311 | 安娜卡·哈里斯谈意识是否具有基础性

大家好，欢迎收听《心智景观》播客。我是主持人肖恩·卡罗尔。今天为听众准备了特别内容：我们将一劳永逸地解开意识之谜。不，我们对此并不感到抱歉——刚才那句算是虚假宣传。

Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll. Special treat for Mindscape listeners today: we're going to finally figure out this consciousness thing once and for all. No, we're not actually sorry about that. That was false advertising.

我们将再次探讨意识这个话题。在一个小时的对话中，我们不太可能让持不同观点的人达成共识，但每期节目都会让我们离答案更近一步——这是我唯一能承诺的。不久前我们才邀请过著名神经科学家克里斯托夫·科赫，重点讨论了意识的神经关联物和整合信息理论。

We're going to talk about consciousness yet again. It's not something that we're going to ever in the course of a one hour long conversation quite agree that people who have different opinions about this are going to see the light. But we're going to come closer and closer with every episode. That's all I can actually promise. You know, it wasn't that long ago we had Christoph Koch, famous neuroscientist on the show, and we talked a lot about consciousness in particular, the neural correlates of consciousness and integrated information theory.

我们曾涉及泛心论的观点（即意识无处不在），但未曾深入探讨。今天我想给这个理念——或许不是泛心论本身，而是'意识是现实的基本成分而非涌现现象'的观点——一个充分阐述的机会。当我们说意识是物质在足够复杂自指时表现出的集体行为，有没有可能其实意识才是思考现实本质的起点？我必须诚实地说，我并不认为这个观点正确。

We touched on the idea of panpsychism, which we've talked about before on the podcast, the idea that consciousness is everywhere. But we didn't really give it a full airing out. So I wanted to kind of give that idea, maybe not panpsychism per se, but the idea that consciousness is a fundamental ingredient of reality rather than just an emergent level, something that we use to describe the collective behavior of matter when it becomes sufficiently complex and self referential and so forth. Rather than that, what if consciousness is the starting point for thinking about the fundamental nature of reality? I'm very, very honest that I don't think that that is the right idea.

但我认为思考这类观点很有价值。今天的嘉宾安妮卡·哈里斯是《纽约时报》畅销书《心灵基本谜题简指南》的作者，最近她还以探索形式制作了音频系列《开灯：理解意识如何帮助我们理解宇宙》，采访了包括我在内的多位人士——其中不少都是《心智景观》的老嘉宾。

But I do think that it's useful to think about that kind of idea and I wanted to sort of give it a fair hearing. So today's guest, Anika Harris, is the author of New York Times bestseller A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of Mind. And more recently, she's done in this sort of exploratory fashion, she came up with an audio series, aka a podcast called Lights On, How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe, where she talks to a bunch of people. I'm included. Actually, there's a bunch of people who are former Mindscape guests who are included.

她收集了来自物理学家、神经科学家和心理学家关于意识本质的各种观点，并分享了自己从'认同意识是涌现现象'到'倾向于意识是基本要素'的思想转变历程。我们将探讨人们持这种观点的原因、益处和动机，包括思想实验和实际实验等方面的依据。

And she gets a lot of different opinions from physicists, from neuroscientists, from psychologists about what consciousness really is. And she talks about how she has made the journey from someone who was closer to my own point of view about these things with consciousness being emergent, to someone who is very sympathetic to the idea of consciousness being fundamental. And we talk about why anyone would believe such a thing and what is the benefit of doing it? What is the motivation for doing it? From both thought experiments and real experiments and things like that.

我们的讨论充满乐趣，因为彼此都知道无法说服对方——但这没关系。我们仍可以交流观点，这正是本节目的意义。请像往常一样保持开放心态，听完后自行判断哪种视角最有说服力，永远不要对任何观点持100%或0%的确信度。

So we had fun with it in the sense that we knew we weren't going to convince each other either way, but that's okay. We can still talk about it. We can discuss the ideas. That's what we're all about here. So as usual, I want you to listen and decide for yourself what it is that you think, which perspective you think is the most convincing, the way forward, never ever putting a credence of 100% or 0% on anything, but keeping an open mind.

现在有请拉妮卡·哈里斯——《心智景观》播客欢迎你的到来！

And with that, let's go. Lanika Harris, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

非常感谢邀请我。我深感荣幸，真的。

Thank you so much for having me. I'm I'm honored, truly.

特别要感谢你，因为你知道，你这是在深入敌营。对吧？是的。我们都知道，我们之前讨论过这些。我们立场相左，但我真的很欣赏你的新系列节目，以及你如何尝试与各种观点不同的人对话。

Well, especially thank you because you know that you're, you know, walking into enemy territory here. Right? Yes. Like, we all know that, we've talked about these things before. We come out on opposite sides, but I really appreciated your new series and how you try to talk to a whole bunch of different people with different points of view.

那趁我们还没忘记，不如先简单介绍一下这个系列，是什么让你想到采用这种特定形式的？

So why don't you just, before we forget, mention the series and what caused you to think of this particular medium?

是的。这个系列叫《点亮光明：理解意识如何帮助我们理解宇宙》。刚开始创作时，我甚至不知道自己在做什么。2019年我刚完成《意识》这本书的出版和推广工作，结果发现自己还有太多未解的疑问，还没准备好转向新课题。

Yeah. So it's called Lights On, How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe. And I didn't even know what I was making when I started out creating this project. I had finished publishing and promoting my book called Conscious that came out in 2019. And I just realized that I was left with so many questions and I wasn't quite ready to move on to a new topic yet.

实际上，我一位制片人朋友带着拍电影的想法来找我——只是个初步构想。突然间我意识到，我需要的只是获得许可，开始录制那些我想做的访谈。我根本不指望真能拍成电影——我不熟悉那个领域，而且知道制作周期漫长。但转念一想：天啊，他这不就是把我的梦想项目送上门了吗？可以畅所欲言地和所有我想对话的科学家、哲学家交流，提出所有疑问。

And actually, a film producer friend of mine came to me with this idea, loose idea for a film. And I suddenly it's like all I needed was permission to start recording the interviews I wanted to record. I had no faith really that a movie would ever get made. I mean, I don't know that world, but I know it takes forever But do those I thought, Oh, he just gave me my dream project, which is talk to all the scientists and philosophers I want to talk to. Ask all these questions.

继续深挖这些让我魂牵梦萦的问题。原本计划是录下对话，然后把文字稿作为潜在电影的对话模板。但几周后我们意识到：既然已经积累了这么多音频素材，做播客可比拍电影容易多了。电影也许以后再说，现在先做播客。于是事情逐渐明朗——我其实是在记录自己的思想探索之旅，讲述自己思维过程和观点演变的故事。

Keep thinking about these things that I can't stop thinking about. And the idea was to record the conversations and then use the transcripts as templates for dialogue for this potential film. And what he realized when I was a few weeks into this process was that we would have all this audio and it's much easier to make a podcast than a film. So maybe we'll make the film down the line, but I'm creating a podcast. And so then it became clear that I was kind of on this journey and I was narrating my own story of my process of thinking and my evolving thoughts.

后来我意识到这更像是部纪录片，记录我试图理解这些概念的过程。我们曾称之为'播客纪录片'，但没想到麦克米伦出版社——来自我熟悉的出版界——对制作有声书很感兴趣。所以形式其实不重要，本可以取很多名字，但我知道自己在做音频纪录片。内容始终没变，只是呈现形式在不断调整。

And so I realized it was more like a documentary of kind of my story of trying to understand these concepts. And so we were calling it a podcast documentary, but then lo and behold, Macmillan, the publisher from my publishing world that I'm so comfortable in and understand, were interested in doing this as an audiobook. So yeah, I mean, format doesn't really matter. It could have really been called anything or it could have been called a lot of different things, but I knew I was making an audio documentary. And so yeah, the content didn't change over time, but the format that we put it in did.

嗯，这很有趣，因为人们表达想法的方式各不相同。我们有书籍，有需要字斟句酌的写作。我自己在AMA（问我任何事）环节刚收到一个有趣的问题。前几天有人问，为什么你在AMA中的声音或说话方式与你朗读自己有声书时听起来不一样？

Well, it's interesting because people have different ways of communicating their ideas. And there are are books, there's writing where we're very careful. I just got an interesting question in my own AMA Yeah. The other day about why does your voice or at least your way of talking sound different in the AMAs than when you're reading your own audiobooks?

有意思。

Interesting.

当然，我把这归因于写作形式的不同。对吧？不过我觉得这正是播客的魅力所在——虽然我做的是访谈类播客，但你们这里的制作要精良得多。你能更直接地获取人们的观点，更贴近...

And, of course, I I I attribute it to the writing being different. Right? Yeah. But I think this is, you know, this is one of the nice thing about podcasts, you know, my form of interview podcast, but also you you have a much more polished production here. But you're you're getting people's viewpoints, you know, a little bit more viscerally, right, a little bit closer to

他们的真实个性。其实说来好笑，我更擅长写作。现在紧张得要命，因为我不相信自己能即时用语言清晰表达想法。虽然勉强能应付，但写作才让我感到自在。不过我还是想进行这些对话，所以录了下来。

their individuality. And actually, you know, it's funny because I'm much more comfortable writing. I I'm a nervous wreck right now because I don't trust myself to communicate my ideas well the moment through speech. I end up doing an okay enough job of it, but I'm really comfortable writing. But I wanted to have these conversations and I was recording them.

最终我得以撰写旁白，用书籍形式更详细地阐述当时的想法、疑问，以及答案引导我的方向，再配上这些录音。是的，这很有趣，因为有时我们需要重录。但重现实时对话让我很困扰——那毕竟不是我的朗读声线。确实很不一样。

And so I ended up being able to write the narration, which kind of explains more in book form, what thoughts I was having, what questions I was having, where the answers were leading me, and then use this audio that, yes, it's interesting because there were times when we needed to rerecord things. And I really had a hard time rerecording something that had happened in real time because it's not my reading voice. And yeah, it is different.

在与持不同态度的人们交流过程中，你是否觉得我们在整个意识研究领域取得了进展？你...

And do you find through the course of talking to various people with different attitudes, like do you think that are we making progress on this whole consciousness thing? Do you

看，我希望你的担忧能缓解。我认为是的。虽然还有很长的路要走，而且这个话题很难说我们能否实现期望中的突破。但单就进步而言——当我开始写《意识》这本书时，我甚至不敢与其他科学家分享我的疑问。

see I hope your concerns so. I would say yes. I think so. I think there's a lot more progress to be made, and I think it's one of those topics that is really hard to say whether we can ever make the kind of progress we want to make. But I mean, there's progress just in the sense that when I started writing my book Conscious, I was afraid to share my questions with other scientists.

这就是我们之前讨论的。现在确实有很多科学家愿意参与这个话题的讨论，他们意识到即使对他们来说这不像某些哲学家认为的那么神秘，但确实存在一些我们尚未解释、值得解释的现象。是的，就我个人而言也是如此。我在科学领域已经工作了二十多年，最初并没有现在这样的观点。

That's where we were. So we're definitely at a place now where many scientists are open to having this conversation, realize that even if it doesn't seem as mysterious to them as it does to some other philosophers, that there really is something here that we haven't explained that would be nice to explain. And yeah, and I would say, and it's true for myself. So I've been in the sciences for over twenty years now. I did not start out with the view that I have now.

过去二十多年里，我的观点发生了巨大转变。现在遇到的其他科学家比如布莱恩·格林（这完全是个意外），我认为他基本上和你有相同感受，但他现在能以职业生涯早期不具备的方式欣赏意识的神秘性。我觉得这是巨大进步——就连我们这些曾经认为不值得思考或探讨的人，也开始注意到科学在这方面还有工作要做。

It really transformed a lot over the last twenty years and more. And I'm now meeting other scientists. Brian Green was one, a total surprise actually, who, I think he basically feels the same way you do about it, but he's able to appreciate the mysterious nature of consciousness in a way that he wasn't earlier in his career. And so I think that is huge progress. Just those of us who wouldn't have even considered it really something interesting to think about or ask about, noticing that science has some work to do here.

是的，这是个有趣的问题，与我们以往面对的任何科学问题都不同。

Yes. And it's an interesting problem that's different from every other scientific problem we have faced.

那么你对意识最认同的定义是什么？

So what is your favorite definition of consciousness?

其实我一直在思考这个问题，因为我们之前讨论时——本来想说争论，不过这些辩论总是很有趣——我意识到我们可能对意识有不同的定义，这可能是我们过去产生分歧的部分原因。说实话，我们甚至可能需要改变术语，因为有些人使用'意识'这个词的方式与我的用法不同。大多数人提到意识时，想的是复杂思维、复杂生命、自我认知和自我反思能力。我在回想我们的一些对话时，怀疑当你谈论意识时是否更多指向这些特征。

Yeah, I was actually, I was thinking about this with you because I was going over some of the, I was going to say arguments, but they're they're fun, always, are debates. And I realized that we might be defining it differently and that might be part of where we have diverged in the past. And so, yeah, so when I talk about consciousness, the truth is, we could even change the terminology because the way some people use consciousness is not the way I'm using it. So most people, when they use the word consciousness, they're thinking about complex thought, complex life, self awareness often, and ability to self reflect. I think part of that may be Well, we'll get into it, but I was thinking about some of our conversations and wondering if when you were saying consciousness, you were pointing more to those features.

而我认为真正神秘的、也是我大多数时候讨论意识时采用的定义，是更基础的定义：就是感知体验这个事实。它可能不涉及自我认知或复杂思维。比如我常举蠕虫或蜗牛这类简单生物为例——如果它们存在意识的话（神经科学家对此意见不一）。蜜蜂或苍蝇如果有意识，它们有大脑和中枢神经系统，但我认为苍蝇不会有自我意识或拥有思想语言。比苍蝇更简单的比如蠕虫，如果要猜测它的意识体验，可能是对压力、温度变化的感知，甚至更复杂的如饥饿或恐惧——取决于它是否需要觅食或躲避危险。所以无论我们怎么称呼，我关注的核心就是感知体验这个事实。

And the thing that I think is really mysterious and that most of the time when I'm talking about consciousness, I'm using this other definition or more basic definition, is just the fact of felt experience. So it could be something that is not self aware, that is not a complex thought. Could be, you know, if we imagine, I often give worms or snails or some type of simple insect as an example, you know, if there is consciousness there, neuroscientists are kind of split on this, but if a bee is conscious or a fly is conscious, know, they have a brain and a central nervous system, I would not imagine that a fly is self aware or has thoughts or language, but could maybe, even I think simpler than a fly would be something like a worm where maybe if I had to guess what the conscious experience is, it would be of pressure, maybe of temperature change, maybe even of something more complex like hunger or fear, depending on the circumstance, if it needs to look for food or get away from something that could cause it harm. But yeah, so my definition and the thing I'm interested in, whatever we call it, is really just the fact of felt experience.

为什么自然界中某些系统会从内部产生某种感受？为什么这种感受本身除了被感知之外无法被直接观察？

Why is it that some systems in nature feel like something from the inside, of have this perspective where the feeling itself cannot be directly observed apart from the feeling itself.

所以我想说，如果你给我那个定义，我会说，当然，我理解。至少，你知道，我们可以辩论什么是最好的定义，但我想我明白你的意思。是的。但在某些地方，你在区分那与觉知。比如，我怎么能像蠕虫那样感受压力或恐惧而不意识到它呢？

So I think I would have said, if you just give me that definition, I would have said, sure, I understand. At least, you know, we can debate over what what's the best definition, but I think I understand what you mean. Yeah. But somewhere in there, you're drawing a distinction between that and awareness. Like, how can I be the worm feeling pressure or fear without being aware of it?

是的。嗯，我想觉知也是个棘手的术语。你可以用觉知指代不同的事物。你知道，我倾向于用它作为意识的同义词。当我说觉知时，通常指的是有感知的觉知体验。

Yeah. Well, I guess it I mean, awareness is a tricky term also. So you can mean different things by being aware. You could you know, I tend to use it, synonymous with consciousness. When I say awareness, I'm usually meaning a felt experience of awareness.

所以我可以谈论我的电脑意识到音频输入和视觉输入以及正在进行的任何处理，但我并不认为电脑的处理伴随着有意识的体验。因此，觉知可以指非意识处理，仅仅是信息的组合或某种数字记忆之类的东西。我感觉我现在没有回答你的问题。你刚才问，蠕虫怎么能有意识而不觉知？

So I could talk about my computer being aware of the audio input and the visual input and whatever processing is taking place, but I'm not imagining that there's a conscious experience associated with that processing in the computer. So awareness could be talked about in non conscious processing where it's just a combining of information or a form of digital memory or something like that. I feel like now I'm not answering your question. You were saying, how could a worm be conscious without being aware?

是的，听起来你试图把觉知放在比单纯的意识稍微更高层次的复杂性或精密性上。

Yeah, well it sounded like you were trying to put awareness at a slightly higher level of complexity or sophistication than mere

不，自我。我可能说的是自我觉知。即对自我的觉知，这通常是人们思考意识的方式。你知道，意识发生在像人类这样非常复杂的生命形式中。我们甚至对其他哺乳动物进行这种测试。

No, self. I may have said self awareness. So being aware of oneself, which is usually how people think about consciousness. You know, consciousness happens in very complex life forms like human beings. There's even this test that we do with other mammals.

它们是否意识到自己？它们能在镜子里认出自己吗？诸如此类。但我谈论的是比这更基础的东西。

Are they aware of themselves? Can they see themselves in the mirror? Sort of thing. But I'm talking about something much more basic than

明白了，这非常有帮助。好的，谢谢。正如你所说，我们从内部感受它。所以你提到科学正在取得进展，我们将看到一些科学进步。

Got That's very, very helpful. Okay. Thanks. And we do, like you say, we feel it from the inside. So you mentioned how science is making progress and we're going get to some scientific progress.

但是否存在大量无需神经科学就能取得的进展？我们能否像思考一样推进

But are there whole bunches of progress to be made kind of without doing neuroscience? Can we I progress like thinking

我认为，就我的想象力所及，必须基于神经科学的认知。但不，如果我们被引导相信意识感受体验在自然界中比昆虫和蠕虫更深入，甚至延伸到植物或更深层，我们就开始跨越到其他科学领域。这就是为什么我为音频纪录片采访了那么多物理学家——我想知道如果意识确实超出我们定义的生命范畴，这可能会导向何方。这对物理学意味着什么？物理学家会如何回应？这是否会实际影响我们所做的物理研究，还是我们将始终受限于传统观察和实验的框架？

think it really, as far as my imagination can go, has to be informed by neuroscience. But no, I think if we are led to believe that consciousness felt experience, if it goes much deeper in nature than even insects and worms, or to plants or even deeper than that, we start crossing over into other realms of science. It's why I talk to so many physicists for my audio documentary because I wanted to know where this might be headed if we actually start to think it makes sense to assume that consciousness goes kind of beyond what we categorize as life. And what would that mean for physics and then what would physicists have to say about that? And is there any way in which this can actually affect the physics we do or are we kind of just always going to be limited by observation and experiment the way we traditionally have.

但在纪录片最后一章《科学的未来》中，我尝试让想象力自由驰骋。我提出了一些可能性，如果我们再次确信这是理性的... 让我退一步说，我的起点是与神经科学家共事二十年后意识到：我们一直假设意识产生于复杂生命体，但支撑这个假设的证据并不如我们想象的充分。解构这些导致我们如此假设的直觉认知后——正如我所说，我也曾做过这些假设。我仍认为它可能是正确的，但这个假设的基础并不像我原以为的那么牢固。

But I try to let my imagination go wild in the very last chapter of my documentary and it's called The Future of Science. And I suggest some ways this might go if we're convinced again that it's rational to Well, let me take one step back because I think kind of where my starting point is, is realizing with working with neuroscientists over the course of about twenty years, realizing that we have actually assumed that consciousness arises in complex life forms and that we don't have as good evidence for that as we think we do. And kind of pulling apart those intuitions that lead us to assume that. Now, as I've said, I also made those assumptions. I still think it may be correct, but we're not really on a solid ground as I thought we were in making that assumption.

我意识到我们被迫如此——因为我们不知道起点。我们实际上只能二选一：要么假设意识在自然界某个节点涌现，要么承认它是自然的基本属性。它要么存在于所有系统，要么存在于某些系统，因为我们知道答案不可能是'全无'（毕竟我们拥有自身意识体验的证据）。当我越来越确信我们现有的'意识源于复杂性'这个起点假设可能大错特错时... 如果我们... 我们依然可以说'我们不知道'。

And that I realized we kind of are forced because we don't know our starting point. We're really forced to either assume that it arises at some point, it emerges at some point in nature, or it's fundamental to nature. It's either in all systems or some because we know the answer isn't none, right? So because because we have evidence of at least our own conscious experiences. And so the more convinced I became that we could be very wrong in this starting assumption we've used so far, that it arises out of complexity, What would happen if we Still, we could say we don't know.

我们不必相信它是基本属性，但如果我们假设它是呢？这会如何塑造我们观察到的现象？会如何影响未来的科学走向？于是我让想象力迸发，开始为神经科学家和物理学家提出新问题——这正是我的纪录片探讨的内容。这逐渐演变成我的核心追问：如果意识是基本属性，那么......（省略号）

We don't have to believe that it's fundamental, but what if we just assumed? How would that shape the phenomenon we observe? How would that shape science going forward? And so I just kind of let my imagination run wild and then started to come up with new questions for neuroscientists and physicists, which is, you know, what my documentary is about. But so it kind of became this question for me, if consciousness is fundamental and then, you know, dot dot dot.

那么我们该如何解释自然界中的这种现象？

So how might we interpret this phenomenon in nature?

好吧。这个图景... 虽然它触怒了我的本质，不过没关系。抱歉，这很酷。但我...

Right. So in this picture, which, you know, offends me to the very core, but that's okay. I'm sorry. That's cool. But I

可以说，我生命中的大部分时间都与你同在。

will say that I was completely with you for most of my life.

我知道。是啊。哇。

I know. Yeah. Wow.

有一种方法可以看待这件事。我相信有一种既不冒犯又能理解的方式，尽管从我嘴里说出来连我自己都觉得疯狂。你比我更超前

There's a way there's a way to see this. I believe there's a way to see this that's not offensive even though I it still sounds crazy to me coming out of my own mouth. You're more advanced than

确实。

I am.

我还在努力

I'm still trying

追赶，但这没关系。不过我仍然，你知道，我非常想理解它。我觉得你这里说的有趣之处在于，如果我们采取——先别管是否应该——如果我们认为意识是根本的，那么与其说它是某种复杂信息处理系统的产物等等等等，不如说当复杂性达到允许其显现的程度时，它就以特定方式呈现。但它其实一直都在那里。

to catch up, that but that's okay. But but I still, you know, I'm very interested in understanding it. I think the interesting thing you're saying here is that if we take, you know forget about whether we should but if we take the view that consciousness is fundamental, then rather it being an outgrowth of some complex information processing system, blah, blah, blah, it manifests itself in certain ways when the complexity is there to let that happen. But it's kind of always there.

是啊是啊。我再次强调，我知道这听起来很疯狂。我甚至不敢相信自己会提出这种观点。当你越深入神经科学和我们目前对大脑的认知，就越会意识到我们最初的那个直觉假设其实很快就会被打破。

Yeah. Yeah. Which again, I know that sounds crazy. I kind of can't believe I'm even suggesting it. The deeper you get into the neuroscience and what we've learned about the brain so far, the more you realize our intuitions for that starting assumption really break apart pretty quickly.

有一点虽然显而易见，但我们很少真正思考过，我认为在现代神经科学所有颠覆直觉的发现中，这一点尤为有趣——我们是宇宙中已知最复杂的系统，对吧？而且我们也知道，我们无法区分记忆丧失与意识丧失，我们完全依赖这串记忆流来思考所有想法、成为人类，对吧？所以我们有种感觉，既然我们有意识且是宇宙中已知最复杂的系统，那么假设我的肝脏运作时也有某种感受体验，但只要它从未进入我的记忆流，我就永远无法描述它——它不属于我称之为'我'的那个部分。于是我们陷入这种境地：认为意识是这种复杂处理过程的一部分似乎很合理，但真相是，意识是我们唯一能触及的事物，也是唯一能与其他类似系统交流的事物。

So one thing that is kind of obvious, but we don't really think about it, and I think is interesting in the context of all of these other intuition shattering, I think, of modern neuroscience is that we are the most complex systems we know of in the universe, right? And we also know that we can't tell the difference between loss of memory and loss of consciousness, that we're completely dependent on this stream of memories to think all the thoughts we think, to be human beings, right? And so we have this sense that because we're conscious and we're the most complex systems we know of in the universe, and let's say if there's a felt experience associated with the processing in my liver, let's say, but that never enters my stream of memory, I'll never be able to report on It's not part of the I I'm referring to as I, right? And so we're kind of left in this situation where it makes sense that we would assume that consciousness is part of this complex processing. But the truth is it's the only thing we have access to and the only thing we can communicate to other systems like us about.

我们无法从与我们差异过大的系统中获取信息，因为沟通会彻底失效。所以根本无从报告。这一点甚至在大脑内部也成立——分裂脑研究就是最令我着迷且最颠覆直觉的神经科学发现之一。你甚至会遇到这种情况。不知道你们对这个研究有多熟悉。

We have no way of getting information from a system that is too different from us because the communication completely breaks down. And so there's no way to report. This is even true in a single brain, which was one of the pieces of neuroscience that I found most interesting and most intuition shattering was the split brain research. So you can even have a circumstance. I don't know how familiar you are with this research.

假设

Let's assume

观众并不熟悉。

the audience is not.

好的。那么需要我从头解释吗？因为对我来说，正是这里开始真正颠覆我的直觉认知。

Okay. Okay. So do you want me to kind of explain from the beginning? Yeah. Because this to me is where my intuitions started to really break down.

并让我开始思考自然界中其他可能存在意识的地方。分裂脑患者现在较少见了，但几十年前这曾是治疗癫痫的绝妙方法——针对那些癫痫发作会从大脑一个半球扩散到另一个半球的病人。

And I started having interesting thoughts about where else in nature we might find consciousness. So split brain patients, it's less used now. I don't think there are very many of them now. But a few decades ago, it was a wonderful actually treatment for epilepsy. So for people who were experiencing ground mouth seizures that would, sorry, would spread from one hemisphere of the brain to the other.

如果能将发作局限在单侧半球，危险性就会大幅降低。于是他们开发出切断左右半球连接的手术——切断胼胝体，即左右半球信息共享的中枢。通过一系列实验（可以详述其中一两个），他们发现当这些连接被完全切断后，似乎形成了两个意识孤岛，两个各自感觉像是独立自我的处理中心。这就像一个人分裂成了连体双胞胎，左半球是一个人格，右半球是另一个。

And if they can be contained, if the seizure can be contained to one hemisphere, it's much less dangerous, much less life threatening. And so they developed this procedure by which they would actually disconnect the left and right hemispheres. They would sever the corpus callosum, the center where the information between the left and right hemispheres is shared. What they discovered through a series of experiments, and I can describe one or two if you'd like, but what they discovered was that it seems as if when those connections are completely severed, there are now two islands of consciousness, two kind of centers of processing that seem to feel like a self. And so there's kind of It's almost like the person is split into conjoined twins or something where the left hemisphere is one person and the right hemisphere is another.

有趣的是，对大多数人而言，语言中枢位于左脑半球，负责言语功能。更耐人寻味的是，这些术后患者表现得与常人无异。这正是该手术如此成功的原因，也是它为受癫痫困扰的人们带来福音的奥秘。当你与他们交谈时，他们能正常说话交流，能表达感受，甚至能告诉你午餐想吃什么。最惊人的发现是，当研究人员通过提示卡等方式审问右脑半球时——让患者用左手指示（因为左手由右脑控制），他们发现右脑竟会给出与左脑完全不同的答案、观点和偏好。

What's interesting is that in most people, the left hemisphere is where the language center is, where is responsible for speech. And so it's interesting, these patients after the surgery seem actually to be very normal. It's why it was so successful and such a wonderful tool for people who were being threatened by these seizures. When you talk to the person, they can speak normally, they can have a conversation with you, they can tell you how they feel, what they want for lunch. What's interesting is when they figured out they were able to actually interrogate the right hemisphere by other means using cue cards, having the person point with their left hand because the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere, they discovered that the right hemisphere had different answers, different opinions, different tastes than the right hemisphere.

虽然我们无法确证这是否伴随意识活动，但就像我无法确认你是否具有主观体验一样——我只是根据足够多的迹象来合理推测。即便在同一个人的身体和大脑中，也可能出现这种情况：你正与之对话的人会说'对，我有这种感觉'，转眼又否认，或是声称看到某些左脑根本没感知到的事物。

Now we can't know for sure whether there was consciousness associated with that, but the truth is in the same way that I can't know whether there's conscious experience associated with you. I mean, I assume there are enough arrows pointing in the right direction for me to assume that's the case. And so even in a single human body and brain, you can have a circumstance where you're talking to someone, they're telling you, Oh yes, I feel that. No, I don't feel that. Yes, I saw that.

比如'我没看见那个'、'早餐想吃格兰诺拉麦片'等等。实际上，大脑中还存在另一个部分，它感知着左脑未察觉的事物，产生着独立的思想和观点，但除了通过这类实验，永远无法将这些信息传递给外界。虽然我们找到了审问右脑的方法，但若想了解捕蝇草是否有任何感知体验，至今仍缺乏足够的沟通手段来作出哪怕是最粗略的推测。

I did not see that. I want granola for breakfast and all the rest. And there's actually another part of that body of that brain that is seeing things the left hemisphere isn't seeing, that is having thoughts, having opinions, all of that, but never can get communicated to the outside world except through these experiments. They were able to figure out ways to interrogate. But again, if we wanted to understand if there's any felt experience at all associated with the Venus flytrap, we have yet to find ways to communicate anything sufficient to even be able to guess whether something like that is conscious.

所以，如果存在某种

So So if there was some

我扯远了，你继续说吧。有一个

I've been rambling. You go ahead. There was a

若某个人类部落只听过立体声音箱播放的音乐，他们很可能会认为音乐是音箱的固有特性，而非通过音箱传递的媒介。

tribe of human beings that only ever heard music come out of stereo speakers, they might naturally think that music was a feature of stereo speakers, not that it was just medium by which it was being communicated.

确实，确实。这个角度我从未想过。

Sure, sure. Yeah, I never thought about that.

好的，那么

Okay, so

我是说，我需要再深入思考一下。这可能不是一个直接的类比。但没错，正如我所说，意识与我们科学研究中的其他事物都不同，因为它只能通过体验本身来认知。所以我们完全依赖于报告能力，也就是能够报告的能力，但同时也需要沟通能力。

I mean, I'd to think about that more. It's probably not such a direct analogy. But yes, consciousness is something different from everything else that we study in science, as I said, because it can only be known from the experience itself. So we're completely reliant on report, an ability to report, but then also an ability to communicate.

而裂脑患者甚至自己都不知道还存在另一个意识

And the split brain patients didn't even themselves know that there was another conscious

体。嗯，我的意思是，当他们参与这些研究并观察到

creature. Well, mean, became aware of it when they were part of these studies and they could see that

那是内心的对话。我是说，能看到

was internal dialogue. Mean, could see

他们的左手正在正确回答问题。是的。但从他们的意识层面来说，这些信息并未进入大脑的那个半球。因此它不会成为记忆流的一部分。所以如果你问他们：'我刚才闪过一张卡片，你意识到它了吗？'

that their left hand was answering questions correctly. Yeah. But no, in terms of their conscious awareness, it does not enter that hemisphere of the brain. And so it's just not part of that stream of memory. And so for them, if you ask them, Are you conscious of I just flashed a picture of a card, are you conscious of it?

他们会回答：'我没看到任何卡片，根本没有任何图像。'然而他们大脑的另一部分确实看到了。因此，当我们试图探究身体内不同系统时就会很棘手。比如当我们说，或当我们接受麻醉时，当我们入睡时，我会说：'我当时没有意识。'

They would say, I didn't see any card. There's no picture at all. Yet there is another part of their brain that did see it. And so it's tricky when we try to interrogate even different systems in the body. You know, when we say, or when we undergo anesthesia, when we go to sleep, I'll say, I wasn't conscious.

但是否存在某种意识状态，它并未进入我的记忆流，却仍能让我——即‘我’这个概念——去报告它。好吧，这就是我开始质疑我们对意识本质及其存在位置的直觉认知可能误导我们的起点。

But was there consciousness present that just didn't enter my stream of memory that enables me, you know, the I call me to report on it. Okay. So that's So that was the beginning of my starting to wonder if our intuitions about what consciousness is and where we'd find it are maybe throwing us off.

对，很好。这确实非常有助于我建立这些关联。因为通常我们会以处于全身麻醉状态的人为例，认为他们是没有意识的。

Right, good. Yeah, that's very helpful in helping me make those connections there. So, because ordinarily, we would use people who were under an anaesthetic, a general anaesthetic, as an example of not being conscious.

是的。

Yes.

而你在质疑：你怎么能确定？

And you're saying, Well, how do you know?

没错。意识的问题就在于我们永远无法真正确定。我们只能做出或好或坏的推测。但即使在麻醉状态下，也存在一个我在书和音频纪录片中讨论的惊人现象——麻醉觉醒，即肌肉松弛药物生效了，但使人失去意识的药物却未起作用。结果就是患者完全瘫痪。

Right. This is the problem with consciousness is we just can't really ever know. I mean, we make better and worse guesses, I think. But even with anesthesia, there's this fascinating phenomenon that I talk about in my book and in my audio documentary, something called anesthesia awareness, where the paralyzing drugs take effect, but the drugs that are meant to make the person unconscious do not. And so the person is completely paralyzed.

他们无法传达自己完全清醒的状态。这是每个人最可怕的噩梦。许多人因此患上严重的创伤后应激障碍，这完全可以理解——因为他们会完整经历手术过程：疼痛、视觉（虽然通常眼睛不会睁开）、听觉...他们就像此刻的你我一样清醒，却完全瘫痪无法沟通。这又是一个绝佳例证。

They have no way to communicate that they're fully conscious. This is everyone's worst nightmare. Many people come out of this situation with severe PTSD for understandable reasons, because they then experience the operation or whatever they've been for, given have the full experience. The pain, the sights, the sound, well, usually their eyes would not be open, but yes, they're just as awake as you or I are right now, but completely paralyzed and unable to communicate. And so that's another good example.

还有所谓的闭锁综合征患者案例，他们因特定脑损伤处于完全瘫痪状态。同样无法报告自己的意识体验——他们具备交流能力却无法表达。这让我们直面一个困境：当我们遇到一个我能理解、与我无异的清醒人类心智时，其外在却表现出零行为特征。我们真正依赖的正是这种沟通与报告能力的结合。

There are also examples of something called locked in patients where they have certain brain damage. The same situation they're in where they're completely paralyzed. There's no way for them to report on these conscious experience. They have the communication skills, but they're not able to report. And so it's this combination of communication and report that we really rely on and noticing, like coming face to face with these circumstances where there's a human mind that I can relate to that is just like me, but on the outside, you know, there's zero behavior.

如果存在任何行为表现，我们可以将它们放入功能性磁共振成像仪中观察。本质上能看到电活动。这让我联想到植物生物学。我直觉上并不认为植物具有意识。这听起来确实很疯狂，但我必须挑战自己的直觉并承认：本质上大脑中发生的过程与植物中的过程相似，都是通过电信号传递信息。

If there's any behavior, we could put them in an fMRI machine. Could see electricity essentially. Which reminded me of plant biology. I do not have an intuition that plants are conscious. It does actually sound crazy to me, but I had to let myself challenge my intuitions and say, Okay, essentially what's happening in the brain is similar to what's happening in a plant, and it is the transfer of information, through electrical signals.

那么有没有可能意识——那种被感知的体验——是与这种简单机制相关联，而非更复杂的结构？

And is it possible that consciousness, the felt experience, is associated with that rather than the more complex?

所以你最终持什么观点？关于植物意识这个极具争议性的问题，你目前的立场是什么？

So where did you come down? Where do you currently come down with the plant question? A provocative one, obviously.

说实话，关于这一切我仍处于未知状态。我持续在追问这些问题并进行探索。我对所有可能性都持开放态度——从最基础层面开始，每个系统都可能具有意识。在纪录片最后两章里，我彻底放开思路：如果意识真的贯穿所有层面，这对科学的未来意味着什么？我们如何才能获得更清晰的认知？

You know, I will I will just say I don't know about all of it, honestly. I am continuing to, ask these questions and investigate. I am open to everything, every system being conscious all the way down to the most fundamental. And so that's kind of where I let myself go in this documentary until the last two chapters where I just really go with it and say, Okay, if consciousness truly goes all the way down, what does this mean for for the future of science, and how might we be able to get, yeah, more clarity on this?

我们做播客到现在都没提那个'P开头的词'——泛心论，但看来你正是往这个方向...

We've gotten this far in the podcast without using the p word, panpsychism, but that is that is that's where you're

我现在根本不用这个词。人们总是...我已经不再使用它了，因为我不喜欢这个术语，也觉得它没有实际意义。

I never use it anymore. People are people have been I never use it anymore because I don't like it and I don't think it's useful.

明白了。好吧。

I see. Okay.

其实，我甚至不确定你是否记得，但那可能是个没引起你注意的细节，不过当时在场的其他哲学家注意到了——在我们一起参加的那场会议上，我做了个演讲，其中一张幻灯片上写着‘泛心论’这个词，但被划掉了。就像是个泛心论的圆圈标志上打了个叉。

Actually, I don't even know if you remember it, but it's probably something that didn't catch your eye, but other but philosophers in the room caught it, which was at that conference that you and I attended together, I gave a talk and one of the slides was actually panpsychism with the word crossed out. It was like a panpsychism circle sign with a Right.

好的，了解。

Okay. Good to know.

我当时试图说服他们。虽然肯定没说服任何人，但这个框架对思考这类问题确实非常有用。

And I tried to convince them. I'm sure I didn't convince a single person, but that it's such useful framework, for thinking about these things.

不过我的意思是，嗯，我想我们会...

But I mean, well, I guess we'll

我们可以继续讨论这个话题。

get We can still talk about it.

待会儿再谈这个。但泛心论的字面意思确实是意识无处不在或者说心灵无处不在，对吧？是的，这听起来确实很接近你之前...

Get to there later. But you do so panpsychism literally means consciousness is everywhere or mind is everywhere, I suppose. Yes. That does sound pretty close to what you were

确实如此。好吧，我其实并不反对这个理论本身，只是反对这个术语。事实上，我认为唯心论、泛心论这些——严格来说，我的观点即便不归属于它们，至少也有交叉之处。

It does. Okay. And I'm not I'm not really opposed to it. It's the word. And the truth is, you know, I think idealism, panpsychism, you know, technically, my view certainly has crossover, if not falls into.

我对这些理论框架的部分质疑在于，它们诞生于我们对宇宙运行规律一无所知的年代。因此它们得出的那些结论在我看来既不现实也不科学。作为一个崇尚科学的人，我希望这个话题能保持在科学范畴内。如果意识确实在自然界中更为深层，我希望我们能运用最先进的工具和最优秀的头脑来研究——我认为这将影响科学的未来。所以我们必须让这个课题保持在科学领域。

Part of my issue with these frameworks is they were developed so long ago before we understood anything about how the universe works. And so the types of conclusions they tend to draw just don't sound realistic and scientific to me. And I'm very much a science minded person and I would like this topic to stay within the sciences. And I'd like, if it's possible that consciousness goes deeper in nature, I would like to have our best tools and our best minds trying to under I think this will affect the future of science. And so it's something we need to keep in that realm.

确实，那些领域得出的某些结论对我来说太像新时代玄学了。我不会对宇宙结构做出那样的假设。说实话，我对'泛心论'这个词在审美上也有意见，它听起来就像个新时代的流行词。

So yeah, so some of the conclusions that are drawn in those domains sound too new agey to me. Wouldn't make those assumptions about how the universe is structured. I also honestly just have an issue aesthetically with the word panpsychism because it sounds like a New Age word.

确实如此。

Yeah. It does.

而且这个词本身，我认为是十六世纪创造的。你知道吗？就是...好吧。我还认为，如果这些观点从未存在过，如果前人从未有过这种想法，我确信当今的神经科学和物理学界会有很多人提出这个问题。

And it's also it's a word that was developed, I think, with the sixteenth century. You know? It's just yeah. Okay. I I also think that if no if those views had never existed, if no one had ever had this thought before, I truly believe that many people in neuroscience and physics at this point in history would be asking this question.

所以我总是试图论证：'意识是否比我们假设的更为基础？意识是否是根本性的？'这些都是可以科学探讨的问题。我认为我们终究会面临这些问题，而目前显然还没有答案。像泛心论这样的理论，某种程度上暗示问题已有定论——但鉴于我们对此如此无知，我不愿用任何'主义'来解释这条研究路径。

And so I always just try to make the case that it's a legitimate question to ask, does consciousness go deeper in nature than we've assumed? And is consciousness fundamental? And those can be scientific questions. And I think we'd be running up against them anyway, and we clearly don't know. So something like panpsychism also, it kind of suggests that there's already a solution figured And I think we so clearly don't know that I wouldn't like to use an -ism to explain this line of questioning.

我认为这些都是待解的问题。

I think they're questions.

明白了，这很有道理。那么你对植物的意识存疑，计算机呢？它们可能具有意识吗？或者未来是否会出现某个节点，让它们能够报告自己可能拥有（或没有）的意识体验？

Got it. That makes perfect sense. So the plants you're not sure about, what about computers? Could they be conscious or is there going to be some point at which they can report the consciousness that they may or may not be experiencing?

我知道。我是说，这真是个离奇的状况。我们很可能即将深入其中，无论意识能延伸到多深。当某个系统的行为与人类、狗或其他我们认为有意识的生物系统相吻合时，我们会非常困惑——我们该如何判断？这对我来说是个巨大的问号。

I know. I mean, this is a really bizarre situation. We are very likely going to be in soon, however far down consciousness goes. We're going to be very confused when the behavior of a system matches our behavior or the behavior of a dog or some living system that we believe is conscious and how we will know. I mean, that's a big question mark for me.

我不知道。但事实是，我已经某种程度上转变了观念，认为如果意识在自然界中更为深层，那么它一路向下延伸才最合理。所以我很快把问题转向：如果意识确实是贯穿一切的最基本特征，我们该如何解释现有的物理学和科学？这就是我所有思想实验的出发点，也是我一直在思考的领域。我会自问：如果意识是根本属性，如果我们感知到的所有物质、所有光线、甚至所有我们无法感知的事物——如果我们的感知本质上是对宇宙中其他意识存在状态的映射，那么我认为物质构成的重要性远超我们的认知。

I don't know. But the truth is I've really kind of crossed over into believing that if consciousness goes deeper in nature, it actually makes the most sense for it to go all the way down. So I have kind of, you know, my list of questions quickly became about how do we interpret the physics we have, the science we have if consciousness actually goes all the way down is the most fundamental feature. And so that's where all of my thought experiments and kind of where I've been living. And so I would ask, so I ask myself this question, if consciousness is fundamental, if every matter that we perceive, everything that we perceive, all the light and all the things we don't perceive, If our perceptions are really a representation or a mapping of essentially other conscious experiences coming in and out of existence in the universe, my guess is that what we deem the matter to be made of matters.

因此我们正通过现有科学工具，在感知和映射过程中获取关于事物结构的线索。我认为意识体验是由物质结构决定的。计算机的构成物质与我们截然不同。所以我的推测是：如果意识是根本属性，那么是的。这意味着这个房间各处、我的身体、甚至衣物中，都存在着不断生灭的意识体验——无论多么微小。归根结底，我们描述的底层现实就是意识体验。

And so we're getting some clues about the structure of things in our perceptions of them and in our mappings of them with the scientific tools we have. And so I think our conscious experiences are dictated by the structure of the matter. And computers are made of very different matter than we are. And so my guess would be, if consciousness is fundamental, yes. Mean, would mean that there are conscious experiences, however minimal, coming into and out of being all around this room, throughout my body, in my clothing, it's all at bottom what we're describing is conscious experiences.

所以没错，这意味着计算机、AI和更复杂系统也包含意识体验。问题是它们与我们有多相似？我认为差异会大到无法辨识。当我认为意识是根本属性时，AI最让我不安的是：我们将建造这样的系统——其行为通常被我们视为自身意识体验的证据。当我向你描述绿色、交响乐或我的思想时，可以合理推测你正在将其映射到与你相似的意识体验上。

And so yes, that means that computers and AI and more complex systems would also entail conscious experiences. The question is how similar to our own would they be? And my guess is they'd be so different they would be unrecognizable to us. And so the weird So the thing that kind of disturbs me most about AI when I think about consciousness being fundamental is that we will be building these systems that the behavior of which we usually take to be evidence of our own conscious experiences. When I talk to you about green and about the sound of a symphony and about my thoughts, I think it's a safe guess that you are mapping that onto a very similar conscious experience on your side.

我们已通过学习使直觉进化到能映射这些事物。但如果我们创造的系统内在感受与我们截然不同，却表现出相同行为...我们将完全失去应对这种情况的直觉依据。

And so we've learned and our intuitions have evolved to map those things. But if we create systems that actually feel very, very different on the inside but behave the same way we do, I mean, we will just have no intuitions for navigating this situation that we're in. I mean, yeah.

不，我认为这个推论是成立的。关于计算机是否具有意识的问题——

No. I think it does that does follow. I mean, the question about whether a computer is conscious

是的。

Yeah.

如果你认为算盘有意识或棍子有意识，或者至少是的，那情况就大不相同了。

Is very different if you think that an abacus is conscious or a stick is conscious or at least Yeah.

嗯，我认为把这些东西视为单一实体并不完全正确，就像我们把人类心智视为单一实体一样。我们有理由将人类心智和大脑视为一个体验事物的系统，尽管最终这可能不是最准确的思考方式。但算盘，我们注意到它是一个单一物体。实际上，如果意识是基本的，即便如此，算盘本身并不像大脑那样是一个整合系统。所以我不认为算盘会有体验，但我认为在那个算盘所处的时空点中，会有无数成千上万的体验产生和消失。

Well, and I think it's not quite right to think of those things as single things the way we think of a human mind as a single thing, right? There are reasons that we can kind of talk about a human mind and a brain as a system that experiences things, although ultimately, think that's not quite the right way to think about it. But an abacus, we notice that as a single object. But in reality, if consciousness is fundamental, and even so, an abacus itself is really not an integrated system the way that a brain is an integrated system. So I wouldn't expect abacus have an experience, but I would expect there to be you know, countless thousands, millions of experiences coming into and out of being in the point in space and time that that abacus inhabits, you know.

所以我想问一下意识是基本这一观点的一些含义。首先，让我确认你已经说了你想说的关于分裂大脑动机的部分。但确实，你认为意识是基本的最佳论据是什么？

So I want to ask about some of the implications of the idea that consciousness is fundamental. First, let me make sure that you you have said what you want to say about the motivation for thinking that the split brains is definitely a part of it. But yes, what is your best argument for consciousness is fundamental?

是的。我在我的纪录片系列中花了11个小时来阐述这个论点，但我会尝试简短一些。实际上，这让我想起了一些神经科学发现，以及一个轶事故事，这些都是我认为质疑我们对意识直觉的重要性的原因之一。所以我想说，我并没有完全确信意识是基本的。但我确信的是，我们对意识是什么、它在宇宙中起什么因果作用的直觉，这些直觉来自于错觉。

Yeah. Well, I take eleven hours to make that argument in my documentary series, but I'll try to give a briefer one. Actually, that reminds me of a couple of neuroscientific discoveries and actually one just anecdotal story that were part of the reason I felt it was really important to question our intuitions about what consciousness is. And so I would say I haven't become convinced that consciousness is fundamental. What I've been definitely convinced of is that our intuitions about what consciousness is, what causal function it serves in the universe, those intuitions come out of illusions.

我们依赖的东西在现代神经科学中已经被理解为错觉。这些不仅没有被整合到文化中，甚至没有被从事这项工作的科学家们的哲学所接受。我们很难将我们发现的关于大脑如何运作的知识整合到我们对世界运作方式的思考中。举个例子，大卫·伊格曼是我花了很多时间交谈的科学家，他也出现在我的纪录片系列中。

And we're relying on things that we actually in modern neuroscience understand to be illusions already. And those have not quite been integrated in, not only into the culture, but into the philosophy of the scientists doing this work. It's very hard for us to integrate the things we have discovered about how the brain works into the way that we think about how the world works. So one one example, David Eagleman is a scientist I've spent a lot of time talking to, and he's also in my documentary series.

《Mindscape》的前嘉宾？

Former Mindscape guest?

哦，好的。是的。我是说，我相信你们讨论了他所有有趣的工作。有很多领域我可以深入。在纪录片中，我们谈到了他在感官替代和感官增强方面的工作。他在纪录片中与我分享的故事实际上是一小部分研究，我甚至没有意识到已经有人做过。

Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure you talked about all the fascinating things he works There are lots of areas I could go in. In the documentary, we talk about his work on sensory substitution and sensory addition. The story that he shared with me in the documentary was actually a little piece of research that I didn't even realize had been done.

这可以追溯到他早期的研究。他经常谈论绑定过程。大脑中的绑定过程将不同时间传入的各种输入——声音、视觉、感觉——连接起来，这些信息在大脑不同区域被分别处理，最终整合成我们意识中当下的单一体验。而这些过程在我们意识到之前就已发生的事实，我认为我们至今仍未真正理解透彻。他还谈到如何对这些系统进行某种程度的干预。

And this goes way back to his early work. So is just in So he talks a lot about binding processes. And binding processes in the brain connect the different inputs, the sounds, the sights, the sensations that all kind of come to the brain at different times, then get processed in different parts of the brain at different times, and then kind of get delivered to our conscious experience as a single present moment event. And even just these processes, the fact that this type of thing happens before we're conscious of them is something we haven't quite really grappled with properly, I think. He talks about the ability to kind of hack some of these systems.

他们做了个非常简单的实验：参与者按下按钮时会触发蜂鸣声。通过这个简单练习，大脑很快就能建立'按下按钮-听到蜂鸣'的关联。实际上大脑需要约500毫秒来协调这两个事件，让你产生即时反应的错觉——因为现实中这两个事件并非同步发生。大卫·伊格曼的团队开始插入大脑无法察觉的极短暂停，而大脑会不断进行调整以适应这些输入信号。

So they did this very simple experiment where the participant pushes a button and when they push a button, it makes a beeping sound. So their brain, very quickly, it's a simple exercise, learns that when they push the button, the beep happens. And I think that processing actually takes something like five hundred milliseconds for the brain to coordinate those two things and then give you the experience that, okay, I push the button and the beep happens because out in the world, those things are actually not happening at the same time. And so his team, David Eagleman's team started inserting very brief pauses that were too brief for the brain to recognize. It just kept making adjustments, which is what the brain does all the time to help us integrate all these different signals that are coming in.

他们开始引入延迟机制，使得按下按钮与声音出现之间存在时间差，并逐渐加大延迟。虽然大脑已经适应了这种延迟，你仍会感觉声音是即时产生的。但当突然取消所有延迟（而非逐步取消）时，大脑来不及调整，参与者就会产生声音先于按钮按下的错觉。

So it started entering a delay so that you push the button and there's actually a delay between the time you push the button and the sound happens, and then they introduce more and more and more of a delay. Your brain has adjusted for this, so you still have the experience. You push the button and the sound is created. So then if they remove the delay, they go all the way back, but they don't do it gradually, the brain doesn't have time to adjust. And the person has the experience that the sound was made before they push the button.

虽然事实并非如此，但大脑却这样告诉他们

Which it wasn't, but their But brain tells them that it

这正是你的主观体验。你无法改变这种体验，因为大脑只是根据最佳推测生成它。他们设计了一个无法被战胜的石头剪刀布游戏——通过逐步引入又取消暂停，使得计算机能提前预判你的出拳。你应该能理解这个原理。

that's exactly your experience. And you can't change your experience because your brain is just generating it based on its best guess. And so they created, I love this, they created an unbeatable rock, paper, scissors game where they gradually introduce you know, a pause, then they take it away. And so the computer actually knows what your hand is before So it has time to make the right guess. You get the idea.

但这揭示了：我们对事件发生的意识体验并非直接感知，而许多关于意识的直觉都源于这种有局限的 conscious experience（意识体验）。在纪录片中我花了很多时间讨论意识意志——我们往往抱持着某些直觉，其实这些错觉都交织在一起，在我看来它们都与我们看待意识的方式有关。

But this exposes, just a small window onto how our conscious experience of the way things are happening is not a direct perception. And it exposes how so many of our intuitions about consciousness come from these limitations of what we're consciously experiencing. And so conscious will is another area that I spend a lot of time talking about in the docuseries because we tend to have this intuition. There are many illusions that are kind of wrapped up into one. And to my mind, they are all related to how we view consciousness.

关于意识意志的概念，关于'自我'是跨时间稳固实体的概念——这些其实都是大脑的建构产物。时间维度上的变化盲视让我们误以为自己是稳定实体，在持续'消费'意识体验，而非每时每刻都在重新生成。正因这是我们唯一能意识到的部分，也是唯一能进入记忆流被我们谈论思考的部分，我们容易误以为这就是意识的全部。所以我最初的问题是：有没有可能意识其实比这一切简单得多？神经科学研究表明，我们所体验到的意识其实位于大脑处理流程的最末端，并不像我们感觉的那样具有因果效力。

So the idea of conscious will, the idea of being a self that is solid across time, which is also another thing that is basically generated by the brain. There's a change blindness that happens across time that causes us to feel like we're this stable entity that's kind of consuming our conscious experiences over time rather than them being generated anew in each moment. And again, because it's the thing we are conscious of and the only thing we can talk about or think about because it's the only part that enters this stream of memory that we have access to, we're kind of led to believe that all of that is what consciousness is. And so my first question was really, is it possible that consciousness is much more simple than all of this? And because there are all these neuroscientific studies that show us that what we experience to be our conscious experience is really at the tail end of most of this brain processing, it's not causal in the way we feel it is.

我们认为意识是基于我们以为与之相关的行为进化而来的，但实际上可能只是这些过程的感受，而过程本身只是自然发生。对它们的意识体验并不一定是驱动它们的原因。

We think we've evolved consciousness based on the behavior we think it's associated with, when in reality it's possible that it's simply how these processes feel, but the processes are just playing out. And the conscious experience of them is not necessarily the thing that's driving them.

好的，我理解你说的这些，我认为非常重要。而且正如你所说，这可能被低估了。因此，我认为我们应该将意识视为基本要素。

Okay, so I want to I get all that I think it's super important. And it is probably, like you say, underappreciated. I want to hear, therefore, we should take consciousness as fundamental.

啊，好吧。我的意思是，这需要比一期播客访谈更长的时间来...但一旦你意识到我们关于意识的假设可能出错的方式，并开始追问：在自然界中，意识从何处产生才有意义？我发现无论你试图将其置于何处都会遇到悖论，同样的论点也表明这种假设站不住脚。因此从必要性来说，它只能一直追溯到最底层，根本没有合理的放置位置。

Ah, okay. So again, I mean, it takes longer than a podcast interview to But get all the way once you've realized the ways in which we could be wrong about our assumptions about what consciousness is, and you start asking, where does it make sense for it to emerge in nature? What I discovered was that you run into paradoxes wherever you try to place that emergence and that you run into the same arguments for why it doesn't make sense to assume there. And so it's kind of like it just by necessity goes all the way to the bottom. There's no place at which it makes sense to put it.

于是我确信最理性的答案是'贯穿始终'。我几乎是违背自己的意愿才接受了这个结论，

And so I became convinced that the most rational answer was all the way down. I became convinced of that really against Against my my will, as

可以这么说。

it were.

经过过去五年沉浸在这个问题中，我才开始形成直觉并理解其合理性。但确实，最初是纯粹的逻辑思辨让我走到这一步——我不得不与自己的理性思维和直觉对抗。实际上，我承认自己可能错了。记得我联系你录制对话时说过：我不想浪费时间，所以希望能被说服放弃这个观点。

And it's only after kind of marinating in this for the last five years that I've kind of started to develop an intuition for it and can feel how it makes sense. But yeah, it was really just logical thought experiments that brought me there that I had to kind of fight my rational mind and my intuitions on. And that actually, you know, I think I could be wrong about it. It was I'm sure I mentioned to you when I called you up to record a conversation for my docuseries, I don't want to waste time. So I'd like to be talked out of this, you know?

因此我也一直在尝试与持不同意见者交流，以检验我的思维是否存在漏洞，看看是否有充分理由不再继续深究这些问题。

And so I've been attempting also to talk to people who disagree with me so that I can see if there's an error in my thinking, I can see if, you know, it actually there's a good reason to not actually follow these questions any further.

相当不错。我认为你已经阐述得非常非常好了。那么问题在于，我们能否对这种说法的含义建立起合理的理解？当然，我反复强调的观点——你们也听我多次提及——就是我们非常理解原子的行为方式，我们非常了解那些物理定律。其中关键就在于：我本身是由原子构成的，当我在向你们汇报我的意识体验时，我本质上是一团遵循物理定律的原子集合。

So so good. So that I think you've motivated it very, very well. Then the question is, can we build up a sensible understanding of what it implies to say this? So, of course, my the constant thing that I've talked about and you've heard me talk about is look we understand how atoms behave we understand those laws of physics very well and part of that is part of that behavior of atoms is that I'm made of atoms and when I'm talking to you here when I'm reporting my conscious experiences I am a collection of atoms obeying the laws of physics.

那么如何

So how

在这种理解框架下，我的意识体验是如何影响我的行为、我的报告、以及我的物理活动的？在...

in this understanding do my conscious experiences affect my behavior, my reporting, my physical moving around in How the

你的意识体验是如何影响这些的？

do your conscious experiences affect those?

是的，如果意识是基础性的，而你认为

Yeah, if consciousness is fundamental and you think that

意识...我不确定。我认为意识可能实际上并不具有因果性。但我不确定。这是我思考的疑问之一，也是我花费大量时间探讨的问题。如果意识是基础性的，根据你刚才描述的所有理由，它显然具有某种结构。

consciousness I don't know. I think consciousness might actually not be causal. But I don't know. This is one of the questions I have, and this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about. If consciousness is fundamental, it clearly has a structure for all of the reasons you just described.

我们已经发现了许多这种结构。它显然不是无序的。但如果所有物理和数学最终描述的都是宇宙中产生的这些意识体验的范围——没错，它确实具有这种结构。当我深入思考这个问题时，一个疑问是：是否存在没有内容的纯粹意识体验？意识本身是否具有某种结构？或者说，就像多世界诠释中的薛定谔方程...

We've discovered a lot of the structure already. It clearly is not just a free for all. But if what all the physics and mathematics describes at bottom are this range of conscious experiences that arise in the universe, yes, it has this structure. One question I have when I really get into the weeds on this is, is it possible to have conscious experience with no content? Is there something that consciousness, that thing is that has a structure to it or you know, the equation in many worlds for the Schrodinger Yeah.

这是关于什么的？关于宇宙的。

For the what is it? Of the universe.

宇宙的波函数。

The The wave function of the universe.

宇宙的波函数。谢谢。所以宇宙的波函数不仅仅是一个数学术语、一个概念或某种推动事物的力量，实际上它是一种可被感知的体验。然后它生成所有这些不同的形态和存在的事物，实际上它们只是不同类型的意识体验不断涌现与消逝。我不太确定。

The wave function of the universe. Thank you. So the wave function of the universe is not just a mathematical term and an idea and kind of a force that is kind of moving things, but is actually, in actuality, felt experience. And then it generates all of these different forms and things that come into being that in actuality are just different types of conscious experiences coming in and out of being. I'm not sure.

我猜想，用这些术语思考问题可能会改变理论物理学家未来的思考方式。我认为这必须与实验结果相结合。我们需要开始进行一些非常新颖有趣的科学研究，至少让我们像在神经科学中确信意识源于复杂性那样有信心，认真对待并观察。这让我觉得很有趣，因为我认为它确实激发了许多创造性思维，为从基本层面思考问题开辟了新途径。

I imagine that thinking about things in those terms might change the way theoretical physicists think about things moving forward. And I think that will have to be in combination with experimental results. I think we'll have to start doing some very new and interesting science to at least make us as confident as we've been in neuroscience that consciousness arises out of complexity to take it seriously and see. But it's interesting to me because I actually think it generates a lot of creative thinking. It does kind of open up new avenues for thinking about things at the fundamental level.

我不知道它们会走向何方。我不认为自己有能力解决这些问题。但我认为这是一种范式转变——这是一个能激发关于量子力学及其发现的新思考方式的框架转变。不知道你是否听完或听我说过，实际上对我而言，多世界诠释是描述量子力学的最佳方式，如果意识是根本的，它确实能解决你遇到的许多问题。这很有趣。

I have no idea where they will go. I do not claim to have the kind of mind who will figure any of this out. But I think it's kind of a paradigm shifting It's a paradigm shifting framework that could inspire new ways of thinking about quantum mechanics, the findings of quantum mechanics. I don't know if you listen to the whole thing or have heard me say that actually many worlds to me is the best way to describe, is the best interpretation of quantum mechanics if consciousness is fundamental, that it actually resolves a lot of issues that that you run into. That's funny.

你可能不喜欢这个说法。你会说，别把我的多世界理论扯进来。

You probably don't like that. You're like, leave my leave many worlds out of it.

无耻的迎合，但我们这里不鼓励这种行为

Shameless pandering, but don't don't we encourage that here a

有点像这样。再次强调，这违背了我的意愿，因为多世界理论并非自然引起我共鸣的概念。你知道吗？我长期追随弦理论，从美学角度讲，我更喜欢弦理论，但我不得不承认多世界理论更契合我将意识视为宇宙基础的观念。

little bit like this. Again, against my will because many worlds was not something that that naturally resonated with me. You know? I I followed string theory for a long time. I I like you know, aesthetically, I like string theory better, but I had to admit that many worlds actually fit better with my view of the universe of consciousness as fundamental.

基础性的。

Fundamental.

那么让我这样问吧。正如我在菲利普·戈夫组织的那个会议上所说——你提到的这场会议还有其他几位《思维景观》往期嘉宾参加。在我看来，任何想探讨意识基础性的人首先要回答的问题是：他们认为这会表现为对我们现有基本物理定律理解的改变？还是完全按照我们当前对物质行为的理解来引导物理物质的行为？

So let me ask it this way. As I said in my talk at that conference that you talked about organized by Philip Goff and other previous Mindscape guests. To me the very first question that has to be answered by anyone who wants to talk about the fundamentally of consciousness is do they think that it will manifest in some change of what we understand as the fundamental laws of physics for just the behavior of stuff? Or does it lead the behavior of physical stuff completely as we currently understand it?

噢不，我认为它绝对会按照我们现有的理解来引导物理物质的行为。我的思考方式完全是从物理主义视角出发，并且尊重现有科学认知。所以在我看来，如果某个思想实验或理论路径与已确立的物理定律相悖，我们就会排除它。至于是否能推动物理学发展，我真的不确定。

Oh, no, I think it absolutely leads the behavior of physical stuff the way we understand it. I think, I mean, the way I'm approaching this and the way I think about this is completely from a physicalist perspective. And deferring to the science we have already. So in my mind, if I run some thought experiment or if we go down this path and it's kind of counter to things that are already well established in physics, we rule it out. Whether it can actually help move physics along, I really don't know.

我能想象出一些可能的途径，但我并不确定。

I can imagine ways that it might. But I don't know.

那么我的担忧——或者说问题很简单：如果我不认为意识是基础性的，我对物理定律的理解相同，我由原子构成，我所做的一切——包括所有关于感受、体验、爱与痛苦的报告——都不会因为这个图景的真假而有任何改变？

So then the worry I have is simply not the worry, but the question I have is simply, if I didn't think that consciousness was fundamental, I had the same idea of the laws of physics and that I am made of atoms, everything I do would be exactly the same, including all the reports I have about how I feel and how I'm experiencing things and love and pain and all those, completely unaltered by whether or not this picture is true or false?

嗯，既是也不是。主要是肯定的。对于寻求更深层次理解的物理学家来说，这个理论或许能为多世界诠释开辟新方向，让我们更好地理解宇宙结构。但作为人类，我认为每次范式转换都会以我们无法预见的方式改变一切，包括科学。我常举的例子就是我们直觉认为地球是平的。

Well, yes and no. I mean, mostly yes. I think to physicists who are trying to reach a deeper understanding, I think there are possibly places to take this that could take the many worlds interpretation in new directions and potentially give us a better sense of what it's telling us about the structure of the universe. But I also just think as human beings, you know, it's like every time there's a paradigm shift, I actually think it inevitably changes everything, including science, in ways that we can't even predict ahead of time. So, you know, I often will give the analogy of, you know, our intuition that the earth is flat.

天体观测给了我们线索，或许地球并非平的，最终我们掌握了所需的所有证据。虽然这并不直接影响我的日常活动，事实上大多数时候它无关紧要，但我确实认为，这背后有一种关于我们在宇宙中的位置以及如何探索宇宙的感觉——知道外太空的存在，知道我们正围绕太阳运行。我们对宇宙结构的理解更加深入和全面，尽管仍有许多未解之谜。但至少，我感觉自己生活在一个与那些相信地球是平的人截然不同的宇宙中，对吧？因此，我认为这些认知会以某种方式影响我们未来的思考、创造力，并推动科学进步，即便我们并非时刻关注它们。

Then celestial observations give us a clue that maybe this isn't flat and eventually we have all the evidence we need. And while it doesn't necessarily affect my day to day activities, and the truth is most of the time it's not relevant, I do think there's kind of this background feeling of our place in the universe and how we navigate the universe to know that outer space is out there and we're orbiting the sun. And we have a deeper, better understanding of the way the universe is structured with all of these unanswered questions. But at least I feel myself to be living in a different universe than someone lived in when they believed the earth was flat, right? And so I think these things have a way of, I don't know, affecting our future thoughts and creativity and help progress science even when we're not necessarily paying attention to them in every moment.

不，实际上这部分我非常喜欢，你刚才说的，因为我在播客中多次提到，即使在物理学内部，也可能存在两种不同的方式来描述或数学化表述完全相同的理论，所有预测等都一致。但通过采取一种视角而非另一种，这些理论的扩展或修改自然会被提出。你所说的让我觉得非常清晰，因为某些其他泛心论者——我不提名字——拒绝回答我问的这个问题。但你

No, actually that part of it, I like that very much, what you just said, because I've said many times on the podcast that there can be with just within physics two different ways of talking about or mathematically formulating exactly the same theory with all the same predictions, etc. But by taking one perspective versus another, extensions or modifications of those theories are naturally suggested to themselves. What you're saying so I think that's very clarifying because certain other panpsychists who names I won't mention, refused to answer this question that I asked. But you

你回答了。我不是泛心论者。你回答得非常漂亮。

you answered it. I'm not a panpsychist. You answered it very nicely.

我是说

I mean

是的。而且，我还认为这实际上会带来不同。你知道，如果我们将来有更多理由相信意识是根本的，而非在复杂生命形式中涌现的。我不知道这会激发下一代科学家提出什么样的问题，但天哪，那将是一个截然不同的世界。而且，是的，我想知道哪一种更有可能，这将影响我未来的问题。

Yeah. Well, and I also think it actually makes a difference. You know, if we, at some point down the line, have more reason to believe it's fundamental, that consciousness is fundamental than it is emerging in complex life forms. I don't know what kinds of questions that will provoke in the next generation of scientists, but my goodness, that's a very different world. And, yeah, I mean, I'd like to know which one is more likely, and it will affect my my questions going forward.

所以，是的，我理解这个论点，认真对待这种视角的原因是它开辟并提出了新的研究途径。

So yeah, no, so I get the argument that the reason to sort of take this perspective seriously is that it opens up and suggests new research avenues going forward.

当然，甚至是新的道德问题，你知道，如果意识确实在自然界中根深蒂固，那么还有一大堆未解之谜。对吧？突然间，事物就有了我们未曾真正思考过的新维度。是的。

Sure, even new moral questions, you know, think it's just there's a world of unanswered questions if it's in fact true that consciousness goes very deep in nature. Right? Then suddenly, there's a new dimension to things that we haven't really thought about. Yeah.

不知道你是否了解乔纳森·伯奇的研究。他最近是我们节目的嘉宾，是一位哲学家。

I don't know if you know the work of Jonathan Birch. He was a recent, guest that we had. He's a philosopher.

去听那期节目吧。

Listen to that episode.

他是研究动物感知领域的全球权威。嗯。所以他特意避免使用‘意识’这个词，因为这个词争议太大，对吧？

He is, the world's leader in animal sentience. Mhmm. So he ex intentionally doesn't use the word consciousness just because it's fraught. Right?

是的。

Yes.

他说，有些人不会相信——比如你说的——蚯蚓有意识之类的，但‘感知’这个词听起来可能更科学些。你可以...嗯。

And he says, you know, there are people who won't believe that, like you say, an earthworm is conscious or whatever, but sentience is maybe a little more science y sounding and you can Yeah.

这也是我一直选择使用的词汇。

That is that is always the word I I choose to use also.

是啊。所以他试图论证，即使你...嗯...我认同这个观点。虽然不确定他个人立场，但他的哲学论点是：即使你认为宰杀食用动物没问题...嗯...也不代表伤害它们就是正当的。

Yeah. And so and he tries to make an argument that, again, even if you Mhmm. I I like the idea. I think I don't know where he comes down personally, but his philosophical argument is even if you think it's okay to kill animals and eat them Mhmm. That doesn't mean it's okay to hurt them.

是的。为了让他们痛苦。我想，你知道，再次强调，可以

Yes. To cause them pain. I think it's, you know, again, can

同意哦，很喜欢听那个采访。

agree Oh, love to listen to that interview.

这是在编码不，那个

It's a codifying no, that

听起来正合我意。

sounds right up my alley.

逻辑连贯的观点，我真的很喜欢。是的。

Logically coherent perspective, which is I really like. Yeah.

是的。我是说，这和我交谈过的植物生物学家丹尼尔·沙莫维茨类似。我相信那是第四章的内容。你知道，他也为此很纠结，因为他是一位备受尊敬的科学家，从事着严谨的研究。当他发现植物在处理光波或声波（以机械刺激形式）时的过程类型存在相似性时，

Yeah. I mean, it's similar to the plant biologist I spoke with, Daniel Shamovitz. That's, I believe, chapter four. You know, he also really struggled with this because he a well respected scientist who does good science. And as he discovered these similarities in the types of process, when plants are processing light waves or sound waves in the form of like a mechanical stimulus.

他自己使用了‘听’和‘看’这样的术语，但不想把它们与人类的听觉和视觉混淆。但事实是，在分子层面上确实存在这些感知模式。他其实挺有趣的。他谈到——虽然这部分可能没放进纪录片——他来自一个医生世家，自己却是叛逆者。他选择成为植物生物学家后意识到，这本质上是一回事。最终他以某种方式做着类似的科学研究，因为你可以给捕蝇草施麻醉剂，它会以与人类大脑相同的方式阻断信息流。所以是的，他在如何谈论这些事情上遇到了困难。

Was himself using terms like hearing and seeing, but not wanting to confuse them with human hearing and But the truth is there are these sense modalities that, again, the molecular level He actually is funny. He talked about I don't think this made it into the documentary, but he and I were talking about how he comes from a family of doctors and how he was the rebel. And he went out to become a plant biologist and he realized it's all part of the same thing. He ended up kind of doing the same science in a way because you can give anesthesia to a Venus flytrap and it blocks the information flow in the same way that it does in a human brain. So yes, and he had a hard time knowing how to talk about those things.

我认为他真正在思考的是是否存在感知或感受体验，而非我们通常理解的意识，而是我所说的那种方式。他确实认为植物可能拥有某种形式的感知。再次强调，它们不具备与我们相同的系统。它们有一定的记忆，但不同于我们的记忆类型。因此，如果存在感受，它很可能转瞬即逝。

And I think he really was wondering whether there were sentience or felt experience, not consciousness in the way we usually think about it, but the way I talk about it. He really thinks it's likely that plants have some form of that. Again, they don't have the same systems that we have. Don't have They have some memory, but not the type of memory we have. So if there is felt sensation, it probably comes in and out of existence very quickly.

确实如此。我认为这直接引出了一个问题：这种视角会开启哪些新的研究问题和方向？比如你提到算盘时说的那句很有挑战性的话——算盘并不构成一个连贯的自我。算盘的部件或许由某种基础意识材料构成，但算盘本身并未凝聚成自我。

But yes, yeah. I think this leads directly into this question of what would be the new research questions and directions that get opened up by this perspective. I mean, if you go back to the abacus, you said you said something very provocative that the abacus sort of isn't a coherent self. Right? The abacus, you might have pieces that are made of fundamental consciousness stuff or whatever, but the abacus doesn't cohere into a self.

那么...对此你有什么看法？我们究竟在何时拥有自我？

So Yeah. Yeah. What does? What do have opinions about this? Like, when do we have a self?

嗯，我也不确定。我思考过很多，也写过不少相关文章。我认为这与记忆有关。

Yeah. I don't know. I've thought a lot about this. I've written a lot about it. I think it's related to memory.

我认为高度依赖记忆，尽管不完全取决于它。如果意识是基础性的，就像物理学家亚当·弗兰克和我讨论细胞诞生时说的——当单个细胞形成时，本质上细胞与其所处的化学物质环境是同时出现的，因为它们处于运行关系中。没有细胞就没有化学环境，反之亦然。而为了维持边界、吸收所需物质、保持系统运转，这或许就是自我的雏形。我要说的是，没有记忆的自我...

I think highly dependent on memory, although not completely dependent on it. I think, you know, if consciousness is fundamental, I think there's something, you know, Adam Frank, the physicist, and I had this conversation about the cell when a cell comes into being, a single cell, that essentially the cell and the bath of chemicals it's in come into being in the same moment because they're in relationship to run. There's no bath of chemicals if there's no cell, you know, and vice versa. And that in order to keep this, the borders that it has and to let in the things it needs to let in and maintain itself as a system, that that's kind of the beginning of self. And I would say that self without memory.

仅仅将系统与化学环境或外界区分开来...我忘记你具体的问题了，感觉我...

Just distinguishing the system from bath of chemicals or the outside world. I'm forgetting your specific question. I feel like I

在某种程度上，系统的一致性达到什么程度才能被认定为...

have At what some on point my way does answering the coherence of the system qualify as being a

系统？是的，是的。所以我认为，这很大程度上与记忆有关，是将系统与维持系统运行的事物区分开来。不过我也认为，在大多数层面上，甚至自我这个概念在人类心智层面也是一种幻觉。我在工作中曾多次谈到，我们当下的体验是基于每时每刻都在发生的神经元放电。

system? Yeah, yeah. So I think, I mean, I think it largely has to do with memory and distinguishing a system from, you know, the thing that is keeping the system going. I also think, though, that at most levels, even the idea of self is an illusion at the level of the human mind too. So I've talked about this a bit in my work where our present moment experience is based on this neuronal firing that's happening in every moment.

我有种感觉，似乎存在一个固定的'我'在时间中穿行。但事实上，每个新体验都是当下即时生成的——虽然明显受到先前时刻的影响，但仍需在每一刻重新构建。这让我联想到海浪：我们把海浪称为'浪'，仿佛它是一个独立实体。我朋友最近说了件很可爱的事，他带女儿去海滩看浪时，女儿说'好想带一朵浪花回家'，他开玩笑说'那我们拿个水桶装一朵吧'。

I have this sense that there's kind of this solid me that moves through time, But the truth is this new experience is being generated afresh, anew now, that is obviously influenced by previous moments, but it still has to be brought into being in each moment. And so I make this analogy to an ocean wave that we call ocean waves waves as if it's a single thing. A friend of mine actually just said something very sweet that he was at the beach with his daughter and they were looking at the waves and his daughter said, I wish we could take one home. And he joked and he was like, Let's get a bucket. Let's bring one home.

这正揭示了其中的幻觉：我们称之为'浪'，但它本质上是自然界一个不断变化、永无止境的系统。神经元放电也是如此。我不确定是否存在'自我'，实际上我认为'自我'这个概念——我们感觉自己拥有自我的事实——正是阻碍我们清晰思考意识的障碍之一，因为我们常把意识等同于自我。

And that kind of shows the illusion there, which is that we call it a wave, but it's a system in nature. An ever changing, never ending system in nature. And that is true of the electrical firing of the neurons as well. And so I'm not sure that self, and I actually think that the concept of a self, the fact that we feel ourselves to be selves is one of the things that get in the way of our being able to think clearly about consciousness, because I think we often equate consciousness with self. So, yeah, I don't know.

这个回答可能有点奇怪，但我想说的核心是：我不确定是否真的存在所谓的'自我'。

That was a weird answer to your question, but I'm basically saying I'm not sure there are selves to begin with.

我们能

Do we get

或者说'自我'的幻觉是由一个能跨时间承载记忆的系统创造的。是的。

Or that the illusion of self is created by a system that carries memory across time. Yeah.

我们是否可以通过冥想、致幻剂等能改变内在认知视角的方式，来洞察这些问题？

Do we get insight into these questions by some combination of meditation, psychedelics, things like that, things that give us a different perspective on our inner workings?

我也这么认为。我的意思是，可能不像其他人建议的那样直接。冥想绝对有效，因为它做了一件非常有趣的事情，就是揭露了许多这类幻觉，就像大卫·伊格曼的研究那样，你可以通过这些实验揭示大脑的运作方式。冥想是一种有趣的行为，它与大脑通常的运作方式截然相反。

I think so. I mean, maybe not as directly as other people might suggest. I think meditation, absolutely, because it does something very interesting, which is expose a lot of these illusions, you know, in the same way that David Eagleman's work, you can run these experiments and expose the way the brain works. Meditation is an interesting thing to do. It's very counter to the way the brain normally is operating.

因此我认为它有类似的效果，让你能在这些幻觉被创造的过程中捕捉到它们。自我幻觉对于那些长期冥想的人来说经常会消失。我认为这是最重要的一个，但还有其他方面。它极大地改变了我们作为人类的日常体验，使我们思维更具创造性，并注意到那些我们误以为是事实的假设。迷幻药也是一个非常有趣的例子。

And so I think it has a similar effect of kind of you're able to catch these illusions in the act of being created. And so the illusion of self is something that regularly drops out for people when they've been practicing meditation for a while. And I think that's the most important one, but there are others as well. I think it changes our normal everyday experience of being a human being so much that it enables us to be more creative in our thinking and to notice when we've made assumptions that we consider to be fact that are actually assumptions. And psychedelics is a very interesting one too.

我对那些体验有很多疑问。我真的不知道。我认为它们对我和我认识的服用过的人最有用的地方在于，再次类似于冥想，但影响要大得多，就是经历一种与典型人类日常体验截然不同的体验，让你意识到可能的体验范围，即使是人脑，也远超出我曾认为可能的任何事物，而且很难描述。那么在其他系统中可能有什么样的体验呢？我认为它能让你，是的，以不同的方式思考，更具创造性。

I have a lot questions about those experiences. I really don't know. I think the most useful thing about them for myself and people I know who've taken them is, again, a similar thing to meditation, but on a much more impactful scale, I think, is having an experience that is so different from your typical human everyday experience causes you to realize the range of possible experiences, even for a human brain, that are far beyond anything I had ever known possible and are very hard to describe. And so what experiences might be possible in other systems. I think it enables you to be, yeah, to think differently and more creatively.

嗯，某种程度上是这样，你知道，并不是说迷幻药或冥想给了我们关于现实基本运作的更接近的数据，而是它们让我们从教条式的沉睡中稍微清醒了一点。

Well, kind of like that in the sense that, you know, it's not suggesting that psychedelics or, for that matter, meditation somehow give us some closer data about the fundamental workings of reality so much as they nudge us out of our dogmatic slumbers a little bit.

是的，你说得比我优雅多了，但确实如此

Yes, you said it so much more eloquently than I did but yes

我是从伊曼尼·威尔坎那里偷来的这句话。

I stole it from Imani Wilkhan.

所以，对于第一部分，我会说是的。至于第二部分，也许吧。我不知道。我对此有疑问。所以，你知道，我觉得有趣的是，在迷幻药的作用下，人们会体验到一种无空间、无时间的意识状态，我认为这与物理学向我们揭示的更为一致，而不是我们日常对空间和时间的体验。

So that that I would that I would say yes to the to the first piece. To the second piece, maybe. And I don't know. And I have questions about that. And so, you know, I think it's interesting that on psychedelics, people have experiences of a spaceless, timeless kind of consciousness, which I think is more in line with what physics is revealing to us than, you know, than our typical everyday experience of space and time.

也许随着时间的推移，随着我们大脑的进化——当然，大脑不会进化，而是随着它们发展以适应我们需要生存的环境，而生存是主要关注点时，可能存在一条更直接通向外部世界的路径，这种路径逐渐被修剪成一条更有用的对外通道，而迷幻药物或许能帮助我们以更直接的方式触及某些东西。但仅此而已。这些都是巨大的问号。我不知道答案。但这些是我思考并认为可能的事情。

And so maybe, you know, maybe we kind of generate over time as our brains evolve, and well, our brains don't evolve, but as they develop to operate in circumstance where we need to survive, and survival is the main focus, that it's possible there is a more direct line to the outside world that kind of gets pruned away into a more useful line into the outside world and that psychedelics help us kind of access something that is more direct. But that is all. Those are, like, big question marks. I don't know. But these are things I wonder about and think are are possible.

作为最后一个问题，我想问，你是否有关于未来研究方向的建议？如果我们该如何思考这些问题？如果这种视角确实暗示了不同的问题，我们该如何通过实验来解答它们？

I mean, maybe then as a last thing to ask, do you have much of a suggested future research program for how we should be thinking about these things? If it if it's true that this perspective Yeah. Suggests different questions, how do we go about answering them? Experiment.

实际上，我在纪录片系列的最后一章探讨了这一点。我认为首要的起点应该类似于大卫·伊格曼在感官增强领域的研究方向。我曾与一项研究的参与者交谈，他们被赋予了感知磁北的体验。要知道，伊格曼的工作主要集中在帮助盲人和聋人找到大脑处理光波和声波的其他方式。但这完全引入了一种新的感知维度。

So I do I do go into this in the in the final chapter of my docu series. I really think the first place to start is kind of where David Eagleman has headed with sensory addition. And I talked to participants in a study where they were given an experience of magnetic north. Know, Eagleman's work has largely been about helping blind people and deaf people find other ways for their brains to process light waves and sound waves. But this is bringing in a new perception altogether.

我也欣赏这样的科学探索：无论意识是否是基本存在，这些研究都将有价值。当然，

I also like the idea of scientific endeavors, which whether consciousness is fundamental or not will be useful. Of course,

那会很好。

that'd be nice.

但我认为这些都将帮助我们培养更好的直觉，来回答关于意识在自然界中渗透深度的问题。毕竟，我们最初只能依靠直觉来判断意识的存在。我能与你交流，讨论我们共同的体验。所以关键在于拥有共享体验——我无法与先天失明的人讨论红色。

But I think these all kind of will help us get better intuitions for answering questions about how deep in nature consciousness goes. So I think ultimately we only have our intuitions for determining where consciousness is to begin with. I can communicate with you and we can talk about our shared experiences. So one is having shared experiences. I can't talk to a person who was born blind about the color red.

我的意思是，没有共同体验就无法达成任何理解。因此，拥有共同体验很重要，然后还需要能够描述这些体验的语言。我认为，人类能感知和理解的事物越多，对科学就越有帮助。我们所有的感知都为我们提供了关于事物物理属性的线索，然后我们在此基础上继续探索。但我们能直接处理的事物越多，就能发展出更丰富的相关直觉。

I mean, there's just no way we're not going to get anywhere. And so having a shared experience is important and then having the language to be able to talk about those experiences. So I think the more things, more human beings are able to perceive and get intuitions for, I think that could be useful to science anyway. All of our perceptions give us some clue about the physics of things, and then we go on from there. But the more things we can actually process directly, the more intuitions we can develop for them.

我希望能通过观察自然界的系统，找到更多线索来判断它们是否具有意识。虽然我们与宠物沟通的能力有限，但足够的共通点让我们假设它们是有意识的。我在想，如果能找到方法体验并与植物或其他类似系统交流的话——虽然我无法想象如何能最终确定，毕竟就连你是否具有意识我也无法百分百确定。所以我们在这方面确实存在局限。

And I'm hopeful that we might be able to experience systems in nature that give us more of a clue one way or the other if they're conscious. And so, you know, we have limited ability to communicate with our pets, but there's enough crossover that we make the assumption that there is consciousness there. And so I think if there'd be some way for us to experience and therefore communicate with plant systems or other systems like that. Don't think I can't imagine how we could ever know conclusively because the truth is I can't even know conclusively that you're conscious. And so we're kind of limited.

在这方面我们似乎总是受限。但如果我们能开发出工具，提供新的直觉认知，让我能像确信你具有意识那样，确信昆虫或自然界更简单的系统也具有意识，那将会非常有趣。

We seem to always be limited in that sense. But if we could produce tools that give us new intuitions that make me feel as confident that an insect or a much simpler system in nature is conscious to the extent that I believe you are conscious, I think that would be very interesting.

虚拟现实能帮上忙吗？

Could virtual reality be any help?

很可能。虽然我没深入思考过这个问题，但答案是肯定的。事实上Anil Seth正在研究一些我认为相关的项目。是的，绝对相关。

Probably. I haven't thought much about it, but yes. And Anil Seth is actually working on some things that I think, yeah, are are related. Yes. Absolutely.

好的。我很期待能理解所有这些关于意识的问题。

Alright. Well, I'm looking forward to understanding all this consciousness stuff.

不，我们需要让下一代接手这个课题，因为这将需要——

No. We have to get the next generation on this because this is gonna take

已经做过好几期播客了，但我们仍然无法完全达成共识

a had several podcasts, and we still don't agree on exactly

其中之一

what one of

这些行为对我们的影响。不过，安妮卡·哈里斯，非常感谢你参加《葡萄酒风景》播客节目。

these is is doing to us. But, Anika Harris, thanks so much for being on the Winescape Podcast.

感谢你对此事的关注，尤其是你对我的结论过敏的情况下。这确实

Thank you your interest in this, especially since you're you're allergic to my conclusions. It's something

我从不认为结论

I Conclusions are never

这一点我真的很欣赏并尊重你。

I really appreciate and respect about you.

这段旅程。好的。非常感谢。

The journey. Alright. Yeah. Thanks very much.

谢谢。

Thank you.