本文作者神經(jīng)心理學(xué)教授Peter Halligan和心理學(xué)榮譽教授David A Oakley分別來自英國卡迪夫大學(xué)和倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院（UCL）

As the very word used to describe it hasbeen “worn smooth by a million tongues”, consciousness is a fertile topic forconfusion. We all know what it is to be conscious. It is, basically, beingaware of and responding to the world. Similarly, we all possess a common sensenotion of how consciousness works.

正如用來描述它的詞匯都被“無數(shù)條舌頭給磨光了”，意識是一個容易產(chǎn)生混淆的話題。我們都知道有意識是什么?；旧?，它就是意識到這個世界并對其作出反應(yīng)。近似地，關(guān)于意識如此運作我們也都有常識上的概念。

But common sense can be easily confused.Consider these questions for example: if you felt pain in an amputated leg,where is the pain? If you say it is in your head, would it be in your head ifyour leg had not been amputated? If you say yes, then what reason have you forever thinking you had a leg?

但常識是很容易混淆的。比如說，讓我們考慮一下這些問題：如果你那條被截肢的腿讓你感到痛，這痛是在哪里？如果你說那在你的頭腦中，那如果你的腿沒有被截掉，那痛還會在你的頭腦中嗎？如果你的答案為是，那么你有什么理由認為你有一條腿呢？



Previously, we argued that while undeniablyreal, the “experience of consciousness” or subjective awareness is preciselythat – awareness. No more, no less. We proposed that while consciousness iscreated by brain systems, it has no causal relationship with or control overmental processes. The fact that personal awareness accompanies the contents ofthe personal narrative is causally compelling. But it is not necessarilyrelevant to understanding and explaining the psychological processesunderpinning them.

雖然其真實不可否認，在此之前我們認為“對意識的體驗”或主體意識就只是意識而已。不多，也不少。我們提出，雖然意識是由大腦系統(tǒng)創(chuàng)造出來的，它并不控制心理過程，與之也沒有因果關(guān)系。個人意識伴隨著個人敘事的內(nèi)容發(fā)生，這在因果上是令人信服的。但這不一定能拿來理解并解釋那些支撐它們的心理進程。

This quote from George Miller – one of thefounders of cognitive psychology – helps explain this idea. When one recallssomething from memory, “consciousness gives no clue as to where the answercomes from; the processes that produce it are unconscious. It is the result ofthinking, not the process of thinking, that appears spontaneously inconsciousness”.

這段引自認知心理學(xué)創(chuàng)始人之一喬治·米勒的文字幫助解釋了這個想法。當一個人從記憶中回想起些什么的時候，“意識對于這個答案從哪里冒出來是沒有頭緒的；產(chǎn)生它的這些過程是無意識的。它是思考的結(jié)果而非思考的過程，在意識中自發(fā)出現(xiàn)。”

Taking this further, we propose, thatsubjective awareness – the intimate signature experience of what it is like tobe conscious – is itself a product of non-conscious processing. Thisobservation, was well captured by pioneering social psychologist Daniel Wegnerwhen he wrote that, “unconscious mechanisms create both conscious thought aboutaction and the action, and also produce the sense of will we experience byperceiving the thought as the cause of the action”.

我們更進一步地提出，主體意識，即關(guān)于有意識狀態(tài)的標志性私密體驗本身就是無意識進程的產(chǎn)物。社會心理學(xué)家先驅(qū)丹尼爾·魏格納很好地捕捉到了這種觀察，他寫道，“無意識機制既創(chuàng)造出了有意識的關(guān)于行動的思考和這個行動，也通過察覺到這種作為行動起因的想法，產(chǎn)生了我們體驗到的意志的感覺”。



Such a proposal does not dispense with thecommon sense reality of one’s personal qualitative experience, nor with theprevious findings of cognitive neuroscience. However, it offers an opportunityto reduce some of the confusion that comes with use of the terms“consciousness” and “contents of consciousness”. Both of which continue toimply that consciousness has a functional role in distinguishing psychologicalprocesses.

這個提法沒有忽略屬于常識的現(xiàn)實中足以用來定性的個人體驗，也沒有忽略認知神經(jīng)科學(xué)之前的發(fā)現(xiàn)。然而，它提供了一個機會，能去減少使用“意識”和“意識的內(nèi)容”等術(shù)語時發(fā)生的混淆。這兩個術(shù)語都暗示了意識在其有別于其他的心理進程中，起到了功能性的作用。 

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原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://www.轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處


1、There is no suchthing as consciousness. It isn’t anywhere and doesn’t do anything. The factthat we are complex perceivers that can distinguish different types ofperception and the fact that we sometimes don’t perceive does not makes anexistence out of consciousness don’t. Consciousness is not a product and ismost assuredly not the product of the brain.

不存在意識這種東西。它不存在于任何地方，也干不了任何事。事實是，我們是復(fù)雜的感知者，能夠區(qū)分不同類型的知覺，我們有時候會感知不到的事實，不代表意識之外的某種存在也感知不到。意識不是一種產(chǎn)物，而且最容易確定的是，它不是大腦的產(chǎn)物。

There is no clear distinction betweenconscious and non conscious perception.

在有意識感知和無意識感知之間不存在明確的差別。

We correctly express experience as “Iperceive X” where ‘I’ is the object that perceives and perception is a realprocess.

我們用“我感知到了X”來正確地表達體驗，其中“我”是那個去感知的物體，而感知是一個真實的過程。 



So, given that consciousness must arisefrom non conscious processes the real question is how this creates theexperience of self awareness. How is our own consciousness different from someautomaton that generates a log of its internal processes?

那么，鑒于意識必須產(chǎn)生于無意識過程中，真正的問題是，這如何就產(chǎn)生了自我意識。我們自身的意識和一些能產(chǎn)生內(nèi)部進程日志的機器人有什么不同？

4、Any theory of consciousnessin ourselves has to be compatible with a corresponding account of the evolutionof consciousness over time and across evolving species. This is extremely difficult for a theory thatproposes a strong binary “split” between the conscious and the not-conscious.

意識隨著時間推移、跨越持續(xù)進化物種而演化，關(guān)于我們自身意識的任何理論，都必須與其相應(yīng)的解釋相符合。而對于一種在意識和無意識間搞絕對二“分”的理論，做到這點是極其困難的。