Right now you have a movie playing inside your head. It's an amazing multi-track movie. It has 3D vision and surround sound for what you're seeing and hearing right now, but that's just the start of it. Your movie has smell and taste and touch. It has a sense of your body, pain, hunger, orgasms. It has emotions, anger and happiness. It has memories, like scenes from your childhood playing before you. And it has this constant voiceover narrative in your stream of conscious thinking. At the heart of this movie is you experiencing all this directly. This movie is your stream of consciousness, the subject of experience of the mind and the world.
現在 你的大腦裡正播放一部電影, 一部很棒的多軌道電影, 它有3D視覺特效與環繞音效, 為你帶了一場視聽盛宴, 但是還不只如此。 你還能聞到、嚐到、觸摸到, 它與你的身體感官融為一體, 痛覺、飢餓、高潮, 它還有感情、 憤怒與開心, 它擁有回憶,像是兒時情景 在你面前播放著, 在你的意識流裏 還有似近似遠的旁白解說。 這部電影的主角是你, 直接經歷所有一切。 這部電影就是你的意識流, 對於內在世界甚至與外在世界 主觀的精神體驗。
Consciousness is one of the fundamental facts of human existence. Each of us is conscious. We all have our own inner movie, you and you and you. There's nothing we know about more directly. At least, I know about my consciousness directly. I can't be certain that you guys are conscious.
意識是人類存在 的幾個重要基礎之一, 我們每一個人都具備意識。 我們都主演一部內在的電影, 你、你,還有你。 沒有比意識更直接的感受了, 至少我能直接理解我意識, 但我無法確知你們是否都有意識。
Consciousness also is what makes life worth living. If we weren't conscious, nothing in our lives would have meaning or value. But at the same time, it's the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. Why are we conscious? Why do we have these inner movies? Why aren't we just robots who process all this input, produce all that output, without experiencing the inner movie at all? Right now, nobody knows the answers to those questions. I'm going to suggest that to integrate consciousness into science, some radical ideas may be needed.
意識賦予存在意義, 如果我們沒有意識, 生命中的一切便失去意義和價值, 這是宇宙之中 最神秘令人費解的現象。 為何我們擁有意識? 為何我們擁有這些內心世界的電影? 為何我們不像機器人一樣, 只是簡單的輸入資料, 輸出資料, 對內在的感受全然不覺? 這個問題至今 沒有解答。 我認為研究意識這一門科學, 我們需要建立一些基礎概念,
Some people say a science of consciousness is impossible. Science, by its nature, is objective. Consciousness, by its nature, is subjective. So there can never be a science of consciousness. For much of the 20th century, that view held sway. Psychologists studied behavior objectively, neuroscientists studied the brain objectively, and nobody even mentioned consciousness. Even 30 years ago, when TED got started, there was very little scientific work on consciousness.
許多人認為對意識進行研究 是不可能的, 科學的本質是客觀的, 意識的本質卻是主觀的, 所以不可能以客觀的科學 研究主觀的意識, 這是二十世紀普遍存在的論點。 心理學以客觀方法研究人類的行為, 神經學家以客觀方法研究大腦, 卻沒有任何人提及意識, 甚至在三十年前 TED 剛開始的時候, 當時關於意識的研究 也是少之又少。
Now, about 20 years ago, all that began to change. Neuroscientists like Francis Crick and physicists like Roger Penrose said now is the time for science to attack consciousness. And since then, there's been a real explosion, a flowering of scientific work on consciousness. And this work has been wonderful. It's been great. But it also has some fundamental limitations so far. The centerpiece of the science of consciousness in recent years has been the search for correlations, correlations between certain areas of the brain and certain states of consciousness. We saw some of this kind of work from Nancy Kanwisher and the wonderful work she presented just a few minutes ago. Now we understand much better, for example, the kinds of brain areas that go along with the conscious experience of seeing faces or of feeling pain or of feeling happy. But this is still a science of correlations. It's not a science of explanations. We know that these brain areas go along with certain kinds of conscious experience, but we don't know why they do. I like to put this by saying that this kind of work from neuroscience is answering some of the questions we want answered about consciousness, the questions about what certain brain areas do and what they correlate with. But in a certain sense, those are the easy problems. No knock on the neuroscientists. There are no truly easy problems with consciousness. But it doesn't address the real mystery at the core of this subject: why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Why is there this inner subjective movie? Right now, we don't really have a bead on that.
大約二十年前, 改變開始了。 神經科學家,比如 Francis Crick, 以及物理學家比如 Roger Penrose 認為現在該是科學家 著手研究意識的時候了, 真正的探索至此開始, 隨之而來的是意識研究的 黃金時代, 研究成果斐然, 但至今仍存在著 幾個根本上的研究限制。 近年來 關於意識的研究 主要集中在研究 某些腦區同 種特定意識狀態之間的聯繫。 Nancy Kanwisher 讓我們 了解了一些這樣的研究, 幾分鐘前她在演說中分享了研究成果, 現在我們(對於意識)更加了解了,比如 某些腦區同 面部識別有關, 有的與痛覺有關, 還有的與快感有關, 但這只是說明它們有相關性, 還不能夠解釋原因。 我們知道這些腦區 與某些意識經驗有關聯, 但不知道為何有關聯。 我認為 某些神經學研究 的確解釋了一些關於 意識的疑問, 找出了那些特定的腦區的作用 以及它們之間的相關性, 但在某種意義上,這些只是簡單的疑問, 並沒有難倒神經學家。 事實上,關於意識的問題都不簡單, 即便如此,還是沒有 解決核心的問題: 為什麼大腦中的物理過程 會和意識產生聯繫? 為什麼會存在主觀的內心電影? 現在我們對此還沒有很好的解答。
And you might say, let's just give neuroscience a few years. It'll turn out to be another emergent phenomenon like traffic jams, like hurricanes, like life, and we'll figure it out. The classical cases of emergence are all cases of emergent behavior, how a traffic jam behaves, how a hurricane functions, how a living organism reproduces and adapts and metabolizes, all questions about objective functioning. You could apply that to the human brain in explaining some of the behaviors and the functions of the human brain as emergent phenomena: how we walk, how we talk, how we play chess, all these questions about behavior. But when it comes to consciousness, questions about behavior are among the easy problems. When it comes to the hard problem, that's the question of why is it that all this behavior is accompanied by subjective experience? And here, the standard paradigm of emergence, even the standard paradigms of neuroscience, don't really, so far, have that much to say.
或許你會說 再多給神經科學多一些時間, 它最終會向我們說明 意識也是一種湧現現象, 就像交通堵塞、龍捲風, 就像生命,我們會搞清楚的。 所有湧現現象的經典案例都是 應急行為的表現, 交通堵塞是如何形成的, 龍捲風如何運作, 生物體如何繁殖, 適應環境,新陳代謝, 所有疑問都是關於客觀機能的。 你可以把它應用到人類大腦上 去解釋人類大腦的某些行為 和功能 和湧現發象很像: 我們如何走、如何交談、如何下棋, 這些問題都是關於行為的, 但是當談到意識時, 關於行為的問題 就是一個簡單的問題。 難的問題是 為什麼 這些行為 都伴隨著主觀體驗? 對此,湧現現象的 標準範例, 甚至是神經科學的標準範例, 目前來講,也沒有什麼好說的。
Now, I'm a scientific materialist at heart. I want a scientific theory of consciousness that works, and for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn't work for systematic reasons. It's a long story, but the core idea is just that what you get from purely reductionist explanations in physical terms, in brain-based terms, is stories about the functioning of a system, its structure, its dynamics, the behavior it produces, great for solving the easy problems — how we behave, how we function — but when it comes to subjective experience — why does all this feel like something from the inside? — that's something fundamentally new, and it's always a further question. So I think we're at a kind of impasse here. We've got this wonderful, great chain of explanation, we're used to it, where physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology explains parts of psychology. But consciousness doesn't seem to fit into this picture. On the one hand, it's a datum that we're conscious. On the other hand, we don't know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world. So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don't yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically.
我本質上是一名科學唯物主義者, 我想要一種行得通的 關於意識的科學理論, 長期以來 我想破了腦袋 尋找一種行得通的 但從物理角度 解釋意識的理論, 但我最終得出一個結論 由於系統原因,它不會奏效。 說來話長, 但是思想的核心就是 你從物理方面,在基於大腦方面 通過純粹的還原解釋得到的 都是關於系統的運行, 它的結構、活力、 產生的行為 很適合解決簡單問題, 比如我們的行為如何活動, 但涉及到主觀體驗時, 為什麼這些都像是來自內部? 這是個全新的 更進一步的問題。 我覺得我們有點兒卡在這了, 我們有一套美妙的解釋鏈, 我們習慣了用物理解釋化學, 用化學解釋生物學, 用生物學解釋心理學的一部分。 但是意識 似乎並不符合這一情形, 一方面它是一個已知數, 就是我們是有意識的, 另一方面我們不知道 如何讓它符合科學的世界觀, 所以現在我認為意識 是一種反常事物, 我們需要整合 我們的世界觀,但如今還沒有找到方法, 面對這樣的異常事物, 可能需要激進的想法, 我認為,我們在科學地 抓住意識之前, 可能需要一兩個 最初看起來瘋狂的點子。
Now, there are a few candidates for what those crazy ideas might be. My friend Dan Dennett, who's here today, has one. His crazy idea is that there is no hard problem of consciousness. The whole idea of the inner subjective movie involves a kind of illusion or confusion. Actually, all we've got to do is explain the objective functions, the behaviors of the brain, and then we've explained everything that needs to be explained. Well I say, more power to him. That's the kind of radical idea that we need to explore if you want to have a purely reductionist brain-based theory of consciousness. At the same time, for me and for many other people, that view is a bit too close to simply denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfactory. So I go in a different direction. In the time remaining, I want to explore two crazy ideas that I think may have some promise.
現在對於這些瘋狂的想法是什麼, 已經有了一些選項。 我的朋友 Dan Dennet 有一個想法,他今天也來了, 他認為關於意識 完全沒有什麼難題。 主觀電影這一觀點 涉及到一種幻覺或困惑, 實際上我們需要做的就是解釋 客觀功能大腦的行為活動, 然後就解釋了一切 需要被解釋的 要我說賜予他更多力量吧。 我們需要探索 這種激進的想法, 如果你想得出純簡化論的關於 意識的基於大腦的理論。 同時,對我和其他人來說, 這個觀點有些接近簡單地 直接否定有關意識的已知資料, 而不能令人滿意, 因此我選擇了另外一個方向。 在剩下的時間裡, 我想探討兩個我認為 可能有希望的想法。
The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental. Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics. These fundamental properties and laws aren't explained in terms of anything more basic. Rather, they're taken as primitive, and you build up the world from there. Now sometimes, the list of fundamentals expands. In the 19th century, Maxwell figured out that you can't explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, Newton's laws — so he postulated fundamental laws of electromagnetism and postulated electric charge as a fundamental element that those laws govern. I think that's the situation we're in with consciousness. If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, charge — then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature. This doesn't mean you suddenly can't do science with it. This opens up the way for you to do science with it. What we then need is to study the fundamental laws governing consciousness, the laws that connect consciousness to other fundamentals: space, time, mass, physical processes. Physicists sometimes say that we want fundamental laws so simple that we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. Well I think something like that is the situation we're in with consciousness. We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don't know what those laws are yet, but that's what we're after.
第一個瘋狂的想法就是 意識是一種基本概念。 物理學家有時會把宇宙中的某些方面 作為一種基本概念: 空間、時間,和質量。 他們假定一些基本定律來約束它們, 比如重力定律,或量子力學定律, 這些基本性質和定律 並不能解釋一些更基礎的東西, 這相當於以它們為基礎, 然後在構建其他。 現在這張基本定律的清單不時會擴大, 19世紀 Maxwell 發現 不能用當時存在的基本概念—— 空間、時間、質量、牛頓定律 來解釋電磁現象, 因此他設定了電磁現象的 基本定律, 設定電荷作為 這些定律的 基本元素。 我認為這與我們在 研究意識上的情形是一樣的, 如果你不能用現有的 基本概念來解釋意識、 空間、時間、質量、電荷, 那麼從邏輯上來講就應該擴展清單。 自然就應該假設意識 為某種根本的東西, 自然界中最基本的一部分。 這不意味著突然就不能用它來研究科學, 它為你研究科學開闢了一條新路, 我們需要做的就是研究 控制意識的基本定律、 那些將意識與其他基本概念, 空間、時間、質量 相聯繫的概念。 物理學家有時會說 我們希望基本定律簡單地 能讓我們印在T恤上, 我想對意識的研究 也同樣如此。 我們希望基本定律簡單的 能讓我們印在T恤上。 我們現在還不知道這些定律, 但這是我們接下來要做的。
The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. Every system might have some degree of consciousness. This view is sometimes called panpsychism: pan for all, psych for mind, every system is conscious, not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even Rob Knight's microbes, elementary particles. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. It's not that a photon is wracked with angst because it's thinking, "Aww, I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light. I never get to slow down and smell the roses." No, not like that. But the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness.
第二個瘋狂的想法是 意識也許是普遍存在的。 每個系統都有 某種程度的意識, 這種觀點被稱作泛心論, 一切皆有心理活動, 每個系統都是有意識的, 不僅僅是人類、狗、老鼠、蒼蠅, 甚至 Rob Knight 的微生物, 基本粒子都有意識, 甚至一個光子都有某種程度的意識。 這一觀點並不表明光子擁有智慧 或更夠思考, 不是說一個光子會 陷入深深地焦慮, 因為它想著:「我總是以光速跑來跑去, 從未停下來輕嗅玫瑰。」 並不是這樣。 而是表明光子也可能有 一些原始的主觀體驗, 一些原始的意識的前兆,
This may sound a bit kooky to you. I mean, why would anyone think such a crazy thing? Some motivation comes from the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental. If it's fundamental, like space and time and mass, it's natural to suppose that it might be universal too, the way they are. It's also worth noting that although the idea seems counterintuitive to us, it's much less counterintuitive to people from different cultures, where the human mind is seen as much more continuous with nature.
這對你來說可能有些奇怪, 為什麼會有人思考這種瘋狂的事呢? 一些動機來自第一個瘋狂的想法, 即意識是基本概念。 如果它同空間、時間、質量一樣是基本概念, 那自然也可以假定它具有普遍性, 同其他基本概念一樣。 還有一點值得注意的是, 雖然這個想法對我們來說是反直覺的, 但對於來自其他文化的人來說 沒那麼反直覺, 那裡人的心靈同自然 緊密相連。
A deeper motivation comes from the idea that perhaps the most simple and powerful way to find fundamental laws connecting consciousness to physical processing is to link consciousness to information. Wherever there's information processing, there's consciousness. Complex information processing, like in a human, complex consciousness. Simple information processing, simple consciousness.
從這個想法中得到的更深一層動機是 也許找出將意識同物理過程 相聯繫的 最簡單有效的方法就是 將意識與資訊相結合。 有資訊處理的地方 就有意識, 複雜的資訊處理,比如人類的 複雜的意識, 簡單的資訊處理, 就有簡單的意識。
A really exciting thing is in recent years a neuroscientist, Giulio Tononi, has taken this kind of theory and developed it rigorously with a mathematical theory. He has a mathematical measure of information integration which he calls phi, measuring the amount of information integrated in a system. And he supposes that phi goes along with consciousness. So in a human brain, incredibly large amount of information integration, high degree of phi, a whole lot of consciousness. In a mouse, medium degree of information integration, still pretty significant, pretty serious amount of consciousness. But as you go down to worms, microbes, particles, the amount of phi falls off. The amount of information integration falls off, but it's still non-zero. On Tononi's theory, there's still going to be a non-zero degree of consciousness. In effect, he's proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don't know if this theory is right, but it's actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness, and it's been used to integrate a whole range of scientific data, and it does have a nice property that it is in fact simple enough you can write it on the front of a t-shirt.
近年來最令人興奮的是 神經學家 Giulio Tononi 採用了這種理論 並將其嚴格按照 數學理論發展。 他有一個關於資訊整合的 數學測量, 他稱之為 phi, 用來測量一個系統中 資訊整合的量。 他推測 phi 同 意識相關 所以在人類大腦中 有令人難以置信的資訊整合數量, 高度的 phi 值, 大量的意識。 老鼠有中等程度的資訊整合數量, 但數目仍然龐大, 有大量的意識。 但降至蠕蟲、 微生物、粒子, phi 的值就會跌落, 資訊整合數量下降, 但並沒有降至零。 在 Tononi 的理論中, 意識程度也不會 降至為零。 事實上他提出了一個 關於意識的基本定律, phi 值越高,意識程度越高。 現在我不清楚這個理論是否正確, 但它實際上是意識科學的 前沿理論, 並且它被用於整合 各方面的科學數據, 並有一個優勢,就是它實際上十分簡單, 可以印在T恤上。
Another final motivation is that panpsychism might help us to integrate consciousness into the physical world. Physicists and philosophers have often observed that physics is curiously abstract. It describes the structure of reality using a bunch of equations, but it doesn't tell us about the reality that underlies it. As Stephen Hawking puts it, what puts the fire into the equations? Well, on the panpsychist view, you can leave the equations of physics as they are, but you can take them to be describing the flux of consciousness. That's what physics really is ultimately doing, describing the flux of consciousness. On this view, it's consciousness that puts the fire into the equations. On that view, consciousness doesn't dangle outside the physical world as some kind of extra. It's there right at its heart.
另一個最終動機就是 泛心論可以幫助我們將 意識和物理世界相結合。 物理學家和哲學家經常發現 物理學十分深奧抽象, 它用一連串方程式去 描述現實結構, 但又不告訴我們 構成它的現實基礎。 正如 Stephen Hawking 所說, 什麼把火放入了方程式? 從泛心論者來看, 物理方程式可以是它現在的樣子, 也可以用它們來描述 意識的量。 這是物理學最終要做的, 描述意識的量, 從這一角度 是意識把火放進了方程式。 從那種觀點來看 意識不是晃蕩在物理世界之外 某種剝離出來的東西, 它就在物理世界的核心。
This view, I think, the panpsychist view, has the potential to transfigure our relationship to nature, and it may have some pretty serious social and ethical consequences. Some of these may be counterintuitive. I used to think I shouldn't eat anything which is conscious, so therefore I should be vegetarian. Now, if you're a panpsychist and you take that view, you're going to go very hungry. So I think when you think about it, this tends to transfigure your views, whereas what matters for ethical purposes and moral considerations, not so much the fact of consciousness, but the degree and the complexity of consciousness.
我認為這種泛心論觀點 有改變我們與自然關係的 潛質, 並有可能產生一些嚴重的 社會倫理影響, 其中一些可能是違背直覺的。 我過去認為自己不應該吃 任何有生命的東西, 因此我成為素食主義者, 現在如果你是泛心論者並同意這一觀點, 你就要挨餓了。 所以當你思考它的時候, 會使你有改變觀點的傾向, 但對於倫理目標和 道德考量來說, 最重要的不是關於意識的事實, 而是意識的程度和複雜性。
It's also natural to ask about consciousness in other systems, like computers. What about the artificially intelligent system in the movie "Her," Samantha? Is she conscious? Well, if you take the informational, panpsychist view, she certainly has complicated information processing and integration, so the answer is very likely yes, she is conscious. If that's right, it raises pretty serious ethical issues about both the ethics of developing intelligent computer systems and the ethics of turning them off.
最然也會探討 其他系統中的意識,比如電腦。 電影《她》中的人工智慧 Samantha 是什麼情況? 她有意識嗎? 如果你用這種資訊性的 泛心論的觀點來看, 她能進行複雜的資訊處理 和整合, 答案很有可能是,她有意識。 如果答案正確, 那麼不管開發智能計算機系統, 還是關閉它們 都會引發很嚴重的倫理問題。
Finally, you might ask about the consciousness of whole groups, the planet. Does Canada have its own consciousness? Or at a more local level, does an integrated group like the audience at a TED conference, are we right now having a collective TED consciousness, an inner movie for this collective TED group which is distinct from the inner movies of each of our parts? I don't know the answer to that question, but I think it's at least one worth taking seriously.
最後你可能問 集體意識、 星球的意識、 加拿大有自己的意識嗎? 或從地方層面來說, 一個組合的整體 比如 TED 演講的觀眾 擁有集體 TED 意識嗎? 這個 TED 集體的 內在電影 與我們每個人的 內在電影不同嗎? 我不知道這個問題的答案, 但我認為至少它 值得重視。
Okay, so this panpsychist vision, it is a radical one, and I don't know that it's correct. I'm actually more confident about the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental, than about the second one, that it's universal. I mean, the view raises any number of questions, has any number of challenges, like how do those little bits of consciousness add up to the kind of complex consciousness we know and love. If we can answer those questions, then I think we're going to be well on our way to a serious theory of consciousness. If not, well, this is the hardest problem perhaps in science and philosophy. We can't expect to solve it overnight. But I do think we're going to figure it out eventually. Understanding consciousness is a real key, I think, both to understanding the universe and to understanding ourselves. It may just take the right crazy idea.
泛心論者的觀點 十分激進, 我不知道它是否正確, 我其實對第一個瘋狂的想法 更有信心, 即意識是一種基本概念, 而不是第二個想法, 意識是普遍存在的。 我的意思是,這個觀點引發了很多問題, 有很多挑戰, 比如那些意識的片段 是如何疊加成 我們熟知並喜愛的 複雜意識的。 如果我們你回答這些問題, 那我們就能在通往嚴肅意識理論的 道路上順利走下去。 如果不能,這些也許就是科學和 哲學上最難的問題。 我們不能期待一個晚上就解決, 但我想我們最終會解決它, 理解意識 是理解宇宙和我們自己的關鍵, 這也許只需要 採取正確的瘋狂想法。 謝謝。
Thank you.
(掌聲)
(Applause)