties, but mental properties as well. So I would I would characterize him as convinced of the problem, but he's not wedded to any particular answer. David Chalmers is a philosopher who everyone respects even if they don't agree with him.

与他交谈令人愉悦，因为他始终保持开放态度。正如所言，他虽确信难题存在，但在解决方案上从不教条——遇到有力论证时愿意改变观点。对试图理解人类本质与意识起源的自然主义者而言，他是探讨这个重大问题的绝佳对象。最近大卫还对新奇的理论产生兴趣：我们可能生活在某个高等文明制造的计算机模拟之中。

He's a delight to talk to because he is very open minded about considering different things. Like I said, he's convinced of this problem, but when it comes to solving the problem, he will propose solutions, but he won't take them too dogmatically. He will change his mind, when good arguments comes along. So he's a great person to talk to about this very very important problem for naturalists when they try to confront how to understand what it means to be a human being and where consciousness comes from. Also, David has developed a recent interest in the simulation hypothesis, the idea that maybe we could all be living in a simulation running on a computer owned by a very very advanced civilization in a completely different reality.

我们将讨论意识难题和各种哲学议题，但不会强迫他表态——我的目的不是当场说服大卫·查默斯改变立场，而是让听众了解他对此的见解，再对照我的观点，最终由你们自行判断。或许此刻或未来某天，你会改变自己的想法。

So we'll talk about the hard problem of consciousness. We'll talk about various philosophical issues and you know, I won't pin him down on anything. I'm not trying to argue with him. My point here is not to convince David Chalmers in real time that he's wrong, but rather to let you, the listeners, hear what his perspective is on these issues and then hear what my perspective is on these issues and decide for yourself. Maybe you will change your mind either right now or sometime down the road.

这将是场有趣的对话，相信你们会喜欢。现在有请大卫·查默斯——《心灵景观》播客欢迎你的到来！

So this is a fun conversation. I'm sure you'll like it and let's go. David Chalmers, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

谢谢，很荣幸参与节目。

Thanks. It's great to be here.

在我邀请哲学家参与播客的短暂经历中发现，我们总有说不完的话题。尤其知道你涉猎广泛，让我们直接切入观众最感兴趣的内容——作为世界顶尖的意识哲学专家，我记得'意识难题'这个术语正是由你创造的。

So I've discovered in my brief history of having philosophers on the podcast that there's a lot to say, that we have a lot of ground to cover. I know that you especially have all sorts of interests. Let's just jump right into, the crowd pleasing things that we can talk about. You're one of the world's experts on the philosophy of consciousness. You, I believe, are the one who coined the phrase the hard problem of consciousness.

那么你会如何定义这个难题是什么？

So how would you define what the hard problem is?

意识的难题在于解释大脑中的物理过程如何产生主观体验。当你思考心智时，有许多事情需要解释。其中一些涉及我们复杂的行为，所有我们能做的事情。我们能四处走动。我们能行走。

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how physical processes in the brain somehow give rise to subjective experience. So when you think about the mind, there's a whole lot of things that need to be explained. Some of them involve our sophisticated behavior, all the things we can do. We can get around. We can walk.

我们能说话。我们能彼此交流。我们能解决科学问题，但其中很多都属于复杂的行为能力层面，我们能做的事情。在解释行为方面，我们已经有相当不错的方法。至少在原则上，你找到大脑中的一个回路，一个复杂的神经系统，它可能执行一些计算，产生一些输出，生成行为，那么原则上你就有了解释。

We can talk. We can communicate with each other. We can solve scientific problems, but a lot of that is at the level of sophisticated behavioral capacities, things we can do. And when it comes to explaining behavior, we got a pretty good bead on how to explain it. In principle, at least, you find a circuit in the brain, a complex neural system, which maybe performs some computations, produces some outputs, generates the behavior, then in principle, you've got an explanation.

可能需要一两个世纪来完善细节，但这大致是认知科学中的标准模型。你将这统称为简单问题？是的。所以这就是大约二十多年前被称为简单问题的部分。

It may take a century or two to work out the details, but that's roughly the standard model in cognitive science. And you've wrapped this together as the easy problem? Yeah. So so this is what twenty odd years ago, called the easy problems

有点半开玩笑的意思。

Slightly tongue in cheek.

特别是关于心智和意识的部分，大致指的是这些行为问题。是的。没有人认为它们在普通意义上简单。它们之所以被称为简单，是因为我们知道我们有解释它们的范式。找到一个神经机制或计算机制。

Of of the mind and of consciousness in particular, roughly referring to these behavioral problems. Yeah. Nobody thinks they're easy in any ordinary sense. The sense in which they're easy is that we know the we've got a paradigm for explaining them. Find a neural mechanism or a computational mechanism.

这就是那种可以产生那种行为的东西。原则上，找到正确的机制，讲述正确的故事，你就会得到解释。但当涉及到意识，主观体验时，看起来这种方法并不那么明显适用。我的意思是，意识有一些方面，大致上是行为或功能的。你可以用意识这个词来描述清醒和反应之间的区别，例如，相对于睡着，或者可能只是谈论某些事情的能力。我可以谈论事实，嘿。

That's the kind of thing that could produce that behavior. In principle, find the right one, tell the right story, you'll have an explanation. But when it comes to consciousness, to subjective experience, it looks as if that method doesn't so obviously apply. I mean, there are some aspects of consciousness which are, roughly speaking, behavioral or functional. You could use the word consciousness for the difference between being awake and responsive, for example, versus being asleep or for maybe just for the ability to talk about certain things I can talk about the fact that, hey.

那是肖恩·卡罗尔。那边有一些书，我听到了自己的声音。这些是一些报告。解释这些报告可能也是一个简单问题，但真正独特的意识问题不是由行为部分提出的，而是由主观体验提出的，由作为一个有意识的生物从内部感受如何。我现在正看着你。

There's Sean Carroll. There are some books over there, and I'm hearing my voice. And those are some reports. Explaining those reports might also be an easy problem, but the really distinctive problem of consciousness is posed not by the behavioral parts, but by the subjective experience, by how it feels from the inside to be a conscious being. I'm seeing you right now.

我有一个颜色和形状的视觉图像，它们作为内心电影中的一个元素呈现给我。我听到了自己的声音。我感觉到了自己的身体。我有一连串的思绪在脑海中流动。这就是哲学家们所说的意识或主观体验。

I have a visual image of colors and shapes that are sort of present to me as an element in the inner movie of the mind. I'm hearing my voice. I'm feeling my body. I've got a stream of thoughts running through my head and the heart. And this is what philosophers call consciousness or subjective experience.

我认为这是我们自身的一个基本事实，我们有这种主观体验。但问题是，你如何解释它？我们称之为难题的原因是，看起来仅仅解释行为和解释我们所做的事情的标准方法并不能完全解决为什么会有主观体验的问题。似乎你可以解释我们做的所有这些事情，行走、说话、报告、推理。那么为什么这一切不在黑暗中发生呢？

And it's I take it to be one of the fundamental facts about ourselves that we have this kind of subjective experience. But then the question is, how do you explain it? And the reason why we call it the hard problem is it looks like the standard method of just explaining behaviors and explaining the things we do doesn't quite come to grips with the question of why is there subjective experience. It seems you could explain all of these things we do, the walking, the talking, the reports, the reasoning. And so why doesn't all that go on in the dark?

我们为什么需要主观体验？这就是所谓的‘难题’。

Why do we need subjective experience? That's the hard problem.

所以我有时听到它被简单描述为：作为一个主观主体、一个人，是什么样的感觉这个问题。

So sometimes I hear it glossed as the question of what it is like to be a subjective agent, to be a person.

这是对意识的很好定义。实际上，这个观点最早由我的同事汤姆·内格尔在1974年的一篇题为《成为一只蝙蝠是什么感觉？》的文章中提出或至少使其闻名，他当时在纽约大学。他的想法是，我们不知道成为一只蝙蝠是什么感觉。我们不知道蝙蝠的主观体验是怎样的。蝙蝠拥有这种奇特的声呐感知能力，这与人类拥有的任何感知能力都不直接对应。

That's a good definition of consciousness. Actually, first put forward or at least made famous by my colleague, Tom Nagel, here at NYU in an article back in 1974 called, what is it like to be a bat? And his thought was, well, we don't know what it's like to be a bat. We don't know what a bat subjective experience is like. You know, it's got this weird sonar perceptual capacity, which doesn't really correspond directly to anything that humans have.

但大概来说，成为一只蝙蝠是有某种感觉的。蝙蝠是有意识的。而另一方面，大多数人会说一杯水没有任何感觉。如果这是对的，那么一杯水是没有意识的。所以这种‘是什么感觉’的说法至少可以作为一个初步的直觉引导，帮助我们理解有意识的系统和无意识的系统之间的基本区别。

But presumably, there is something it's like to be a bat. A bat is conscious. So and most people would say on the other hand, there's nothing it's like to be a glass of water. Say, if that's right, then a glass of water is not conscious. So this this what it's like way of speaking way of speaking is a good way at least of serving as an initial intuition pump for what is the basic difference we're getting at between systems which are conscious and systems which are not.

在这个语境中有时会提到的另一个词是‘感受质’，即我们所拥有的体验。比如，看到红色是一回事，而如果我理解正确的话，体验到红色的‘红’是另一回事。

And the other word that is sometimes invoked in this context is qualia, the experiences that we have. Like, there's one thing that is it is to see the color red and a separate thing, if I get it right, to have the experience of the redness of red.

是的。‘感受质’这个词，我感觉在过去大约二十多年里有点失宠了。但可能在二十年前，很多人用这个词来描述你在体验中遇到的感官品质。典型的例子是红色的体验与绿色的体验。你可以提出所有关于这个的熟悉问题。

Yeah. This word qualia, my my sense is it's gone a little bit out out of favor over the last, say, twenty odd years. But maybe twenty years ago, heard a lot of people speaking of qualia as a word for the the sensory qualities that you come across in experience. And the paradigmatic ones would be the experience of red versus the experience of green. You know, you can raise all these familiar questions about this.

我怎么知道我对我们称之为红色的事物的体验是相同的？也许它与你面对我们称之为绿色的事物时的体验相同。你知道吗？也许你的内部体验与我的相比是颠倒的，人们称之为‘颠倒感受质’。那可能是你的红色是我的绿色。

How do I know that my experience of the things we call red is the same? Maybe it's the same as the experience you have when you you're confronted with the things we call green. You know? Maybe your internal experiences are are swapped with respect to mine, and people call that inverted qualia. That would be your red is my green.

疼痛会是另一个例子，拉丁语中的单数是。对吧。所以疼痛的感觉会是。我不确定这些品质是否就是意识的全部，也许这就是它失宠的一个原因。还有可能在思考和推理以及感觉中也有一种体验，这些在感官品质方面更难界定，但你可能会认为思考和推理也是有某种感觉的，尽管它与感知的感觉不同。

Or pain would be another example of the singular in Latin is. Right. So the feeling of pain would be a would be a. I'm not sure that these qualities are all there is though to consciousness, and maybe that's one reason why it's gone out of favor. There's also an ex maybe an experience to thinking and to reasoning and to feeling that's much harder to pin down in terms of sensory qualities, but there's still you might think something it's like to think and to reason, even though it's not the same as what it's like to sense.

我想稍微谈谈这个问题：当你和我看到红色时，我们是否有相同的体验。我不确定这怎么可能意味着相同的体验或不同的体验。我的意思是，一个发生在我脑子里，一个发生在你脑子里。在什么意义上它们可以是相同的？但也许当我说这话时，只是反映了存在一个难题的事实。

I wanna just for a little bit talk about this question of whether or not you and I have the same experience when we see the color red. I'm not sure I know what that could possibly mean for it to be either the same experience or a different experience. I mean, one is going on in my head, one is going on in your head. In what sense could they be the same? But maybe when I say that, it's just a reflection of the fact that there's a hard problem.

嗯，

Well,

我们知道有些人，比如色盲患者，他们面临的挑战要简单得多。他们甚至无法区分红色和绿色。大多数人拥有红绿色觉通道、蓝黄色觉通道以及类似亮度感知的通道。但有些人由于视网膜机制的问题，根本无法分辨红色和绿色。

we know that some people, for example, have to pick up much easier case, some people are color blind. Right. They can't they don't even make a distinction between red and green. They're red green you know, most people have a red green access for color vision and a blue yellow access and something like a brightness access. But some people, due to due to, you know, things going wrong in their retinal mechanisms don't even make the distinction between red and green.

我有红绿色盲的朋友，我常问他们：作为你是什么感觉？是像只看到蓝黄色调而看不到红绿色，还是完全不同的体验？但可以确定的是，他们的主观体验与我们不同——因为对我们而言截然不同的红绿色，在他们看来却是相同的。从逻辑上讲，我们之间必然存在某种本质差异。

So I can I got friends who are red green color blind? I'm often asking you, what is it like to be you? Is it like you just see everything in shades of of blue and yellow and you don't get the reds and greens, or is it something different entirely? But we know is that what it's like to be them can't be the same as what it's like to be us because, for example, reds and greens, which are different for us, are the same for them. So there's got to be some difference between us as a matter of logic.

我的红色不可能等同于他们的红色，我的绿色也不可能等同于...因为如果我的红色等同于他们的红色，我的绿色等同于他们的绿色，而他们的红色又等同于绿色，那么我的红色就不可能不同于绿色——但事实上却不同。

My red can't be the same as their red, and my green can't be the same as if my red was the same as their red and my green was the same as their green and their red was the same, we know their red is the same as their green, then my red couldn't be different from my green, but it is.

但事实就是不同。

But it is.

所以从逻辑上必然存在这种差异。

So as a matter of logic, there has to be some there.

但难道不能这样解释吗：每个与众不同的人，其体验都是独特的？那么问题在于，所谓的'相同'究竟有何意义？我能想象某种操作层面的相同性——比如你看到红色时说'红'这种行为上的一致，但这恰恰不是你想探讨的层面。

But isn't so one way out is just, well, everybody who is different from everybody else, their experiences are different. I guess the the question then is in what sense could they ever be the same? What is it what is the meaningfulness? And I can imagine some kind of operational sameness. Right?

就像你看到红色时说'红'这种行为层面的一致，但这正是你不想纳入考量的部分。

Like you say the word red when you see the word red in that behavioral sense, but that's exactly what you don't wanna count.

确实。直觉上多数人认为我们至少能理解'我的红等同于你的红'这个概念，虽然这本质上是个悬而未决的实证问题。你说难以将其操作化验证——作为科学家我或许需要操作化测试，但作为哲学家，我对'所有假设都必须可操作化才有意义'持怀疑态度。

Yeah. So I guess intuitively, most people think that we can, you know, at least grasp the idea that my red is the same as your red, and then it's an empirical open question, but if they are, in fact, exactly the same. I mean, you're saying, well and it is unclear how you could operationalize that matter. Now you might say, I'm a scientist. I want an operational test.

二十世纪初哲学界的逻辑实证主义运动就主张：唯有可验证的假设才有意义。但这个验证主义哲学假设本身却无法被验证——这恰恰暴露了该理论的致命缺陷。

On the other hand, I'm a philosopher. And I'm very skeptical of the idea that you want you can operationalize everything that, you know, hypothesis has got to be operationalizable to be to be meaningful. I mean, there was a movement in philosophy in the first part of the twentieth century, logical positivism or logical empiricism, where they said the only meaningful hypotheses are the ones we can we can test. And for various reasons, that turned out to have a lot of problems, not least because this very this very philosophical hypothesis of verificationism turned out not to be one that you could test.

如今哲学推特圈正掀起逻辑实证主义的复兴浪潮呢。

So It's a there's a a renaissance of logical positivism on philosophy Twitter these days.

哦，是这样吗？是的。鲁道夫·卡尔纳普，伟大的逻辑实证主义者之一，是我个人心目中的英雄之一。我读过一整本名为《构建世界》的书，部分内容就是基于他的一些思想。不过，验证主义并不在其中。

Oh, is that right? Yeah. Rudolf Karnapp, who was one of the great logical positivists, is one of my one of my heroes personally. I read a whole book called Constructing the World that was partly partly based around some of his ideas. Nonetheless, verificationism is not one of the ones.

好的。我认为特别是涉及到意识时，我们面对的是本质上主观的东西。是的。我知道我有意识，不是因为测量了自己或他人的行为，而是因为我直接从第一人称视角体验到了它。

Okay. And I think when it comes to consciousness in particular, we're dealing with something essentially subjective. Yeah. I know I'm conscious not because I measured my behavior or anybody else's behavior. It's because it's something I experienced directly from the first person point of view.

我觉得你可能是有意识的，但你知道，我无法给出一个直截了当的操作性定义。如果你说你有意识，那你就是有意识的。这就像，谁能断定呢？大多数人并不认为这能完全解决问题。也许我们会造出一个自称有意识的人工智能。

I think you're probably conscious, but, you know, it's not as if I can give a straight out operational definition of it. If you say you're conscious, then you're conscious. It's like, who's to say? That doesn't most people think that doesn't absolutely settle the question. Maybe we'd come up with an AI that says it's conscious.

而且，好吧。那会非常有趣，但这能解决它是否具有主观体验的问题吗？很可能不能。

And, okay. Well, that would be very interesting, but would it settle the question of whether it's having subjective experience? Probably not.

那么，艾伦·图灵尝试过。对吧？图灵测试本应是一种判断什么有意识、什么没有的方法。你对这个计划的成功有何看法？

Well, so Alan Turing tried. Right? The Turing test was supposed to be a way to judge what's conscious from what's not. What are your feelings about the success of that program?

我认为它不算糟糕——我是说，当然，目前没有任何机器能勉强接近通过图灵测试。

I think it's not a bad I mean, of course, no no machine right now was remotely close to passing the Turing test.

图灵测试是什么。

What the Turing test is.

是的。图灵测试的基本理念是，这是一种测试机器是否能以与普通人无法区分的方式行事的测试，至少在文字对话中，比如通过短信等方式。图灵认为最终我们会拥有能通过这个测试的机器，即在数小时的对话测试中无法与人类对话者区分开来。他并没有说那时机器就能思考了，而是说，到那时，机器是否能思考的问题基本上变得毫无意义。

Yeah. So the Turing test is the idea that it's basically a test to see whether a machine can behave in a manner indistinguishable from a normal human being, at least in a verbal conversation over, say, you know, text messaging and, and the like. And Turing thought that eventually we'll have machines that pass this test, that is they're indistinguishable from, say, another human interlocutor over hours of conversational testing. Then he didn't say at that point, then machines can think. What he said was, at that point, the question of whether machines can think becomes basically meaningless.

对。我提供了一个操作性定义来替代它。所以一旦它们通过这个测试，他说，对我来说这就足够了。

Right. And I've provided an operational definition to, to substitute for it. So once they pass this test, he says, that's good enough for me.

是的。他在论文中谈到了关于意识的反对意见。你可能会说它只是在模仿意识，而非真正有意识。据我回忆，他的回应是，嗯，谁在乎呢？我无法测试这一点。

Yeah. And he talked to the paper about the consciousness objection. You might say that it's just mimicking consciousness, but not really conscious. And he's as I as I recall, his response is, well, who cares? I can't possibly test that.

因此，这没有意义。

Therefore, it's not meaningful.

但事实证明，意识是我们珍视的事物之一。首先，它是我们心智的核心属性之一。其次，许多人认为正是意识赋予了我们心智和生活意义与价值。如果我们没有意识，没有主观体验，那么我们基本上就只是自动机器，对它们而言任何事物都没有意义或价值。所以我认为，随着我们开发出越来越复杂的人工智能，它们是否具有意识的问题将对我们如何对待它们、它们是否具有道德地位、我们是否应该关心它们的存亡、它们是否应获得权利等议题至关重要。

But it turns out that consciousness is one of the things that we value. A, it's one of the central properties of our of our minds. And two, many of us think it's what actually gives our minds gives our lives meaning and value. If we weren't conscious, we didn't have subjective experience, then we'd basically just be, you know, automata for whom nothing has any meaning or value. So I think when it comes to the question, once we develop more and more sophisticated AIs, the question of whether they're conscious is gonna be absolutely central to how we treat them, to whether they have moral status, whether we should, you know, care, whether they continue to live or die, whether they get rights.

因此我认为，如果它们没有主观体验，本质上只是机器，我们就可以像对待机器那样对待它们。但如果它们拥有与我们相似的意识体验，那么以我们目前对待机器的方式对待它们将是可怕的。是的，如果你简单地将所有这些问题操作化，我认为存在一种危险，即我们可能会失去那些我们真正关心的事物。

And so what I think many people think if they're not having subjective experiences and they're basically machines that we can treat the way we could we treat machines. But if they're having conscious experiences like ours, then it would be horrific to treat them the way we currently treat machines. So yeah. I mean, you just simply operationalize all those questions, then there's a danger, I think, that you lose the things which are really the things that we really care about.

为了让我们的背景假设更加明确，在大多数情况下，你和我都不是从严格的二元论角度出发的。我们并不试图用笛卡尔式的脱离肉体的非物质心灵来解释意识，即那种作为独立实体的心灵。对吧？至少作为第一个假设，我们想说，你和我都是由原子构成的，我们遵循物理定律，而意识在某种程度上与此相关，但并非完全独立的类别与我们互动。是这样吗？

And just so we can get our sort of background assumptions on the table here, for the most part neither you or I are coming from a strictly dualist perspective. We're not trying to explain consciousness in terms of a Descartesian disembodied immaterial mind that is a separate substance. Right? I mean, we want to at least as the as the first hypothesis say that you and I are made of atoms, we're obeying the laws of physics and the consciousness is somehow related to that but not an entirely separate category interacting with us. Is that right?

这样公平吗？

Is that fair?

是的，尽管二元论有不同的种类和程度。我的背景主要是数学、计算机科学和物理学，我的第一直觉是唯物主义的，试图用物理过程来解释一切。我们用化学解释生物学，用物理学解释化学，这是一条美妙的解释链。

Yeah. Although there's different kinds and different degrees of of dualism. I mean, my background is very much in mathematics and computer science and physics, and all of my instincts, my first instincts are materialist to try to explain everything in terms of ultimately in terms of the processes of physics. And we explain, you know, biology in terms of chemistry and chemistry in terms of physics. And this is a wonderful great chain of great chain of explanation.

但我确实认为，当谈到意识时，这条伟大的解释链似乎断裂了。大致来说，因为当涉及生物学、化学和其他领域时，需要解释的都是这些关于结构和动力学的简单问题，最终是这些系统的行为。而在意识问题上，我们似乎需要解释的是某种不同的东西。我认为，从物理学衍生的科学（如物理学、化学、生物学、神经科学等）中得出的标准解释，最终无法构成对主观体验的解释，因为它总是留下这个进一步的问题：为什么所有这些复杂的处理过程伴随着意识，伴随着主观体验？

But I do think when it comes to consciousness, this is the the one place where that great chain of explanation seems to break down. Roughly because when it comes to biology and chemistry and all these other fields, the the things that need explain explaining are all basically these easy problems of structure and dynamics and ultimately the behaviors of these systems. When it comes to consciousness, we seem to have something different that needs explaining. And I think that the standard kinds of explanations say that you get out of physics derived sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and so on, just ultimately won't add up to an explanation of subjective experience because it always leaves open this further question. Why is all that sophisticated processing accompanied by consciousness, by subjective experience?

但这并不意味着我们突然需要说这都是灵魂的属性，对吧？或者某种从时间之初就存在、在我们死后仍将继续存在的宗教事物。人们有时称之为实体二元论。也许存在一种完全独立的精神实体，以某种方式与我们的物理身体连接并互动。是的。

That doesn't mean though we suddenly need to say it's all properties of, say a soul Right. Or some religious thing which has existed since the beginning of time and will go on to continue after our death. People sometimes call that substance dualism. Maybe there's a whole separate substance that's the mental substance and somehow interacts, connects up with our physical bodies and interacts with it. Yeah.

这种观点更难与科学的世界观联系起来。但我最终倾向于的是人们有时称为属性二元论的观点。即宇宙中的事物具有某些额外的属性。在物理学中我们已经习惯了这一点。在麦克斯韦的时代，我们有将空间、时间和质量视为基本的物理理论，而麦克斯韦想要解释电磁现象，当时有一个项目试图用空间、时间和质量来解释它。

That that view is much harder to to to connect to a scientific view of the world. But the direction I end up going is what people sometimes call property dualism. The idea that there are some extra properties of things in the universe. I mean, this is something we're used to in physics already. People of you know, maybe around the time of Maxwell, we had a we had physical theories that took space and time and mass as fundamental, and then Maxwell wanted to explain electromagnetism, and there was a project of trying to explain it in terms of space and time and mass.

结果发现这并不完全奏效。你无法机械地解释它，最终我们不得不将电荷作为一种基本属性，并制定一些新的定律来支配电磁现象，这只是在我们的科学世界观中增加了一个额外的属性。因此，我倾向于认为，我们需要对意识采取某种不完全相同但至少在某种程度上类似的做法。基本上，用空间、时间、质量、电荷以及当今物理学中的任何基本要素来解释，都无法构成对意识的解释。

So now it turns out it didn't quite work. You couldn't explain it mechanically, and eventually, we we ended up positing charge as a fundamental property and some new laws governing governing electromagnetic phenomena, and that was just an extra property Right. In our scientific picture of the world. So I'm inclined to think that something not exactly analogous to that, but at least analogous to that in some respects, is what we have to do with consciousness as well. Basically, explanations in terms of space and time and mass and charge and whatever the fundamentals are in physics these days are not gonna add up to an explanation of consciousness.

因此我们还需要另一个基本属性。其中一个工作假设是，让我们将意识视为世界不可简化的元素，然后看看是否能提出一个科学解释。

So we need another fundamental property in there as well. And and, you know, one working hypothesis is let's take consciousness as an irreducible element of the world and then see if we can come up with a scientific explanation of it.

很好。我认为我们应该对此保持开放态度。虽然我个人不倾向这条路——我觉得它不太有说服力——但或许在接下来的四十五分钟里，你能说服我。

Good. I think this is, I mean, we should absolutely be open to that. I don't go down that road myself. I don't find it very convincing. But maybe, you know, in the next forty five minutes, you'll convince me.

所以我确实想探讨这点。嗯。但让我们先做些基础铺垫。我接下来要说的很多观点都会以‘我认为这是对的，如有错误请指正’的形式展开。

So I I I do wanna get there. Mhmm. But let's lay a little bit more groundwork first. So one of the things that, a lot of the statements I'm gonna be making over the course of the chat are of the form, I think this is right. Correct me if

我错了。

I'm wrong.

那么，我认为‘困难问题’之所以困难，部分原因在于你甚至无法想象观察神经元活动时说‘这就解释了意识’。这样说公平吗？

So, I think one of the things that makes the hard problem hard is just the fact that you can't even imagine looking at neurons doing something and saying, that explains it. Is that fair to say?

是的。当我们用神经活动解释现象时，常规方式是展示神经元如何作为执行某种功能的机制，最终产生行为。这是神经生物学解释的典型范式。但任何这类解释似乎都无法累积成对意识的解释。

Yeah. I would say that what we when you appeal to neural activity and explaining phenomena, there's a paradigmatic way that works. We see how those neurons serve as a mechanism for performing some function, ultimately generating some behavior. That is the paradigmatic appeal to to to neurobiology in explanation. And it just looks like any explanation of that form is not gonna add up to an explanation of consciousness.

它解释了错误的对象。它能解释行为，但那些属于‘简单问题’。用不同事物解释意识才是‘困难问题’。

It explains the wrong thing. It will explain behavior. But those were the easy problems explaining consciousness with something distinct. The hard problem.

所以你认为，即便神经科学家能做到——虽然我们离这还很远——即便他们能在人每次产生公认的有意识体验时（比如无声地感受‘红色的红’），精确指出大脑中相同的神经活动，你仍会说：但这仍不能解释我的主观体验？

So you think that even if and this we're very far away from this. But even if neuroscientists got to the point where for every time that a person was doing something we would all recognize as having a conscious experience, even if it was silent, you know, experiencing the redness of red, they could point to exactly the same neural activity going on in the brain. You would say, yes, but this still doesn't explain my subjective experience.

没错。事实上神经科学界正在进行一项重要研究计划，人们称之为寻找‘意识神经关联物’（NCC）。我们试图找到在你意识清醒时精确激活、且与意识完美关联的神经体系。虽然这个研究计划极其重要，但目前它只是相关性研究，而非解释性研究。我们可能发现某种特殊神经元以特定模式放电时总是伴随意识。

Yeah. That's in fact a very, a very important research program going on right now in neuroscience, and people call it the program of finding neural correlates of consciousness, the NCC, for short hand. We're trying to find the NCC, that neural system or systems that's active precisely when you're conscious and that correlates perfectly with consciousness, which I say is a very, very important research program. But it's really, as it stands, a program for correlation, not for explanation. So we could know that, say, when a certain special kind of neuron fires in a certain pattern, that that neural pattern always goes along with consciousness.

但接下来的问题是：为什么？解释这个事实。为何这种模式会产生意识？目前神经科学中关于NCC的研究成果都无法解释这点。我认为很多人思考后会意识到，我们本质上需要某种连接意识神经关联物与意识本身的基础法则。

But then the next question then is why? Explain that fact. Why is it that this pattern gives you consciousness? And as it stands, nothing that we get out of the neural correlates of consciousness program in neuroscience comes close to explaining that matter. And I think a lot of people, once they start to think about this, think we basically need some further fundamental principle that connects the neural correlate of consciousness with consciousness itself.

我是说，朱利奥·托诺尼提出了一种理论，即整合信息理论，他认为意识与一种他称为phi的信息整合数学度量相关。phi值越高，意识就越强。phi是一个数学和物理上可敬的量。虽然很难测量，但理论上是可以定义的，也是可以被测量的。

I mean, Giulio Tononi has developed a theory, integrated information theory, where he says consciousness goes along with a certain mathematical measure of the integration of information that he calls phi. And the more phi you have, the more consciousness you have. And phi is a mathematically and physically respectable quantity. It's very hard to measure, but in principle But you can define it. It could be measured.

我是说，关于它是否在物理学和物理系统的细节上定义明确还存在疑问，但至少它已经算是某种东西了，对吧？某种可定义的东西。但即使他是对的，即使phi这种大脑的信息属性与意识完美相关，仍然存在一个问题：为什么？为什么私人facia看起来你可以有一个宇宙，其中所有这些信息整合都在进行，却完全没有意识。而在我们的宇宙中，却存在意识。

I mean, there's questions about whether it's actually well defined in terms of the details of physics and physical systems, but it's at least, you know, halfway to being something Right. Something definable. But even if even if he's right that phi, this informational property of the brain correlates perfectly with consciousness, there's still the question of why. Why private facia looks like you could have had a universe with all of this integration of information going on and no consciousness at all. And yet in our universe, there's consciousness.

我们如何解释这一事实？嗯，我认为这就是我认为在这一点上应该做的科学事情，说，好吧。在科学中，我们把一切都归结为基本原理和基本定律。如果我们需要假设一个基本定律，将phi与意识联系起来，那就太好了。然后这也许就是我们能做到的最好的了。

How do we explain that fact? Well, I think that's what I regard as the scientific thing to do at this point to say, okay. Well, we bought in science, we boil everything down to fundamental principles and fundamental laws. And if we need to postulate a fundamental law that connects, say, phi with consciousness, then that's great. And then that will maybe that's gonna end up being the best we can do.

就像在物理学中，你总是会得到一些基本定律，无论是引力原理还是统一所有这些不同力量的大统一理论。你仍然会得到一些基本原理，而你无法进一步解释它们。有些东西必须被视为基本的。当然，我们希望尽可能减少我们的基本原理和基本属性。但你知道，奥卡姆剃刀原则说，不要在没有必要的情况下增加实体。

Just as in, say, in in physics, you always end up with some fundamental laws, whether it's a principle of gravitation or a grand unified theory that unifies all these different forces. You still end up with some fundamental principles, and you don't explain them further. Something has to be taken as basic. And the question of course, we want to minimize our fundamental principles and minimize our fundamental properties as far as we can. But, you know, Occam's razor says, don't multiply entities without necessity.

时不时地，就有必要。麦克斯韦就有必要。如果我是对的，

Every now and then, there's necessity. Maxwell had necessity. And if I'm right,

在这种情况下也有必要。你暗示或提到一个想法，这是你最著名的哲学思想实验之一，就在那里你说，你可以想象一个系统，无论你想要什么样的phi，但我们不会称它为有意识的。所以你把这个想法推到极端，说，可以有某种东西看起来和行为都像一个人，但没有意识。

there's necessity in this case too. And you hinted at or you you sort of alluded to an idea that is one of your most famous philosophical thought experiments just there where you say, you can imagine a system with whatever phi you want, but we wouldn't call it conscious. So you take this idea to the extreme and say, there can be something that looks and acts just like a person but doesn't have consciousness.

所以这就是哲学家的僵尸思想实验。哲学家的僵尸与你在好莱坞电影或海地伏都教文化中看到的那些有些不同。伏都教文化中的僵尸，据我所知，大多是那些被下了某种毒药的人。他们似乎缺乏自主性、意志力和某种自由意志。好莱坞电影中的僵尸则是那些很像我们但已经死了的生物。

So this is the philosopher's thought experiment of the the zombie. The philosopher's zombie is somewhat different from the ones you find in Hollywood movies or in, you know, Haitian voodoo culture. The ones in voodoo culture, as far as I can tell, are mostly beings that have been given some kind of poi people who have been given some kind of poison. It seems somehow seem to be lacking autonomy, volition, a certain kind of free will. The ones in Hollywood movies are beings which are a lot like us, but they're dead.

而我们是有生命的。

And we animated.

而且他们想要大脑。

And they want brains.

哲学家的僵尸是一种在功能上甚至可能在物理上与我们完全一样，但没有意识的生物。现在非常重要的是要说，没有人，当然不是我，在争论僵尸实际上存在。比如说，我们周围的一些人是僵尸。实际上，我曾经在都柏林遇到一位哲学家，他非常担心相当多的哲学家实际上是僵尸。他们根本没有意识。

The philosopher's zombie is a creature which is exactly like us functionally and maybe physically, but isn't conscious. Now it's very important to say nobody, certainly not me, is arguing that zombies actually exist. That, for example, some human beings around us are are zombies. Actually, did once meet a philosopher in in in in Dublin who was very concerned that quite a lot of philosophers actually were zombies. They weren't they weren't conscious at all.

对此我有点被冒犯的感觉。他似乎很担心我。

And I was I was a little bit insulted by this. He seemed to be worried about me.

他带我去吃了午餐。是的。

He took me to lunch. Yes.

对，对。他请我吃午饭时，问了一大堆关于意识的问题。你的网络经历之类的。没错。

Yeah. Yeah. He took me to lunch and he asked me a whole lot of questions about about consciousness. Your Internet experiences. Yeah.

是的。最后他说，好吧，你通过了。我认为...我认为你是有意识的。

Yeah. At the end, he said, okay. You pass. I think I think you're conscious.

那么好吧。但僵尸也能通过测试对吧？我是说，告诉我们...所以是不是可以说一个僵尸...嗯，我觉得我们还没让你完成定义。

So Okay. But a zombie could also pass. Right? Mean, tell us so so is it right to say that a zombie yeah. I don't think it'd be we let you finish your definition yet.

对。但僵尸在行为上会表现相同，只是...

Yeah. But a zombie would be behaviorally the same, but

没错。行为相同但没有意识体验。僵尸不存在主观感受。或许可以通过思考某种复杂的人工智能系统来逐步理解——比如能产生大量智能回应的系统。也许它能和你对话，就像升级版的Alexa或Siri，能与我们进行高度复杂的交谈。

Yeah. Behaviorally the same, but no conscious experience. There's nothing it's like to be a zombie. Maybe a good way to work up to this is by thinking about, say, some sophisticated artificial intelligence system that produces lots of intelligent responses. Maybe it talks to you, maybe an extension of, you know, Alexa or Siri who carries on a very sophisticated conversation with us.

但大多数人不会认为现有的Alexa和Siri具有意识对吧？它们没有主观体验。好，现在把Alexa放进类似索菲亚那样的机器人身体里。

But most of us are not inclined to think that, say, Alexa and Siri, as they stand, are conscious. Right. So they're having subjective experiences. Okay. Now put Alexa in a body like like Sofia.

这个机器人配备了非常复杂的对话系统。让她变得越来越聪明。这时至少存在一个开放性问题：她会具有意识吗？我们可以理解她具有意识的假设。

The robot is a robot that's out there with a very sophisticated conversational system. Make her smarter and and smarter. And then there's at least an open question. Is she going to be conscious? And we can make make sense of the hypothesis that she's conscious.

我们同样能理解她不具备意识的假设。极端案例会是一个人类的全方位物理和功能复制体——完整保留大脑处理能力、所有行为，甚至可能是肖恩·卡罗尔的完全物理复制体。我认为可以设想这样一种存在：当我与你交谈时，可能存在这样一个没有意识的个体——僵尸版肖恩·卡罗尔。不过我非常确信你不是僵尸肖恩。

We can also make sense of the of the hypothesis that there's not that she's not. The extreme case is gonna be a complete physical and functional duplicate of a human being with all the brain processing intact, all of the behavior, maybe even a complete physical duplicate of Sean Carroll. And I think I can make sense of the hypothesis when I talk to you that there'd be such a being who's not conscious. Zombie Sean Carroll. Now I'm very confident that you're not zombie Sean Carroll.

我认为大多数人类与我足够相似，他们是有意识的。但关键在于，至少在逻辑上是可能的。似乎存在一个物理上与你完全相同却没有意识的生物，这一想法并无矛盾。这正揭示了当你确实拥有意识时，必定有某种特殊且额外的东西在起作用。所以，你可以将意识的难题归结为：为什么我们不是僵尸？

I think most human beings are enough like me that they're they're gonna be conscious. But the point is at least seems logically possible. It seems there's no contradiction in the idea of a being physically just like you without consciousness. And that's just one way of getting at the idea that somehow well, where you do have consciousness, then something special and extra has to be going on. So, I mean, you could just put the hard problem of consciousness as the problem of why and why aren't we zombies?

对。是什么将我们与僵尸区分开来？

Right. What differentiates us from zombies?

带着些许忐忑，让我提出这个问题：在僵尸论证中，可能性与可构想性之间的区别是如何体现的？

And with some trepidation, let me ask the question how the difference between possible and conceivable comes into the zombie argument.

是的。哲学家喜欢讨论可能世界，即不同可能世界中发生的事。比如，存在希拉里·克林顿赢得2016年大选的可能世界，也有二战从未发生的可能世界。这些可能世界或许与我们并无显著差异，它们可能共享大致相同的物理定律，仅在初始条件上有微小差别。

Yeah. I mean, philosophers like to talk about possible worlds, what goes on in different possible worlds. And, you know, there's a possible world where Hillary Clinton won the election in 2016, and there are possible worlds where the second world war never happened. These are all maybe not terribly distinct possible worlds. They might, for example, share roughly the same laws of physics as ours, maybe small differences in the in the initial conditions.

有些人认为我们还能理解具有不同物理定律和自然法则的世界。或许存在经典的可能世界，或是像康威生命游戏那样仅由简单规则支配、二维平面上比特跳动的世界。因此，确实存在自然法则迥异的遥远可能世界。最宽泛的类别或许是逻辑上可能的世界，大致对应我们所能构想或想象的内容。

Some of us think we can also make sense of worlds with different laws of physics and different laws of nature. Maybe there are classical possible worlds. Maybe there are possible worlds that are two dimensional, like Conway's Game of Life with just bits fluttering on a surface governed by by simple rules. So, yeah, there are very distant possible worlds with very different laws of nature. And the broadest class is maybe something like the logically possible world corresponds roughly to what we can conceive of or what we can imagine.

甚至可能存在我们无法想象的世界，比如二加二等于五的世界——这种极端情况会让一切陷入混乱。但只要不产生矛盾，我们至少可以探讨这些可能世界。因此，我倾向于认为僵尸假说看起来完全自洽且可构想：存在一个物理上与我们的宇宙完全相同，但无人拥有主观体验的宇宙。

I mean, maybe there are even worlds that we can't imagine, like worlds where two plus two is five. That's getting a bit too far even for even for things really start to go haywire around that point. But as long as we've don't have contradictions, then we can at least entertain possible worlds. So I'm inclined to think the zombie hypothesis looks to me perfectly coherent and perfectly conceivable. There is a universe which is physically identical to ours, but in which nobody has subjective experience.

那是一个完全的僵尸宇宙，如果你愿意这么称呼的话。意识体验从未闪现，只有一堆复杂的行为。我不认为我们的宇宙如此，但这似乎讲得通。提出意识难题的一种方式就是问：我们的世界与那个世界有何不同？

It's a that's an entire zombie universe, if you like. Conscious experience never flickers into existence. There's just a whole bunch of sophisticated behavior. I don't think our universe is like that, but it seems to make sense. And one way to pose the hard problem is saying what differentiates our world from that world?

对。我的立场是，我不认为僵尸是可构想的。我很乐意被说服改变观点，因为几年前与你交谈时（在我写《大图景》之前），我对这个问题的思考还不够清晰。就像你刚才说的，我们可以想象一个物理上完全复制的世界。

Right. So where I come down here is I don't think that zombies are conceivable. And I'm very happy to be talked out of this because I think that I I talked to you a couple years ago before I wrote the big picture and I was not quite as sharp in my thoughts about this. So like you just said, we could imagine a literal physical copy Mhmm. Of our world.

那个世界包含所有人和构成他们的原子。而你认为，就我们所知，我体内的原子只是遵循已知的物理定律。那么在那个世界里，我会存在但没有意识、没有体验。我会是一个僵尸，但言行与现在的我完全一致。是这样吗？是的。好。那么在那个世界里，如果你问我是否有意识，我会回答‘有’。

So that includes all the people in it, all the atoms that they're made of. And and you do think that as far as we know, the atoms in my body just obey the laws of physics as we know them. Right? So I in that world, I would be here in that world but without consciousness, without experience. I would be here.

（确认语气）

I'd be a zombie, but I would be acting and saying exactly the same things I'm acting and saying now. Is that right? Yep. Okay. And so if you, in that world, were to ask me if I were conscious, I would say yes.

是的。理论上，我可以用一种合理的方式说，我回答‘是’因为我相信这是真的。这样讲公平吗？

Yeah. And presumably, there is a sensible way in which I could say, I say yes because I believe it to be true. Is that fair?

没错。僵尸是否真正拥有信念是个复杂问题，但至少它们具备类似信念的僵尸化替代品。

Yeah. It's a complicated issue whether zombies actually believe Have beliefs. Anything, but they've got zombie analogues of beliefs at the at the very least.

那么最基础的表述就是：如果我所有的言行都和僵尸完全一致，我如何确定自己不是僵尸？

So in I mean, the most basic way to put it then is how can I be sure that I'm not a zombie if if all the things that I say and do are exactly what a zombie would say and do?

我认为这个论证很有力——我无法确定你不是僵尸，因为我能观察到的只有你的行为表现和机能运作。这些都无法将你与僵尸绝对区分开。但第一人称视角不同，因为我直接意识到自己是清醒的。

Well, I think this is a very good argument that I can't be sure that you are not a zombie because all I have access to with respect to you is, you know, your behavior and your functioning Right. And so on. And none of that none of that seems to absolutely differentiate you from a zombie. I think the first person case is different because in the first person case, I'm conscious. I know that I'm conscious.

这种认知比任何其他认知都更直接。笛卡尔在17世纪40年代就说过：我可以怀疑外部世界的一切——甚至怀疑眼前是否有桌子或身体，但唯独无法怀疑'我正在思考'。他本可以更准确地说'我有意识'，即'我思故我在'。

I know that more directly than I know anything else. I mean, Descartes said, you know, way back in the sixteen forties, this is the, the one thing I can be certain of. I can doubt everything about the external world. I can even I can doubt there's a table here. I can doubt there's a body.

因此我无法质疑自身存在。我会将意识视为我们最根本的认知基准。无论你怎么讨论僵尸，我确信自己不是其中之一，因为我明确感知到自己的意识。

There's one thing I can't doubt. That's what I'm thinking, or I think he should he could even better have said that I'm conscious. He said, I think, therefore, I am. So therefore, I don't. I can't doubt my own existence.

所以即便你谈论僵尸等问题，我知道自己并非其中一员，因为我确知自己拥有意识。

So I would take it just I think it's natural to take consciousness as our primary epistemic datum. So whatever you say about zombies and so on, I know that I'm not one of them because I know that I'm conscious.

但我的担忧正在于此——如你所说，这个论证会让你质疑我是否清醒。同样也让我自我怀疑，因为僵尸版我会做出完全相同的举动：包括写出高中时那些烂诗、为《机器人总动员》流泪、抚摸我的猫等等。如果你问那个僵尸版的我'你有意识吗？'

But I think that the the my worry about exactly that is that so like you said, my argument certainly would make you wonder whether I am conscious. Mhmm. I think it also makes me wonder whether I'm conscious because I think that the zombie me would because the zombie me would behave in exactly the same way, it includes, you know, writing all the bad poetry I wrote in high school and, you know, crying at movies, at Wall E, and so forth and, you know, petting my cats. Like, all of these things, the zombie would do in exactly the same way that I do. If you ask that zombie me, are you conscious?

它会回答'有'并给出理由。我看不出如何能确定自己不是那个僵尸。

It would say, yes and here's why. It would give you reasons. I don't see how I can be sure that I'm not that zombie.

嗯。公允地说，你确实指出了僵尸假说及其衍生理论最脆弱的环节。约二十年前我的首部著作《意识心灵》里，专门用一章'现象判断悖论'讨论这个问题：平行宇宙里我的僵尸分身会做出与我完全相同的举动，甚至逐字撰写同名著作《意识心灵》。

Mhmm. I think to be fair, this is you're you've put your finger on, I think, the weakest spot for the for the zombie hypothesis and for ideas that that come from it. In my first book, The Conscious Mind, came out about twenty years ago. I had a whole chapter on this that I called the paradox of phenomenal judgment that basically stems from the fact that my zombie twin in that universe next door is going around doing exactly the same things that I'm doing and saying the same things that I'm saying. And even writing a word for word identical book called The Conscious Mind

是啊。

Yeah.

主张意识无法还原为物理过程。而我认为，这种争论终将结束。我的意思是，在可能的世界里会发生许多奇怪的事，我们不必过于较真。但我会说，在僵尸宇宙中，正确的观点是哲学家所称的消除主义——即根本不存在意识这种东西。

Arguing that arguing that consciousness is irreducible to to physical processes. And I'd say, well, it will end. That's it's a I mean, you know, a lot of strange things go on in possible worlds. We shouldn't take them too too seriously. But I'd say that, yeah, in the zombie universe, the right view is what philosophers call eliminativism, that there is no such thing as consciousness.

僵尸实际上犯了一个错误。我认为在我们这个世界里，有一个关于意识的合理研究纲领认为我们基本处于僵尸的境地。最近两三年，确实有越来越多人开始认真思考这个被称为'幻觉主义'的观点。

The zombie is in fact making a mistake. And I think there is a there is a respectable program about consciousness in our world that says we're basically in the situation of the zombie. And lately, just over the last two or three years actually, there's been a bit of an upsurge of people really thinking seriously about this view, which has come to be known as illusionism.

好吧。

Okay.

这种观点认为意识是某种内在的自我审视幻觉。想想僵尸的情况：僵尸自以为具有意识特性，实则没有，其内部一片黑暗。那么可以说，这其实也是我们的处境。

The idea that consciousness is some kind of internal introspective illusion. After all, think about what's going on with the zombie. The zombie thinks it has special properties of consciousness, but it doesn't. All is dark inside. So then say, that's actually our situation.

就像我们似乎拥有这些特殊属性——那些感受质、那些感官体验——但实际上并非如此。从某种角度说，我们内部同样一片黑暗，只是有个非常强大的内省机制让我们误以为自己具备这些特性。这就是幻觉主义。是的，多数人觉得意识以这种方式成为幻觉简直难以置信。

It's like, it seems to us that we have all these special properties, those qualia, those sensory experiences, but we're not. All is, in a way, dark inside for us as well, but there's just a very strong introspective mechanism that makes us think we have these special properties. That's illusionism. Now Yeah. Most people find it impossible to believe that consciousness is an illusion in that way.

但另一方面，这个观点的优势在于它能预测：如果这是个足够完善的机制让你专注于此，你自然会觉得难以置信。所以我最近常思考这个问题，并写了篇题为《意识的元问题》的文章——刚发表在《意识研究杂志》上。意识的难题在于'我们为何有意识？'

On the other hand, the the view does have the advantage of predicting that you would find it impossible to believe if it's a if it's a good enough mechanism that makes you focus on this. So, actually, lately, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I wrote an article called the meta problem of consciousness. Right. It's just come out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. The hard problem of consciousness is why are we conscious?

'物理过程如何产生意识？'而意识的元问题则是'为何我们自认为有意识？为何认为存在意识难题？'元问题的妙处在于：记住，简单问题关乎行为，难题关乎体验。

How do physical processes give rise to consciousness? The meta problem of consciousness is why do we think we're conscious? And why do we think there's a problem of consciousness? And the great thing about the meta problem is remember the hard prop the easy problems are about behavior. The hard problems about experience.

而元问题归根结底是个行为问题。它关乎我们的言行——为何人们四处著书立说？为何声称'我有意识'、'我感到疼痛'？

Well, the meta problem is a problem ultimately about behavior. It's about the things we say and things we do. Why do I go why do people go around writing books about this? Why do they say I'm conscious? I'm feeling pain.

为何人们宣称自己具有这些难以用功能术语解释的特性？这是个行为问题，是个简单问题。或许最终会有个机制性解释，而这自然可能成为幻觉主义者的佐证。

Why do they say I have these properties that are hard to explain in functional terms? That's a behavioral problem. That's an easy problem. Maybe, ultimately, there'll be a mechanistic explanation of that. And that would, of course, be potential grist for the illusionist's mill.

一旦你掌握了用物理术语解释我们为何会表达这些现象的机制，你就能尝试将其反转，将其称为对元问题的解决方案，即对意识幻觉的解释。有些人仍会觉得难以置信，但这一观点本身也预见了这种反应。

Once you have the mechanisms that explain why we say all these things in physical terms, you could then try and turn that round into an explanation of of you could then call that solution to the meta problem an explanation of the illusion of consciousness. Some people will still find it unbelievable, but, again, the view predicts that.

如果我想知道自己为何对意识的难题感到困惑，这是否属于意识的元元问题？

And if I wanted to know why I feel puzzled by the hard problem of consciousness, is that the meta meta problem of consciousness?

我认为那可能仍属于元问题范畴。没错。你为何觉得意识令人费解，这确实是元问题的核心方面之一。我们似乎总在表达这类感受——比如‘我的红色可能是你的绿色’。

I think that maybe that's still the maybe that's still the meta problem. Okay. Yeah. Why why do you find consciousness puzzling is certainly one central aspect to the meta problem. There are all these things that we seem to feel and say, my red could be your green.

我能想象僵尸的存在。意识看起来是非物理的。这些都是行为表现。解释了这些行为，或许你至少就解释了关于意识的高阶判断。

Right. I can imagine zombies. Consciousness seems nonphysical. Those are all behaviors. Explain those behaviors and maybe you've explained at least the the higher order judgments about consciousness.

我个人认为，即便如此仍不足以完全解释意识。但至少理解这些机制或许能揭示意识基础的某些有趣面向。因此我建议将其作为中立的研究项目，面向哲学家、科学家等所有人。

Now my own view is that that even that wouldn't add up to an explanation of consciousness. But I think at the very least, understanding that those mechanisms might tell us something very, interesting about the basis of consciousness. So I've been recommending this as a research program, a neutral research program for everyone, philosophers, scientists

而不预设任何结论性的答案。

not presuming any conclusion about what the answer will be.

正是如此。不必是唯物主义者，不必是二元论者，不必是幻觉主义者——这本质上就是个实证研究项目。既然存在这些人类行为事实，我们就尝试解释它们。哲学家、心理学家、神经科学家、AI研究者原则上都能参与。

Exactly. You you didn't be materialist, you didn't be dualist, you didn't be illusionists, you didn't be you know, this is just basically an empirical research program. Here are some facts about human behavior. Let's try and explain them. Furthermore, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, AI researchers could all in principle get in on this.

我感觉到这个领域正在逐渐成形。《意识研究杂志》即将刊登专题讨论，汇集来自各领域的学者参与。希望这至少能成为探讨问题的有效途径。当然中立性不会永恒——随着研究成果和机制的积累，关于意识是幻觉还是真实的争论仍将持续。

And I think there's gradually a building. I mean, there's already gonna be a a target article, a symposium in Journal of Consciousness Studies with a whole bunch of people from all those fields getting in on it. So I'm hoping this at least turns out to be a productive way to come with the question. Of course, it won't be neutral forever. Eventually, we'll have some stuff and then, you know, some results and some mechanisms, and then the argument will continue to rage between people who think the whole thing's an illusion and the whole thing's real.

需要说明的是，除了立场极端的消除主义、幻觉主义，或另一端的二元论，还存在这种涌现论的中间立场——这也是我宏观上倾向的观点：底层是物理主义的，但承认意识等主观体验如同桌椅，是我们为组织世界经验而创造的高阶现象范畴。

We should say though that aside from eliminativism and illusionism, which are fairly sort of hardcore on one side Mhmm. Or forms of dualism, which could be on the other side, there is this kind of emergent position that one can take. This is what I wanna take in the big picture and so forth, which is physicalist and materialist at the bottom, but doesn't say that therefore things like consciousness and our subjective experiences don't exist or our illusions. They're higher order phenomena like tables and chairs. You know, they're categories that we invent to help us organize our experience of the world.

在我看来，‘涌现’有时像魔法词汇，用来粉饰我们尚未理解的事物。从A到B如何实现？哦，因为是涌现的——这种解释往往流于表面。

Yeah. You know, my view is that emergence is a sometimes used as kind of a magic word to make us feel good about things that we don't understand. How do how do you get from this to this? Oh, it's it's emergent.

情况紧急。

It's emergent.

是的。但你所说的'涌现'究竟指什么？我记得读过一篇关于涌现现象的文章，其中区分了弱涌现和强涌现。弱涌现本质上是指通过底层结构动力学解释高层结构动力学，比如复杂系统的行为、城市交通流、飓风动态等现象。我的意思是，在更高层次上会涌现出各种奇异、惊人且酷炫的现象。

Yeah. But what really do you mean by emergent? I think I've read an article on emergence where I distinguished weak emergence from strong emergence. Weak emergence is basically the kind you get from, you know, low level structure dynamics explaining higher level structure dynamics, the behavior of a complex system, traffic flows in a city, the dynamics of a hurricane. I mean, you get all kinds of strange and surprising and cool phenomenon emerging at a higher level.

但归根结底，只要你对底层机制理解得足够透彻，高层现象就会透明地随之呈现。这不过是底层结构根据某些简单规则衍生出高层结构的过程。

But still, it's ultimately, once you understand the low level mechanisms well enough, the high level ones just follow transparently. It's just low level structure giving you high level structure according to the following of certain simple low level rules.

你可以用计算机模拟这个过程。

You could put it on a computer and simulate it.

没错。但涉及意识问题时——具体说是意识的'简单问题'——这些很可能就是以这种方式涌现的。它们可能最终被证明是产生这些行为报告、导致系统有时保持清醒的底层结构功能机制，如果这些是弱涌现现象，没人会感到惊讶。但所有这些似乎都无法解释主观体验，后者看起来像是某种根本性的新事物。哲学家们有时会以不同方式讨论强涌现，这实际上涉及通过新的基本法则产生根本性新事物的过程。

Exactly. But when it comes to consciousness, it looks like well, when it comes to the easy problems of consciousness, those may well turn out to be emergent in just this way. They may turn out to be low level structural functional mechanisms that produce these reports and these behaviors and lead to systems sometimes being awake, and no one would be surprised if these were weakly emergent in that way. But none of that seems to add up to an explanation of subjective experience, which just looks like something fundamentally new. This is philosophers sometimes talk about emergence in a in a different way, a strong emergence, which actually involves something fundamentally new emerging via new fundamental laws.

或许存在一条基本法则规定：当信息被整合时，意识就产生了。我认为意识可能是这种意义上的涌现现象，但这种定义对唯物主义者并无助益。若要让'涌现'概念支持唯物主义立场，就必须采用弱涌现定义。这最终要求将'困难问题'简化为'简单问题'。因此我认为，每个人都不得不在此做出艰难抉择。

Maybe there's a fundamental law that's saying says when you get this information being integrated, then you get consciousness. I think consciousness may be emergent in that sense, but that's not a sense that ought to help the materialist. I think if you want consciousness to be emergent in a sense that helps the materialist, you have to go for a weak emergence. That's ultimately going to require reducing the hard problem to an easy problem. So I think I wanna I think everyone has to make hard choices here.

我不想让你简单地用'最终都是大脑和一堆涌现现象'来搪塞。这里存在一个值得尊敬的唯物主义研究纲领，但它必须最终转化这个困难问题。物理学能提供的终究只是更多结构、动态和功能等等。要将这些转化为对意识的解释，就需要找到某种方法，将需要解释的意识问题最终简化为行为和功能问题。或许可以说，那个看似需要额外解释的东西，其实是一种幻觉。

And I I don't wanna let you off the hook of just saying, it's all ultimately gonna be the brain and a bunch of emergence. I think there's a respectable materialist research program here, but it has to involve ultimately turning the hard problem. All you're gonna get out of physics is ultimately more and more structure and dynamics and functioning and so on. So for that to turn into an explanation of consciousness, you need to find some way to deflate what needs explaining in the case of consciousness, ultimately to a matter of behavior and a matter of functioning. And maybe say, that extra thing that seems to need explaining, that's an illusion.

像丹尼尔·丹尼特这样的人——我极为敬重——几十年来一直试图这么做。这就是他的研究纲领。但最终多数人审视丹尼特的成果时会说：不够。你还没有解释清楚意识。

And, you know, people like Dan Dennett, I respect greatly, has tried to do this for years, for decades. That's been his research program. At the end of the day, most people look at what Dennett's come up with and they say, nope. Not good enough. You haven't explained consciousness.

如果你能做得更好，

If you can do better,

那当然好。不过更倾向于你积极主张的方向——至少你向来谨慎地避免过多正面主张。正如你所说，这是个难题。我们尚未知晓答案。我们不需要通过坚持'这必定是正确答案'来推进研究。

then great. Whereas so to to move more in the direction of what you're positively advocating for, at least, I mean, you've always been very careful to positively advocate for not that much. Because this is, as you say, a hard problem. We don't know the answers yet. We we don't need to move forward by sort of insisting this might be the must be the right answer.

所以你一直持开放态度，但至少对你提到的这种属性二元论保持开放。这种观点的一个版本将我们引向泛心论。你能解释一下这两个概念吗？

So you've been open minded, but you're at least open minded about this property dualism that you talked about. And that sort of one version of that leads us into panpsychism. So could you explain these two concepts?

是的。我想说，我确实探索过关于意识的多种积极观点。但我并未完全认同其中任何一种。我看到各种有趣的可能性，每一种都有重大吸引力，但也有需要克服的重大问题。所以我尝试逐一探讨其中一些观点。

Yeah. So I'd say that, yeah, I've explored a number of different positive views on consciousness. What I haven't done is committed to to any of them. I see various different interesting possibilities, each of which has has big problems, has big attractions, but also big problems to overcome. So I've tried to explore some of those one at a time.

其中一种可能性是泛心论，认为意识贯穿自然秩序的最底层。泛心论（panpsychism）中，'pan'意为'全'，'psych'意为'心灵'。基本意思是万物皆有心灵。按字面理解，这意味着人、粒子有心灵，桌子、数字也有心灵。

One of the possibilities is panpsychism, the idea that consciousness goes right down to the bottom of the natural order. Panpsychism, I mean, pan means all, psych means mind. So it's basically saying everything has a mind. Taken literally, it would imply that, you know, people have minds, particles have minds, but also tables and numbers have minds.

抱歉。我们是否必须说'有心灵'？还是可以用'具有心理属性与物理属性'这类表述？

Sorry. Do we have to say have minds or can we just get away with saying something like have mental properties as well as physical ones?

可以。如果那样说让你感觉更舒服的话。

Yeah. We if that if that makes you feel better.

这样可能稍微好些。

It might be a little bit better.

对。说'具有体验'。我们可以说存在某种'成为它们的感受'

Yeah. Have experiences. We could say there's something it's like

成为它们。呃，不确定。我是说，我们真要说电子有体验吗？

to be them. Well, don't know. I mean, do do we want to say an electron has experiences?

严格意义上的泛心论确实有这个推论。不过多数泛心论者不认为桌子、岩石或数字有心灵，他们主要主张基本物理实体具有心灵。如果你想采用更温和的观点，可以说电子存在某种'成为它的感受'——电子并非拥有完整体验，而是具有体验的原始形态或前身。

Well, think panpsychism taken literally has that consequence. By the way, most panpsychists don't say that tables or rocks or numbers have minds, but they're typically the their biggest commitment is to fundamental physical entities having minds. So if you want to say, now there's a weaker view, you might wanna say, actually, something it's like to be an electron. Electron doesn't have experiences. It merely has some proto version of experience, some predecessor of experience.

或许电子是原始意识体。于是有种叫'泛原心论'的观点，听起来可能不那么疯狂。当然，泛心论的问题之一在于它非常反直觉，因为我们通常不认为电子有意识，而且缺乏直接证据支持。

Maybe electrons are proto conscious. Then there's a view called pan proto psychism that could could maybe seem a little bit less insane Okay. To you. I mean, the trouble, of course one of the troubles with panpsychism is it seems very counterintuitive because we don't naturally think that electrons have consciousness. And there's not a whole lot of direct evidence in favor of it.

另一方面，你可能会说，也没有大量直接证据反对它。我们并没有任何实验证据表明电子不具备意识。

On the other hand, you might say, there's also not a whole lot of direct evidence against it. It's not like we've got any experimental evidence that electrons are not conscious.

好吧，与其纠结这一点，不如让我试着理解电子拥有思维、体验或意识意味着什么。这肯定不能是物理学意义上的另一个量子数，对吧？不可能存在快乐的电子和悲伤的电子——那会以糟糕的方式改变粒子物理学的许多内容。

Well, let let me rather than harp on that, let's let me just try to figure out what it would mean for electrons to have minds or experiences or consciousness. It certainly can't mean another quantum number in the physical sense. Right? They can't have, you know, happy electrons and sad electrons. That would change much of particle physics in in bad ways.

那么这是某种副现象论吗？如果我们愿意这么称呼的话，电子的快乐或悲伤只是伴随其存在？是什么决定了电子的感受？

So is it that the is it some kind of epiphenomenalism? Do the do the happiness or sadness, if we wanna call it that, just go along with the electron? What what determines what the electron is feeling?

我认为泛心论者在此的最佳选择是：你不需要为底层意识引入一大堆新的物理定律。相反，正是意识从根本上为我们已知的物理学扮演着因果作用的角色。物理学本质上是一门关于结构或数学的科学——所有事物基本上都是通过与其他事物的关系来解释的。

The way I think the best option for a panpsychist here is, yeah, you don't need a whole bunch of extra new laws of physics for the consciousness at the basis. Rather, it's consciousness that's fundamentally playing the causal role for the physics that we know. I mean, it's a point that's often remained about about physics. It is fundamentally the science of physics is fundamentally structural or mathematical. Everything is basically explained by how it relates to to other things.

或许量子力学已经够混乱了，而当代物理学其他领域更加混乱。所以我们先从经典物理学谈起——它用时空中的位置、质量以及作用力来描述粒子。经典物理学中的质量是什么？它是受引力定律和运动定律支配的东西，并以特定方式参与力的作用。这些都没有告诉我们质量本身是什么，而是通过有质量的粒子如何与其他粒子相互作用来解释其角色。

Maybe quantum mechanics gets messy and and, you know, everything else in contemporary physics gets even messier. So let's just start with classical physics that characterizes, you know, particles with positions in space and time with some mass, with some forces that operate on them. What is mass in classical physics? Well, it's this thing which is subject to the laws of gravitation and the laws of motion and that, you know, is involved in forces in a certain way. Nothing here tells us what mass is in itself, rather explains mass by the way that, you know, particles with mass interact with other particles What its role is.

所以这完全是个巨型结构。物理学在描述这个结构方面做得很好。而这引出了一个问题：质量的本质属性究竟是什么？

With mass. So it's it's all a giant structure. Physics does a great job of characterizing this structure. And then you wanna that raises the question, well, what is? What is it what is the intrinsic nature of mass?

有人可能会说，它不需要有本质属性，只是个巨大的关系网络。这是个值得尊重的观点——有些人认为这说不通，也有人觉得合理。但还存在另一种可能性。

Well, one thing someone might say is, it doesn't need to have an intrinsic nature. It's just a giant relational web. And that's a respectable view, which I think, you know, may some people think it doesn't make sense. Other people think it makes sense. But here's another possibility.

结构实在论。

Structural realism.

在当代科学哲学中这被称为结构实在论。本体论的结构实在论认为世界上只存在一个巨大的关系网络。而另一种可能性是认识论的结构实在论——

Structural realism is what it gets called in contemporary philosophy of science. An ontological structural realism says that's all there is in the world, a giant web of relations. Right. Okay. But the other possibility, people sometimes speak of epistemological structural realism.

物理学告诉我们的是结构，但可能存在某些支撑结构的本质属性。

What physics tells us is the structure, but there may be some intrinsic natures underlying the structure.

就目前而言

And as far

据我所知，质量具有内在性质这一观点同样值得尊重——当两个有质量的物体相互作用时，它们确实存在某些支配这种相互作用的内在属性。当然，泛心论的观点认为，或许这种内在属性就是意识、体验，或是原始体验的雏形。

as I could tell, that's a respectable possibility as well that mass does have an intrinsic nature that when two things with mass interact, they've got some intrinsic properties that govern that interaction. And, of course, the panpsychist idea is to say maybe that intrinsic property is consciousness or experience or maybe proto experience.

或者说心智

Or mind

在某种意义上。是的。这就是我们的心智如何处于底层。在这个基础层面上，作为支撑物理结构的内在属性。如果这就是它扮演的角色，我们并不需要突然修改物理学。

in some sense. Yeah. That's how our mind lies at the bottom of it. At this bottom level serving as the intrinsic properties that underlie physical structure. If that's the role it plays, we don't suddenly need to revise physics.

物理学的结构可以完全保持不变。我们只是需要一些内在属性作为基础，来支撑这个结构。然后你可能会问，那么心智如何产生影响呢？它并不是通过突然引入新的心智法则来产生影响，而是通过作为物理网络的基础本身来发挥作用。

The structure of physics can stay exactly as it was. We're just gonna have some intrinsic properties, the ground, that structure. Then you might say, well, now how is mind making a difference? Well, it's not like it's making a difference by suddenly having new laws in the picture for minds. Rather, it's making a difference by being the thing, the grounds, the physical web.

每当一个粒子的质量与另一个粒子相互作用时，比如两个粒子通过引力相互吸引，在这个图景中，最终是它们的心智属性在做功。

Anytime one particle's mass interacts with another, two particles, say, attract each other by a gravitational force on this picture, it's ultimately gonna be their mental properties doing the work.

好的。所以你的意思是——在这个可能正确也可能错误的图景中——我们并不是说心智属性影响了电子的物理行为。我认识的一些物理学家可能会担心，这根本没有说明任何问题，因为电子的一切行为仍然只受物理定律支配，而这些心智属性并未对其产生影响。但你说，这样提问本身就是错误的。这种假设万物背后存在心智特性的解释，并不是为了说明电子的行为，而是为了揭示更深层的东西，某种只有在复杂的、我们认可为有意识的有机体身上才会显现的东西。

Okay. So you are we're not saying and and again, in this picture, which may or may not be right, but we're not saying that the mental properties affect the physical behavior of the electron. So a physicist, I know some personally, might worry that this isn't saying anything at all because still everything the electrons do is just governed by the laws of physics because these mental properties don't affect it. But you're saying, well, that's just the wrong way to ask the question. The kinds of things that are being explained by this positing of a mental character underlying everything are not the behavior of the electrons, but something deeper and something that kind of flowers once you get complex organisms that we recognize as conscious.

我的意思是，体验会影响行为吗？从某种意义上是，从另一种意义上不是。对于当代物理学家来说，这确实不会太令人兴奋，因为现有的物理学可以完全保持不变。无论底层是否存在体验，物理学都适用。

I mean, does the experience affect the behavior? In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. It's certainly true this is not going to be so exciting for a current physicist in that all the current physics can stay the same. Physics with experience underneath it or without it.

我认为这是件好事。

I think it's a good thing.

我们已经有足够的兴奋点了。

We have all the excitement we need.

如果我们不得不修改物理学，那将引发各种额外的疯狂复杂性。话虽如此，这更多是对当前物理学及潜藏其下的世界运作方式的一种诠释。它最终指出，在物理学最底层发挥作用的是心智或意识的这些内在属性。那些我们视为法则的基本定律，比如连接质量与质量或质量与运动的定律，最终将成为连接这个结构中微小经验片段的法则。从外部看，我们只能看到结构，并用数学语言描述它。

If we had to if we had to revise physics too, then it would be a it would give rise to all kinds of extra crazy complexities. That said, this is more of an interpretation of current physics and of what's going on in the world underneath current physics. And it's ultimately saying that what is doing the work in physics at the bottom level is these intrinsic properties of of mind or consciousness. The fundamental laws, you know, which we think of as laws, say, connecting mass and mass or mass and motion or whatever, ultimately gonna be laws connecting little bits of experience in this structure. From the outside, all we see is the structure, and we give it a mathematical description.

我们称之为物理定律，这很棒。但实际上，其背后的本质——我们已习惯物理理论的基础可能超出实验观测结果的观点。在这个假设中，真正支撑它的是众多心智或经验彼此推拉作用。这极度推测性吗？当然是的。

We call that the laws of physics, and it's great. But in reality, what's underlying it you know, we're used to the idea that what underlies a physical theory may involve more than what actually gets that we see in experimental results. In on this hypothesis, what underlies it in reality is a whole bunch of minds or experiences pushing and pulling each other. Is this wildly speculative? Of course it is.

但它是否被现有认知所否定？我认为并非如此。因此这是个值得认真对待的哲学观点，尽管带有推测性质。

But is it ruled out by anything we know? Well, I think not. So I think it's in a speculative vein. It's at least a philosophical view to take seriously.

人们难免会想从量子力学中寻找实施这类理念的切入点。

And it must be tempting to look toward quantum mechanics for a place to implement these kinds of ideas.

确实。量子力学自然吸引着所有想为心智的奇特属性与物质世界互动寻找位置的人，因为它如此难以理解，且具有似乎与观察或心智相关的暗示性特征。不过我个人不会将量子力学与泛心论最有前景地结合起来。虽有人尝试将两者关联，认为量子力学的整体性可能让个体经验汇聚为宏大体验。但最近，我更多在属性二元论的框架下思考量子力学——即意识属性独立于物理属性却与之互动的观点。

Yeah. Quantum mechanics is, of course, it's a magnet for anyone who wants to find a place for crazy properties of the mind to interact with the the physical world because quantum mechanics is so ill understood, then it does have suggestive properties that connect that may seem to connect to observation or the mind. I would actually not connect combine quantum mechanics and panpsychism, in the most, in the most promising role. There are people who connect quantum mechanics and panpsychism, and somehow the right degree of quantum mechanical holism Somehow, you could see how those individual experiences might add up to a big experience. Lately, though, I've actually been thinking about quantum mechanics in the context of a different kind of view, which is more a kind of dualism with property dualism, with with properties of of consciousness distinct from properties in physics, but somehow interacting with it.

若不持泛心论立场，不认为意识存在于物理底层，那么意识属性就必须独立于时空、质量、电荷等属性。这随即引出一个问题：它如何与其他属性互动？要么宣称它不互动，仅是副现象，毫无作用。

If you're gonna be not gonna be a panpsychist and say consciousness is present at the bottom level of physics, then consciousness has to be somehow the property of consciousness has to be separate from those other ones, space time, mass charge. And that raises the question now, how does it interact? Either you say it doesn't. It's epiphenomenal. It does nothing.

这显得古怪——意识竟对物质世界毫无影响？要么承认它有影响，那么问题来了：如何与看似无意识容身之地的物理学调和？这里确实存在一个可谓古老的观念...

Well, that's kind of weird, and consciousness has no effect at all in the physical world. Yeah. Or you say, it has an effect on the physical world. Then the question is how on earth do you reconcile that with physics, which doesn't seem on the face of it to have any room for consciousness to play that role. And there is there is, of course, this one, I would say, age old idea.

说'古老'或许不当，因量子力学仅百年历史。但这个传统诠释认为：心智可能通过观察导致波函数坍缩的过程介入量子力学。尽管极具争议，却是量子力学的经典图景——波函数有两种演化：薛定谔方程描述的常规演化，以及测量时发生的诡异变化。

Can't be an age old idea because quantum mechanics has only been around for a century or so. But this one old idea that maybe there's at least one kind of fairly traditional interpretation of quantum mechanics where minds could play a role in quantum mechanics, mainly mainly via the process of observation, which collapses the quantum wave function. Of course, it's very controversial, but it is a very traditional picture of quantum mechanics. So there's two kinds of dynamics of the quantum wave function. There's Schrodinger evolution, the normal thing, and there's something weird which happens on measurement.

标准量子力学宣称测量导致波函数坍缩，这与薛定谔演化截然不同。这立即引发无数疑问：测量究竟是什么？为何享有特殊地位？这就是量子测量问题。

And standard quantum mechanics says, make a measurement, the wave function collapses. And that's a different thing from Schrodinger evolution. Now, of course, this immediately raises a million questions like, what on earth is measurement and why should that Right. Get any special treatment? That's the quantum measurement problem.

许多人至此便退避三舍，拒绝让心智介入物理，转而投身埃弗雷特多世界诠释、玻姆隐变量理论或GRW自发坍缩理论——这些理论都不赋予心智角色。我认为这些研究路径都很精彩，但我同样关注一个可能被忽视的方向：严谨阐释量子力学的表面解读，即测量时确实存在特殊作用。

And that's many people run a mile at that point saying, oh, I don't want minds to play a role in physics. Let's try and do let's try something else. And they find themselves in Everett style, many worlds quantum mechanics, or BOEM style, hidden variables quantum mechanics, or GRW style collapse quantum mechanics, which doesn't give, give minds a role. And I think all those programs are great and very interesting, and I'm not against them. But I'm also interested in a possibility which may have been overlooked, which is trying to make rigorous sense of a more face value interpretation of quantum mechanics where there is something special that takes place upon measurement.

对于一个普通物理学家而言，将测量视为基础概念显得非常奇怪，因为这涉及将心智视为根本，而并非所有人都愿意接受这点。反之，若你认为已有理由相信心智包含某种根本要素，意识在某种意义上是大自然的基本组成部分，那么拒绝该观点的理由就不再成立。对我来说，问题在于我们能否严谨地从数学上解释：正是意识介入时波函数发生了坍缩。

Now if you're an average physicist, well, why can we it just seems very strange to treat measurement as fundamental because that would involve treating the mind as fundamental, and that's not something that everyone wants to do. If on the other hand, you're inclined to think there's already reason to think the mind involves something fundamental and that consciousness is somehow a fundamental element in nature, then that reason to reject the view will not be a good reason to Is to reject the view. And the question for me is just can we actually make rigorous mathematical sense of the idea that it's once consciousness comes into the picture that the wave function collapses.

将这种观点与唯心论联系起来是否恰当？即认为心智是创造现实的第一要素。

Is it fair to associate this view with something like idealism where you're putting mind as the first thing that creates reality?

或许存在这种观点的唯心论版本，但我更倾向于将其视为属性二元论的变体。量子波函数是真实的，其存在与心智无关。宇宙具有客观的波函数，就像埃弗雷特多世界诠释中的那样。

I maybe there's an idealist version of this, but I would actually think of it as a version of property dualism. Okay. That is the quantum wave function is real. It's got an existence that has nothing to do with the mind. The universe has an objective wave function just as it might on, say, Everett style view.

确切地说，波函数动力学中存在受心智影响的维度。特定情况下，物理系统会产生意识；特定情况下，该意识会使量子波函数坍缩。这实际上是笛卡尔式观点的现代版——身体影响心智，心智影响身体，经典相互作用二元论的体现。

It's rather there's this aspect of the dynamics of the wave function which is affected by the mind. And under certain circumstances, physical systems will produce consciousness. Under certain circumstances, that consciousness will collapse the quantum wave function. So it's actually it's a know, Descartes thought that, you know, the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body. That was classic interactionist dualism.

可将其视为属性二元论框架下对笛卡尔理论的升级：量子波函数存在，有使波函数影响意识的动力学机制，还有某些定律——比如托诺尼的整合信息理论。

Think of this as an updated version of Descartes in a property dualism dualist framework. You've got the quantum wave function. You've got some dynamics by which the wave function affects consciousness. You've got some laws. It might be, say, something like, Tononi's integrated information theory.

该理论认为当波函数具备足够整合信息时，就会产生意识片段。随后需要另一种动力学机制使意识能影响波函数。我与加州查普曼大学哲学物理学者、前学生凯尔文·麦克奎恩合作研究时提出：意识或其物理关联物具有抗拒量子叠加的特殊性。世间万物中，质量、电荷等多数属性都能演化成量子叠加态。

It says when the wave function has enough integrated information, then you get a bit of consciousness. And then you need some other bit of dynamics by which consciousness can affect the wave function. The idea that I was working on this with with Kelvin McQueen, a former former student of mine who's now in in philosophy and physics at Chapman University in in California. And the idea we started working with was there's something special about consciousness or maybe about the physical correlates of consciousness so that it resists quantum superposition. Everything in the world, mass and charge can most properties can evolve into quantum superpositions.

但或许某些特殊属性会抵抗量子叠加——它们可能短暂进入叠加态，但总会坍缩回来；或即将叠加时会选择确定态。若意识具有这种特性，就意味着它永远不会进入叠加态。

But maybe there are some special properties that resist quantum superpositions. Maybe they go into superposition for a moment, but then they always collapse back. Or maybe the moment they're about to superpose, they pick a determinant state. And then the thought was, if that happens, say consciousness is like that. Consciousness never enters a superposition.

当大脑进程即将产生意识叠加态时，会立即坍缩成确定态。这可视为意识对大脑物理进程的影响，原则上能证明意识对物质世界的作用。当然，这是个疯狂、怪异且充满推测性的图景——但任何意识理论都如此。对我来说问题在于...

The moment brain processes would be such that they would produce a superposition of consciousness and somehow they collapse into a definite state. Right. And then you might see that as an effect of consciousness on the physical processes in the brain that could, in principle, give you an effect of consciousness in the physical world. And then the question is but for me, ultimately, it turns I mean, it's a wild it's a weird and speculative picture, of course, but anyone's theory of consciousness is weird and speculative. For me, the question

这是在重拾维格纳等人的旧观点，虽然这些现已失宠。但你想重新审视它们。

is picking up old ideas from people like Wigner and and they've dropped out of favor now. Yeah. But you wanna reexamine them.

完全正确。维格纳1961年《心身问题评注》堪称此观点的经典文献。有人认为冯·诺伊曼著作中至少存在该思想的雏形。七十年代这理论曾与《物理之道》等著作关联，导致物理学家们纷纷避之不及。

Absolutely. So Wigner in 1961, remarks on the mind body question is probably the locus classicus for this. People think they find the idea, hints of the idea at least in von Neumann. And earlier in the nineteen seventies, this got associated with, you know, the dancing Wu Li masters and so on, at which point physicists started running a mile A

对此深表敬意

lot of some respect for

这个观点。我认为，它曾被以一些不幸的方式运用过。但我只想探讨这个想法，看看能否将其作为量子力学的众多替代解释之一提出，它有优点也有缺点。对我来说，最终的问题是，能否为其构建一个连贯且有效的数学动力学框架，与我们的所有预测一致？如果能做到这一点，那么我们就可以认真对待它。

this idea. I think, you know, it has been used in some unfortunate ways. But I just wanna examine this idea, see if we can get it on on the table as one of the many alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, has upsides and downsides. For me, the question is ultimately, can you give it a good coherent mathematical dynamics that works and is consistent with all of our predictions? If that can be done, then we can take it seriously.

现在我要说明的是，凯尔文和我最初提出的版本确实存在一个相当严重的问题，即所谓的量子芝诺效应。

Now I should say that the version Kelvin and I started with does have one rather serious problem with the so called quantum Zeno effect.

好的。是的。

Okay. Yeah.

简而言之，量子芝诺效应指出，如果你不断测量某些量，它们总是被测量，因此永远不会进入叠加态，那么它们就永远不会改变。所以，如果你不断测量

Roughly, the quantum Zeno effect says if you've got some quantities that are constantly being measured, they're always measured so they never enter into superpositions, then they never change. So if you constantly measure the position of

一个粒子的位置，它就永远不会移动。我能看出这会是个问题。

a particle, it'll never move. I can see where this would be a problem.

是的。如果意识是这样一种存在，它从未进入叠加态，至少看起来像是意识从未被测量，而是总是被测量，这意味着意识永远无法改变。例如，如果你从一个没有意识的早期宇宙开始，那么意识就永远没有机会出现。一旦有一丝意识的迹象，它就会像被拉回一样。

Yes. If consciousness is if consciousness is such that it's constantly never entering into a superposition, it's at least as if consciousness is never being measured is always being measured, which means that consciousness can never change. So for example, if you start out with an early universe with no consciousness, then consciousness will never get a chance to come into existence. The moment there's a little glimmer of consciousness, it's going to like a it's gonna snap back. Right.

只有在波函数的一个极小低振幅部分中才会有意识存在，而且概率为一，它会迅速回到无意识状态。因此，意识永远无法演化。此外，你永远无法从小睡中醒来。如果你处于无意识状态，你将永远无法到达那些发展出意识的分支，它们会迅速回到无意识状态，存在类似的问题。

Only one tiny little low amplitude part of the wave function will there be consciousness, and with probability one, it will snap back to no consciousness. So consciousness can never evolve. Furthermore, you can never wake up from a nap. If you're unconscious, you'll never get to there'll be little branches that develop consciousness that'll snap back to unconscious with problems like that.

美好的世界。我喜欢这个。是的。永远无法从小睡中醒来的世界。

Good world. Now I like it. Yeah. Never waking up from the nap world.

小睡会永远持续下去。所以，好吧，这对最初最简单的理论版本来说是一个小问题，我们现在正试图将其纳入一篇名为《芝诺去哥本哈根》的负面结果论文中。好的。将芝诺效应作为一类相近解释的问题提出。但问题是，是否存在一个可以运作的版本？当然。

Naps go on forever. So, okay, this was a small small problem for the initial simplest version of the theory, which we're we're try we're now trying to work this into a negative result paper called Zeno goes to Copenhagen. Okay. Raising the Zeno effect as a problem for a class of interpretations nearby. But then the question is, can there is there a version of this you can make work Sure.

这样就不会遭受芝诺悖论的问题了吗？我们一直在尝试概率性版本以及意识叠加一段时间后又坍缩的模型。应该说我们尚未完全解决这个问题，但至少这里有一类值得认真对待的有趣解释——如果你倾向于严肃看待意识的话。毕竟量子力学本身已经够混乱了，值得一试。反正现有的诠释没有哪个是毫无瑕疵的。

That won't suffer from this Zeno problem? We've been playing around with probabilistic versions and versions where consciousness superposes for a while and collapses back. And I'd say we haven't exactly solved the problem yet, but I think there's a there's at least an interesting class of interpretations here worth taking seriously if you are inclined to take consciousness seriously. And after all, quantum mechanics is enough of a mess that worth trying. It's not like there's any interpretations that that is free of problems.

没错。如果某个理论既能完美解释量子力学，又能为意识在物理世界中的角色提供依据，那至少就有理由认真考虑这个观点。

Right. If there's something here that, a, gives you perfectly adequate quantum mechanics and, b, allows a role for consciousness in the physical world, then there would at least be reason to take the view seriously.

如果你是个属性二元论者，相信事物同时具有心理属性和物理属性，这是否会影响你对人工智能或计算机意识等问题的看法？

And if you are a property dualist, if you believe in mental properties as well as physical properties of stuff, does that have implications for questions like artificial intelligence or, you know, consciousness on a computer?

我认为不会立即产生直接影响。有些人觉得属性二元论者就该认定计算机不可能有意识，这在我看来挺奇怪的。我们这些拥有大脑的生物系统不也具备意识吗？

Yeah. I think it doesn't have immediate implications. I mean, some people think that if you're a property dualist, you should think that computers won't be conscious. To me, that's kind of odd. I mean, brain we're biological systems who are who are with brains and somehow were conscious.

凭什么硅基就比碳基差呢？这种认为DNA构成物比硅基构成物更优越的想法，反倒像是种奇怪的唯物主义偏见。关键区别究竟在哪里？我认为二元论在这个问题上持中立态度。

So why should silicon be any worse off than than say brains? I mean, it's almost seems like a weirdly materialist idea to privilege the the, you know, things made of DNA over things made of silicon. Right. Why should that make a difference? I think so dualism is just neutral on the question.

我倾向的属性二元论是那种科学自然主义的版本，包含关于意识的基本自然法则。最终关键在于物质属性如何与意识理论中的意识相关联——是更偏向特定生物属性，还是更接近计算或信息属性。如果像托诺尼的整合信息理论那样，那么硅基系统完全可能和生物系统具有同等程度的意识。

The kind of property dualism I like are fairly, you know, scientific naturalistic property dualism with fundamental laws of nature. I think that it's gonna come down to are the properties of matter that get connected to consciousness in a theory of consciousness. Like, are they gonna be more like specific biological properties, or are they gonna be more like computational or informational Mhmm. Properties? If it's something like Czerny's integrated information that gives you consciousness, then it looks like that could be present just as much in a silicon system as in a biological system.

因此至少在我的研究中，我试图论证真正与意识相关的是物质的计算属性或信息属性。若是如此，人工智能系统同样能胜任。理论上我们甚至可以用硅质假体神经元逐步替换生物神经元——只要功能足够完善，最终得到的系统在功能上将完全等同。而我要强调的是，这个功能等同的系统会始终保持相同的意识。

So in the work I've done at least, I've tried to argue that it's really the computational properties of matter that are relevant to consciousness or the informational properties. If that's the case, then an AI system will be able to do the job just as well. And in principle, we could even replace our neurons. One of the time, the biological neurons by silicone prosthetic neurons, if they work well enough, we'll be left with a functionally identical system. And I would actually argue that that functionally identical system is gonna retain the same consciousness throughout.

另一种说法是意识会逐渐消退或消失，但这会引发各种棘手问题。

The alternative would be to say that consciousness Fades away. Fades away or disappears. But that gives rise to all kinds of problems.

确实。既然之前我在质疑自己是否确信不是僵尸，这自然引出了我们如何确信自己不是计算机模拟体的问题，对吧？

Right. And then if before I was asking if I'm sure I'm not a zombie, this leads us to ask if we are sure that we're not a computer simulation. Right?

这正是哲学的伟大命题之一。笛卡尔曾问：我们如何确知外部世界存在？怎么知道自己不是被邪恶恶魔操控的傀儡——所有关于外部现实的体验都只是恶魔制造的幻象。而模拟假说堪称这个笛卡尔难题的二十一世纪升级版，就像《黑客帝国》这类电影所展现的那样。

This is a this is one of the great problems of philosophy. I mean, Descartes said, how do we know that there's an external world? How do you know you're not being fooled by an evil demon who's merely producing experiences in you as of an external reality when all of this is just being generated by the demon. Now the simulation idea is a wonderful twenty first century version of a of a of Descartes. I mean, as illustrated by movies like The Matrix.

我依然欣赏《黑客帝国》这部电影对这类场景的描绘，它确实，我认为，在很大程度上把握得很准确。你怎么知道自己不是生活在一个计算机模拟中，这个模拟扮演着邪恶恶魔的角色，运行着一个世界的模型，给你的大脑输入各种体验，而实际上你以为自己处于一个普通的物理现实，但其实你身处这个计算机生成的现实中。创作《黑客帝国》这类电影的人会说，如果情况如此，那么你基本上生活在幻觉与欺骗中，而非真实世界。这一切都不是真实的，这正是笛卡尔对邪恶恶魔假说的思考。

I'm still a fan of the depiction of this movie in the in The Matrix that really, think, got quite a lot of this right. How do you know you're not living in a computer simulation that is the computer simulation is playing the role of the evil demon, running a model of a world, feeding your brain experiences when in fact you think and you think you're in an ordinary physical reality, but in fact, you're in this computer generated reality. And the people who wrote movies like The Matrix, they say, if this is the case, then you're basically living a life of illusion and deception. And Not the real world. And none of it is is real, which is exactly what Descartes thought about the evil demon hypothesis.

所以我最近一直在思考这个问题，我确实认真对待模拟理论。我认为，你知道，我们没有任何确凿的知识能排除我们身处计算机模拟的可能性。哲学家尼克·博斯特罗姆甚至提出了一个统计学论证，认为我们应当非常严肃地考虑我们处于模拟中的可能性。大致来说，这个观点是任何足够智能的文明都有能力创造大量关于整个族群的计算机模拟。因此，只要他们继续利用这种能力创造计算机模拟，那么宇宙中绝大多数存在都将是模拟存在，而非非模拟存在。

So I've been thinking about this lately, and I I do take the simulation idea seriously. I think, you know, there's nothing we know with certainty that rules out the idea we're in a computer simulation. The philosopher Nick Bostrom has actually given a statistical argument that we should take it very seriously, that we are in a simulation. Roughly, the idea is that any sufficiently intelligent population will have the capacity to create lots and lots of computer simulations of whole populations. So as long as they go ahead and and use their abilities and create computer simulations, then most majority of beings in the universe will be simulated beings and not unsimulated beings.

然后这个想法就是让我们做做数学，算算统计。宇宙中99.9%的存在都是模拟的，包括一大群和我一模一样的人。我是那幸运的0.1%中的一员，这种几率有多大？所以你可能会说我应该有99.9%的把握认为自己是一个模拟存在。当然，你可以在这里或那里对推理提出质疑。

And then the thought is we'll just do the do the math, do the statistics. 99.9% of beings in the universe are simulated, including a whole bunch who are just like me. What are the odds that I'm one of the lucky ones at ground zero, the point 1%? So you might say I should be 999 out of 99.9% confident that I'm a simulated being. Now you can raise issues with the reasoning here and there.

一个问题是模拟存在会有意识吗？有些人会说没有。它们没有意识，只是僵尸。如果是这样，那么我有意识这一事实就证明我不在模拟中。

One question is would a simulated being be conscious? Some people would say no. They're not conscious. They'll be zombies. If so, the fact that I'm conscious shows that I'm not in a simulation.

你认为自己有意识。继续说。

You think you're conscious. Go ahead.

但但但至少这对我没有帮助，因为我至少公开认为一个

But but but at least but that's not gonna help me because I'm I'm at least on record as thinking that a

是的。

Yes.

模拟系统，一个人工智能系统，可以像生物系统一样有意识。所以我认为计算机模拟中的所有存在很可能都是有意识的。也许只有50%的可能性。好吧，即使它们有意识的概率只有50%，这仍然应该给‘我处于模拟中’这一假设带来很大的概率支持。

Simulated system, an AI system, could be just as conscious as a biological system. So I think all those beings in computer simulations may well be conscious. Maybe it's only 50%. Okay. Even if it's only 50% likely they're conscious, then that still should give a big dose of probability to the hypothesis that I'm in a simulation.

所以这并没有帮助。因此，我认为实际上有可能，你知道，我无法排除我们处于模拟中的可能性。不过，我想脱离这种观点的是认为模拟就是幻觉。认为模拟不是真实的。

So that's not gonna help. So I think it's actually possible that, you know, I do I can't rule out that we're in a simulation. Where I where I wanna get off the boat though is this idea that simulations are illusions. Right. That simulations aren't real.

我认为我们可能身处一个作为模拟的世界中。但如果是这样，那并不意味着我们周围的世界中没有桌子和椅子，没有物质，一切都是幻觉。我认为我们应该说的是，是的，我们身处一个有桌椅和物质的世界，如果我们处于模拟中，那么当我们发现这一点时，我们将对桌椅的构成做出一个惊人的发现。

I think we could be we could be in a world which is a simulation. But if so, that doesn't mean that, you know, there's no tables and chairs in the world around us. There's no matter. It's all an illusion. I think what we should say is instead, yeah, we're in a world with tables and chairs and matter, and we've made a if we're in a simulation, then if we discover we're in a simulation, we'll have made a surprising discovery about what tables and chairs are made of.

它们归根结底都是由信息或下一层面的计算过程构成的，而这些过程可能最终由更高层宇宙中的过程实现。但关键在于，这一切依然真实存在。不像笛卡尔所设想的那样——你周围的世界都不存在。是的，我周围的世界确实存在。

They're all ultimately made of, say, information and computational processes at the next level down, which may ultimately be realized in processes in the next universe up. But importantly, it's all still real. It's not like as Descartes thought a world where nothing around you exists. Yes. The world around me exists.

只是它的本质令人惊讶。这实际上与我们之前讨论的结构现实主义观点完美契合——物理学揭示的是世界的结构，而非结构的终极构成。如果身处模拟世界，我们现实的数学结构可能完全符合物理定律，只不过这一切都是在更高层宇宙的计算机上运行实现的。

It just has a surprising nature. And this actually connects nicely to the ideas about structural realism we were talking about before, that really physics tells you about the structure of the world. It doesn't tell you ultimately about what that structure is made up of. If we're in a simulation, it turns out the structure is exactly the mathematical structure of our reality may be exactly as physics says. It's just that it's all implemented or realized on a computer in the next universe up.

所以物理结构是真实的，电子依然真实存在。它们只是最终由比特构成，由更高层宇宙中的基本元素组成。

So, yeah, the structure of physics is real, so the electrons are still real. They're just ultimately electrons made of bits, made of whatever is fundamental in the next universe up.

你提到如果我们终将发现真相，我们有可能找到确凿证据吗？

You said if we ever find out, is there any way we would ever find out?

这取决于模拟系统的完善程度，不是吗？就像《黑客帝国》里那样，如果他们给我们留下某些潜在逃脱途径...

Depends how well the simulation is made, doesn't it? You know, if they if they if it's like the the one in The Matrix where they they gave us some potential ways out like

红色药丸。那代码漏洞太多了。

the red pill. It's very buggy code. Yeah.

没错，要我说这种模拟构建方式很蠢——除非你故意让人逃脱。如果是完美模拟，我们可能永远无法察觉。正因如此，即便我们不在模拟中，也无法证明这点。因为在完美模拟里，任何证据体验都可以被模拟出来。

Yeah, that that's a dumb way to to to build a a simulation if you ask me unless you want people to to escape. If it's a perfect simulation, we may we may never find out. And because of that, I think if we're not in a simulation, we may never be able to prove that we're not in a simulation. Because in a perfect simulation, any evidence, any proof we can get could be simulated Right. By being for the same experiences.

所以我们永远无法确证自己不在模拟中。但反过来说，如果确实身处模拟，或许能发现决定性证据——比如模拟者突然移动月球，或在我们的基因代码里留下'嘿，失败者们，你们在模拟中'之类的信息。

So I think we'll never get we'll never know for sure the negative claim we're not in a simulation. It could be that if we are in a simulation, could we get some very decisive evidence for that. You know, if if if the simulators suddenly move the moon around in the sky and, you know, and write big signals and we we look at our genetic code and we find messages written in there saying, hey, losers. You're in a simulation. Then we take that to be pretty strong.

这其实与'上帝创造论'的预设很相似，对吧？本质上区别不大...

There is the preexisting hypothesis of God having done all this. Right? It's not that different, God

就是这类概念

being these things

来自我们程序员做这些事情。

from our programmers doing these things.

确实如此。关于人类以及证据的问题，同样适用于上帝的存在。我的意思是，原则上我们可以获得决定性证据证明上帝存在，但要证明上帝不存在则非常困难。

Exactly. And people and the questions of the question of evidence arises for God as well. I mean, we could, in principle, get decisive evidence that that there is a God. It's very hard to get decisive evidence that there's not a God.

你认为现实中我们至少可以想象进行如此逼真的模拟，以至于在我们的模拟器中存在多个有意识的智能生物吗？

And you think that it's realistic to think that we can at least imagine simulating doing simulations that are so good that a multiplicity of intelligent conscious creatures exist there in our simulator simulations?

原则上我认为可以。这主要取决于计算机算力——一旦我们充分了解物理定律，理论上我们就能建立一个边界条件允许的宇宙，用微分方程模拟器（可能需要量子计算机来准确模拟量子力学）。虽然模拟一个与我们宇宙同等复杂的宇宙会很困难。

I think so in principle. I mean, I don't see it's just a matter really of computer power and of you know, once you know once we know the laws of physics well enough, presumably, we could set up a universe with boundary conditions like which are allowable boundary conditions for a universe like us, set up the differential equation simulators on our on our maybe it would need to be a quantum computer to be especially to to get the quantum mechanics right. But then I don't see why in principle you couldn't get maybe it'd be hard to get a universe as complex as our universe. Oh, yeah.

必须简化些。所以每个

Would have to be less. So every

每个 如果我们的宇宙是有限的

every If our universe is finite

要简化些。对吧？

to be less. Right?

如果我们的宇宙是有限的，比如具有十亿个复杂度单位，我们就无法模拟同等复杂度的东西。但或许可以模拟百万级复杂度的宇宙，以免过度消耗资源。考虑到我们似乎身处资源极其丰富的宇宙，原则上应该能轻松模拟相当复杂的宇宙。

If our universe is finite and it has, say, you know, 1,000,000,000 units of complexity, then we can't simulate something with 1,000,000,000 units of complexity, but maybe something worth, you know, 1,000,000 units of complexity just to not to tax the universe Yeah. Too much. And, of course, we're if we are in the enormous universe that we seem to be in now with enormous resources, that seems to probably it'll have resources to be able to simulate some pretty complicated universes without without too much trouble in principle.

无论是笛卡尔式的怀疑、模拟理论还是上帝创世论，我们能否运用人择原理来思考：如果这些理论成立，宇宙应该呈现什么特征？然后验证现实是否吻合？就像有人用物理学参数的微调证明上帝存在时，也应注意到宇宙中许多特征完全不符合'为人类存在而设计'的预期。这种逻辑是否适用于模拟假说？

These kinds of scenarios, whether it's Descartes or simulations or whatever, I mean, can we or or God creating the universe. Can we apply some kind of anthropic reasoning here and ask, you know, if this were the case, would that have some implications for what the universe would look like and then ask it does or does not look like that? Like, I've certainly said, if you want to, depend on if you wanna argue that the fine tuning in the universe of certain fundamental physics parameters that therefore allows for the existence of life is evidence for the existence of God, then you should be consistent in that argument and point out that there are other things about our universe that look wildly unlike you would expect if the point of the universe existing was for our life to exist. Can we say similar things about the purported simulators?

没错。你可能担心多数模拟宇宙会具有某些特定属性，而我们的宇宙是否具备这些属性。比如我们的宇宙异常庞大，复杂程度惊人。

Yeah. I mean, you might worry that most simulations are gonna have certain properties and that our universe does or doesn't have those properties. I mean, one thing about a universe is it's enormous. It seems to be enormously big. It's so complicated.

为何要浪费时间呢？如果打算创造模拟世界，你可能会认为大多数模拟场景会为了多种目的而设计得更加局部和小型化。为何模拟者要生成像我们这样庞大复杂的宇宙？你或许会觉得自己很普通。当然，每当创造一个类似我们的宇宙时，必然涉及大量人创造更简单的次级宇宙，这些宇宙又会衍生出更简单的版本，如此循环往复，越来越简单的宇宙会越来越多。因此你可能会认为，实际上大多数宇宙都会极其简单。

Why would you waste your time It does seem if you're gonna be making simulations, you might think most simulations are gonna be a whole lot smaller and local for for many purposes. Why would the simulators be be generating universes quite as big and as complex as we are? You might think you're average. Of course, whenever you do make a universe like that like us, it's gonna involve a whole bunch of people making simulations of universes which are simpler in turn, universes which are simpler in turn, more and more of those ever simpler universes. So you might think that actually most universes are gonna be very, very simple.

正是如此。

Exactly. That's what

我也这么想。对。我似乎记得肖恩·卡罗尔曾提出过类似观点——我想这是我...

I would think. Yeah. I think I might have heard Sean Carroll making a I think I made this

的观点。没错。

point. Yes.

过去某个时候提到过。因此，单是我们存在于复杂宇宙这个事实，就至少能成为质疑模拟假说的一个理由。

The in the past at some point. And then so the other very fact that we're in a complicated universe is gonna be at least some reason to disfavor the simulation the simulation hypothesis.

当然，这里需要稍作辩证。对此的回应可以是：我们并不确定宇宙是否真的广阔。我们看到的只是最近抵达地球的光子，而非星系本身。或许百万光年之外空无一物，一切都是为了让我们产生这种认知而设置的。

Now, of course, so to go there's a little bit of back and forth here. One could respond to that by saying, well, we don't know the universe is big. We see galaxies in the sky, but really we see photons that have recently reached us. We don't see the galaxies themselves. Maybe there's nothing more than a few million light years away, and it's all just set up to make us think that.

但这样一来，我们就陷入了某种怀疑论的噩梦。我们为何要接受这种设定？

But then, we're in some sort of skeptical nightmare. What might we have to do that?

半怀疑论吧。也许真实范围只到太阳系。我们以为自己已向其他行星发射探测器...

Semi skepticism. Maybe it's just like everything out to the solar system. Yeah. And we've actually sent probes out to the We think we get to. To, you know, to other planets and so on.

至于地球...我不确定。我觉得仅模拟纽约这样的城市就很困难——毕竟人们不断进出城市，外界新闻持续涌入。至少需要相当精细地模拟整个地球才能维持报纸电视等媒体的运转。但地球之外的模拟难度或许会降低。

So the Earth I don't know. I'm pretty I'm thinking it's gonna be hard to just to simulate like a like New York City because there's so many people leaving New York City all the time and coming back and the news from the outside. At the very least, you're gonna have to have a pretty detailed simulation of the rest of the earth to keep all the Right. Newspapers and TV and everything going. But once you move outside the Earth, it gets at least a bit easier.

可能月球只是个...考虑到它对人类生活的影响，至少需要相当精细的月球模拟。但超出某个临界点后，或许就能运行非常廉价的模拟——比如冥王星之外，整个宇宙只是低成本模拟。偶尔当科学家有新发现时，模拟者会说：啊，他们刚发现了新的监测手段。

Maybe it's like maybe the moon is just a I mean, if you at least gonna need a fairly detailed simulation of the moon because of the role it plays in our lives. But maybe beyond a certain point, you can run a very cheap simulation. Maybe beyond Pluto, we've just got a very cheap simulation of the rest of the the universe. And every now and then, maybe the science maybe the simulators say, ah, they've just made a new discovery. They've discovered a new a new form of a new way to monitor stuff.

他们正在更仔细地研究这些系外行星。或许他们会匆忙整理出一些新数据给我们。但也许最终会发现运行一个廉价的模拟要容易得多。

And they're they're looking a little bit closer at these exoplanets. And maybe they they scramble and they come up with some new data for us. But maybe that's gonna turn out to be much easier to run a cheap simulation.

但光是说出这些话，难道不会让你觉得我们可能并不生活在这样的世界里吗？

But doesn't doesn't even saying these words make you think that maybe this is not the world we live in?

这不是真实的世界？

That this is not the world?

这些全是否认我们生活在模拟世界中的论点。我们的宇宙看起来确实比实际需要的大得多。你可以想象模拟者能做的事，但他们为何要如此大费周章？

That that that that these are all kind of arguments against living in a simulation. Just our universe does look way bigger than it does. You can imagine things the simulators could do, but why are they going to all this trouble?

不过我认为很有可能——虽然我不确定我们的宇宙是否无限。但基本宇宙是无限的这个可能性很大。或许在更高层宇宙中，他们拥有无限的资源。

I think it's quite possible though that the whether I don't know whether our universe is infinite. Yeah. But it's quite possible that the basic universe is infinite. And maybe, you know, the next in the next universe up, they have infinite resources. Yeah.

事实证明模拟一个有限的庞大宇宙根本不成问题。实际上他们能模拟无限宇宙，因为在无限宇宙中，你可以毫不费力地用资源模拟无数个无限宇宙。只要我们不掉进认为上层宇宙必须和我们一样的思维陷阱，那么一切皆有可能。

And it turns out that simulating a large finite universe is no problem at all. In fact, they can simulate infinite universes because in infinite universe, you'll have the resources for to simulate an infinite number of infinite universes without without problems. So as long as we don't fall into the trap of thinking that the next universe up has to be just like ours, then I think all bets are off.

这是否存在伦理影响？或者说这个想法会如何改变我们的伦理观？首先，如果我们是模拟产物，是否该以不同方式看待本世界的伦理？我们是否该担忧创造具有意识的模拟体并善待它们？

And are there ethical implications for this or are there implications of this idea for how we should think about ethics? Number one, should we think about ethics in our world differently if we're simulations? And should we worry about making simulations with conscious creatures and treating them well?

我认为这个假说对我们世界伦理的影响，不会比有神论假说（认为宇宙存在造物主）的影响更剧烈。我们仍是过着自己生活的意识体，善待他人，确保他们大体拥有积极的意识体验而非消极的。或许我们需要考虑行为对上层宇宙者的影响。但由于我们并不真正了解这种影响，可以说这其中存在自利因素——毕竟若参考宗教假说，人们会大幅改变行为以求永生。

I think that the ethics of our world didn't be affected drastically by this anymore than it has to be affected drastically by the theistic hypothesis that we're in the universe with a god. We're still conscious beings living our lives, treat other people well, make sure they have, by and large, positive conscious experiences rather than the negative ones. Maybe we need to think about the impact of our actions on the people in the next universe up. But since we don't really know what those what that impact is, it's you might say there's a self interest comes into this. After all, if we want to live on the on religious hypotheses, people modify their behavior greatly in order they can live forever.

我们可能想要确保模拟者让我们继续存在。

We might want to, you know, make sure the simulators keep us around.

这确实开启了来世的可能性，如果我们身处模拟中的话。

I mean, does open the possibility of an afterlife, right, if we're in a simulation.

是的。我是说，或许可以非常自然主义地看待——就像模拟假说中存在一个自然主义版本的上帝那样，也可能存在一个自然主义版本的来世。我们已经在《黑镜》这类剧集中看到，当人们生命终结时，他们会上传进入模拟世界继续以那种方式存在。

Yeah. I mean, maybe up quite naturalist just as the simulation hypothesis here has a very naturalistic version of God, it could have a naturalistic version of an afterlife. We already see in TV shows like Black Mirror that, you know, people come to the end of their lives and they upload into a into a simulation and keep going keep going that way. Have

你读过伊恩·班克斯的《文明》系列小说吗？

you read Ian Banks' culture novels?

其实还没读过。我应该看看。

I haven't actually. I should.

噢，好吧。你确实该读读，因为其中部分内容——虽然占比不大，除了一本以这个设定为核心的小说——提出了这样的观点：他们不断进行模拟实验，那些模拟世界里存在有意识的智能体，因此星际组织立法禁止终止模拟，否则就是种族灭绝。但有些极端恶劣的文明会把这些模拟世界变成地狱，专门折磨行为不端的人工智能。

Oh, okay. You certainly should because part of it it's it's a small part except for one novel where it plays a major role. But there's this idea that, yeah, they do simulations all the time. There are conscious consciousnesses and agents in the simulations and therefore the intergalactic organization has passed laws, you can't end it the simulations because that would be genocide. But then there's certain very, very bad civilizations that actually turn them into hells where they they torture the AIs that didn't behave in the right way.

所以我认为，一旦我们开始考虑创建自己的模拟世界，伦理问题就会立即凸显。我确信当人类有能力在iPhone上运行'模拟宇宙'副本，甚至同时运行上千个副本来观察整个宇宙历史通宵演变、收集统计数据时——无论是用于科研还是市场营销预测产品表现——很多人都会跃跃欲试。

So I think the ethical questions absolutely get a grip once we start thinking about creating our own simulations. And I'm sure any number of people are gonna be tempted just to once we've got the capacity to start up a copy of Sim Universe running on our iPhone and maybe get a thousand copies up and running and see what happens overnight around the entire history of this universe, gather the statistics, could be useful for scientific purposes, could be useful for, like, marketing purposes, predicting what product's gonna do well, Could just be

实用性我都没考虑到，不过...

useful I didn't even go there, but Oh,

当然。你会想测试不同产品，看哪款iPhone最畅销。但伦理问题的严重性真的不可估量。

for sure. You wanna you wanna test your different products and see which iPhone is gonna Right. Is gonna sell the best. For sure. But, I think the ethical issues really were enormous.

你将创造包含亿万万生灵——甚至可能是无限多人的宇宙，每个都是拥有意识的个体。如果其中存在痛苦的人生，我们就犯下了暴行；如果有愉悦的人生，或许我们做了好事。就像人们讨论上帝创造我们时是否创造了所有可能世界中最好的那个——为什么存在这么多恶？

You're gonna be creating you're gonna be creating universes with billions of billions, trillions, maybe infinitely many people. Each of which is living a is living a life as a conscious being. And if there are lives of suffering, then we've done something horrific. And if there are lives of pleasure, then maybe we've maybe we've done something good. But, yeah, people talk about did God create when creating us create the best of all possible worlds?

也许上帝创造了众多宇宙，只有那些积极体验多于消极体验的才被保留下来。我们也将面临类似抉择：或许只有当模拟世界中积极体验能补偿苦难时，你才有权创建存在痛苦的实验性世界。

Why was there so much evil? Well, maybe God created many different universes. All the ones that had a net balance of of positive experiences over negative experiences Turned out by creating all those worlds and somehow there was a net positive in creating them. Well, we're gonna face questions like this too. Maybe if you want to create experimental worlds where there's suffering, you can only do that when there's a net balance of positive experiences in your in your simulations to make up for it.

即便如此，总会有人质疑：你本可以创造更美好的世界——减少些苦难，增加些愉悦、成就或满足感。所以创造这个世界本身就是不道德的。我认为我们必须直面这些难题，它们不会有简单的答案。

Even then, someone's gonna say, well, you could have created an even better world with a bit less suffering and a bit more and a bit more pleasure or fulfillment or satisfaction. So you need to do something immoral by creating creating this world. I think we're gonna have to face all those questions. They're not gonna have easy answers.

好的。说到简单的答案，大卫，最后还有两个问题。一个是，你正在写一本书。我知道进展顺利，但我们可以让观众做好准备。你想透露一些关于这本书的内容吗？

Okay. Speaking of easy answers, two last questions for you, David. One is, you're working on a book. Do you I know it's well advanced, but we can prime our audience to be ready. Do wanna say anything about what the book will be?

当然。这本书的重点正是我们刚才讨论的关于模拟和虚拟现实的这一系列问题。暂定书名可能不会是最终标题，但暂定名为《现实2.0：人工世界与哲学的重大问题》。全书通过人工或虚拟现实的概念，探讨诸如我们对客观世界的认知和现实本质等哲学问题。

Sure. Yeah. The the focus of the book is very much this set of issues we've been talking about for the last few minutes about simulations and about virtual reality. My working title probably won't be the final title, but the working title is reality two point o, artificial worlds and the great problems of philosophy. And it's all about exploring philosophical problems like our knowledge of the external world and the nature of reality through this through the idea of artificial or virtual reality.

所以，比如我们是否生活在矩阵中？这是其中之一。但更重要的是，我想发展自己的哲学观点——虚拟现实、模拟现实是一种真正的现实。它不是虚假的，也不是次等现实。

So, you know, are we in a matrix? That's one of them. But also, really want to to develop my own philosophical line, is virtual reality, simulated reality is a genuine kind of reality. It's not a fake Right. Or a second class reality.

这是世界存在的完全合理方式。我认为这不仅与科幻场景（如我们生活在模拟中）的推测相关，也与当今正在开发的虚拟现实技术等实际场景密切相关。比如Oculus Rift，人们进入虚拟世界并开始在那里花费越来越多时间。不难想象，五十年或一百年后，我们都将在这些虚拟世界中度过大量时间。问题随之而来：你能在那里真正过上有意义的生活吗？

It's a perfectly respectable way for a world to be. And I think this is relevant not just for a way out speculation science fiction scenarios like we're living in a simulation, but very practical scenarios like the virtual reality technology that's being developed today. Things like, you know, the Oculus Rift where people enter into into virtual worlds and start spending more and more of their time there. It's easy to imagine fifty or a hundred years in the future, we're gonna we're gonna all gonna be spending a lot of our time in these virtual worlds. And the question's gonna arise is that can you actually lead a meaningful life there?

是啊。甚至不确定这是否是个有意义的问题——这本书的目标读者是普通大众、专业哲学家，还是两者兼顾？我...

Yeah. And is this is it I'm not even sure if this is a meaningful question. Is this aimed at a popular audience or professional philosophers or both? I would

两者都是。但我绝对会尽可能让它通俗易懂，任何人都能阅读。

say both. But I'm I'm absolutely trying to make it as accessible Okay. As possible so anyone can anyone can read this book.

你有10...

You have 10 you

能做到的。希望他们不会收回这个评价。这本书既要介绍大量哲学思想，也要提出我自己的实质性哲学观点——即虚拟现实在所有领域都是第一流的现实。

can do that. Yeah. I hope I hope they won't revoke it. But, yeah, it's it's meant to be both introducing a whole lot of philosophical ideas, but also putting forward a substantive philosophical view of my own. But roughly this view that virtual reality is a first class reality across all of these domains.

我认为这与重大哲学问题相关：我们如何知道存在外部世界？（笛卡尔难题）它与心身关系问题相关，也与伦理问题相关——比如什么构成有意义、有价值的生活。因此，通过虚拟现实的视角，实际上可以触及一些最深刻的哲学问题，就像思考人工智能能启发关于人类心智的诸多问题一样。

I think it has bearing on the great great philosophical problems. How do we know there's an external world? Descartes' problem. It has bearings on the question of the relationship between mind and body, and it has bearing on these ethical questions about, you know, what makes a meaningful and valuable existence or life of the kind. So I think it's actually a way to come at some of the deepest philosophical problems just through this lens of just as thinking about artificial intelligence turns out to shed light on many questions about the human mind.

我认为思考人工现实能照亮我们身处其中的自然现实的各类问题。这就是我正在尝试的工作。

I think thinking about artificial realities turns out to shed light on all kinds of questions about the actual natural reality we find ourselves in. So that's what I'm trying to do.

最后一个问题是关于汤姆·斯托帕德的，

And the last question is, Tom Stoppard,

他是

one of

我最喜爱的在世剧作家之一，或者说所有剧作家中的最爱。他写了一部名为《难题》的戏剧。你创造的一个短语成为汤姆·斯托帕德戏剧的标题，这种感觉如何？

my favorite living playwrights, playwrights period. He wrote a play called The Hard Problem. How does it feel to have a phrase you coined become of the title of a Tom Stoppard play?

哦，我非常非常高兴。实际上是我朋友丹·丹尼特发邮件告诉我的。他在一篇文章里读到这个消息，说‘嘿，汤姆·斯托帕德有部新剧叫《难题》要上演了’。我说太棒了，这该不会和意识有关吧？结果还真是。

Oh, I was I was I was very pleased. I think actually it was my friend Dan Dennett who sent me an email. He read this in an article and said, hey, there's a Tom Stoppard play coming out called The Hard Problem. I said, great. Has this got something to do with consciousness, but it turns out it does.

因为这个契机，我和汤姆·斯托帕德还逐渐熟识起来。这部剧在美国费城的威尔玛剧院首演，大概是两年前——也可能是一年前的事。我去那里和汤姆同台做了场活动，我们俩在舞台上讨论意识这个‘难题’。这部剧很有意思，但我不确定它本质上是否真的关于意识。

And I've actually gotten to know Tom Stoppard a little as a result of this process. He put on it it had its American opening in in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, maybe about a year ago at the Wilmer Theater in Philadelphia. And I went down there and did an event with Tom where the two of us were talking on stage about the hard problem of consciousness. The play is very interesting. I'm not convinced it's actually about consciousness at its root.

它探讨的是一系列更广泛的问题，有些涉及意识，有些涉及上帝，还有些涉及价值。事实上在讨论中我们发现，对汤姆而言真正推动创作的核心问题似乎不是意识问题，而是价值问题。嗯。你如何体验某些事物比其他更好、生命有意义、悲伤与快乐的区别？当然这些与意识紧密相关。

It's about a much broader set of questions, some of which involve consciousness, some of which involve God, some of which involve value. And in fact, in this discussion, it sort of emerged that it's not that it seemed to me that the problem that was really generating things for Tom was not the problem of consciousness, but the problem of value. Mhmm. How can you have the experience of some things being better than others, of life being meaningful, of of sorrow versus versus happiness? Of course, that's very deeply connected to consciousness.

但我向他提出，他真正的‘难题’其实是价值问题。他同意了，说‘是的，谢谢。我想真正触动我的可能就是这个问题——这个难题’。

But I suggested to him that really his hard problem is the problem of value. And he agreed. He said, yes. Thank you. I think maybe that's what's really moving me, the hard problem.

著名的难题啊。

Famously hard problem.

不过好吧，这不算

But okay. It's not

真正的难题。但它们都纠缠在一起。我是说，你总得写出最好的剧本对吧？就连我给好莱坞科学电影当顾问时，目标也是做出最好的电影，而不是最严谨的科学纪录片。

the hard problem. But they're all mixed up. I mean, you gotta write the best play. Right? That's even I'm when I'm a adviser for Hollywood movies about science, the the goal is to make the best movie, not to be the best science documentary.

但这出戏实际上即将在纽约林肯中心上演。所以我，哦，好吧。又要经历一轮所有这些事了。实际上，最后——我不想透露任何剧透——但在某个时刻，他们提到主角去和一位NYU教授共事，这位教授的理念被描述为无法证实的。已经有好几个人问我那是不是我。

But the the play is about to open actually here in here in New York at the at the Lincoln Center. So I Oh, okay. Have another round of of of all of this coming up. Actually, last I don't wanna give away any spoilers about the play, but at a certain point, they mentioned the main character goes to work with a professor at NYU whose ideas are said to be indemonstrable. And various people have asked me whether that's whether that's me.

我其实相当确信那不是指我。我认为是我的同事托马斯·内格尔。

I'm actually fairly confident that it's not. I think it's my colleague, Tom Nagel.

我觉得是托马斯·内格尔。汤姆

I think it's Tom Nagel. Tom

内格尔，写了《成为一只蝙蝠是怎样的》。是的。而且他就是那位在

Nagel, wrote What Is It Like to Be a Bat. Yes. And he's the he's the professor at

但仅仅被贴上‘理念被称为不可证实的哲学家’的标签，其实并不能缩小太多范围。

But simply the label of being a philosopher whose ideas have been called nondemonstrable is doesn't doesn't really narrow things down too much.

我的。是啊。我和同事内德·布洛克讨论过这个。我们NYU有三位研究意识哲学的。我们认定剧中哲学家肯定不是我们俩，因为我们的理念是可证实的。

My. Was yeah. I was talking about this with my colleague, Ned Block. There's three of us at NYU who work on the philosophy of consciousness. And we decided that the philosopher in question surely couldn't be either of us because our ideas are demonstrable.

完全正确。好的。大卫·查默斯，非常感谢你参加播客。谢谢。很愉快。

Absolutely right. Alright. David Chalmers, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.