凯文·J·米切尔，《自由个体：进化如何赋予我们自由意志》（普林斯顿大学出版社，2023年）

致新书网络。

To the New Books Network.

大家好，欢迎收听普林斯顿大学出版社思想播客的又一期节目，本节目由普林斯顿大学出版社与新书网络联合制作。

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Princeton University Press Ideas Podcast, a joint production of Princeton University Press and the New Books Network.

我是马克·克洛维斯，今天我将与凯文·J.

I'm Mark Clovis, and today I'm speaking with Kevin J.

米切尔交谈，他是《进化如何赋予我们自由意志》一书的作者。

Mitchell, author of the book How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.

凯文，欢迎来到新书网络。

Kevin, welcome to the New Books Network.

非常感谢你，马克。

Thanks very much, Mark.

谢谢你邀请我。

Thanks for having me.

很高兴你同意参加我们的节目。

Well, thanks for agreeing to be on our show.

当然。

Sure.

我想请你先为我们听众介绍一下你自己。

I was wondering if you could start us off by telling our listeners something about yourself.

当然，我在爱尔兰都柏林三一学院从事遗传学和神经科学方面的工作，我主要感兴趣的是大脑是如何构建的。

Sure, so I work in genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and I'm broadly interested in how the brain gets put together.

那么，基因组中有哪些指令决定了人类大脑的连接方式？这些指令的变异又是如何导致行为特征、个性和智力的差异，以及精神障碍或神经系统疾病的风险差异的呢？

So, what are the instructions in the genome that specify how to wire a human brain and how does variation in those in those instructions lead to differences in behavioral traits and personality and intelligence, and also, you know, risk of conditions like psychiatric disorders or neurological conditions.

因此，这一直是我广泛的研究领域，并促使我去思考一些深层次的哲学问题，比如先天与后天的争论，或者自由意志的问题。

So, that's been sort of my broad area of interest, and it's led me to thinking about some sort of deep philosophical issues like the nature versus nurture question or this or this question of of free will.

你书中最让我着迷的一点就是，你展示了这个长期以来困扰我们、在哲学思考中占据重要地位的问题，如何能够通过生物学和进化科学的研究来探讨。

That is one of the things I found most fascinating about your book, which is that you're showing how this question, which is, you know, long consumed us and has long been a very prominent in considerations of, say, philosophy and questions of philosophy, is one that you're showing how we can approach it through the study of the biological sciences, the evolutionary sciences.

是什么促使你写下这本书的？

What led you to undertake this book?

嗯，有几个原因。

Well, there were a few things.

其中一个动机来自我之前与普林斯顿大学合作出版的一本书，名为《先天：大脑的布线如何塑造我们是谁》。

One of the ones actually led from a prior book that I'd written with also with Princeton, is called Innate, How the Wiring of Our Brain Shapes Who We Are.

那本书的一个核心观点是，我们并非白板。

And one of the sort of messages of that was that really we're not blank slates.

我们生来就具有一些心理倾向，即个体的天性，这些天性影响着我们的性格，而性格特质实际上是对一个人随着时间推移所做决策模式的描述。

We're born with some psychological predispositions, our individual natures, and those natures affect our personality, and that really, you know, personality traits really are descriptors of patterns of decision making through time.

因此，核心观点是：我们的决策受到性格特质的影响，而性格特质又受遗传因素左右。那么一个显而易见的问题是：如果这是真的，那我是否真的能掌控自己的行为？

So the idea that you know is that our decision making is informed by our personality traits which is affected by our genetics and an obvious kind of question then is well if that's true then am I really in charge of things?

我的意思是，我并没有决定自己的大脑该如何布线，这是否意味着我根本没有自由意志，只不过是个预设程序的机器人？这种担忧确实让许多读者提出，但说实话，它也一直困扰着我。

I mean I didn't decide how my brain would be wired so does that mean that I don't really have free will that I'm just kind of a pre programmed robot in a way and that's a concern that was you know many readers raised but it also was nagging at me frankly.

此外，如今在神经科学界，尤其是许多研究者倾向于宣称自由意志是一种幻觉。

And then there was also there's a kind of a current trend these days for many people in neuroscience especially to declare that free will is an illusion.

他们说，你认为自己在做决定，这感觉确实如此，但实际上，这不过是神经回路在放电，而我们能观测到这些活动。

To say that actually you know what you think you're making decisions and it sure it feels like that, but really it's just all the neural circuits firing and we can see them.

你看，我们可以把你放进扫描仪，看到这些活动在进行；我们也可以进入动物体内，激活不同的神经元群，让它们做出A或B行为，比如坐起来、翻滚，甚至改变它们的思维。

Look we can put you in a scanner, we can see them working and we can go into an animal and we can activate different sets of neurons and make them do A or B and make them sit up or roll over or we could change what they're thinking.

我们可以在小鼠身上植入记忆，因此所有这些神经科学研究都让人很容易陷入一种想法，即一切不过是神经回路的放电。

We can implant memories in mice you know, and so all of this neuroscience makes it really, really tempting, I think, to fall into this idea that really it's just neural circuits firing.

事实并非如此，你所体验到的其他一切——心理状态等等——其实并不具备因果力量。

It's not, you know, all of the rest of it, the mental states and so on that we are experiencing don't really have causal power.

这仅仅是一个在其中运行的机制，驱动着拥有这些机制的生物的行为。

It's just a mechanism that's whirring away and driving the behavior of the organisms in which those mechanisms happen to sit.

因此，这些担忧实际上并不容易被忽视，人们之所以这样想是有原因的。

And so those sort of worries, you know, they're not easy to dismiss actually and there's a reason why people think like that.

因此，我想弄清楚的是：是否存在一种仍然符合自然主义和科学的自由意志观念？

And so what I wanted to do was try and figure out is there a way to think about free will that is still naturalistic and scientific?

它不需要走向另一个极端，即假设某种非物质的灵魂或机器中的幽灵，能以某种方式赋予你非物质的自我控制能力。

It doesn't, you know, it doesn't go the whole other extreme where you'd have to posit some kind of immaterial spirit or a ghost in the machine that somehow gives you, you know, an immaterial self control over the mechanisms.

这种说法似乎行不通。

That doesn't seem to work.

因此，我想找到一种框架，让我们能够理解自由意志和能动性如何作为生物能力存在，它们既非神秘也非玄妙，而是让自我、生物体真正掌控自己的行为。

So what I wanted to do was find a way a framework in which we could see how you can have free will and agency as biological capacities that aren't mystical or mysterious whereby the self, the organism, can really be in charge of what it does.

你从思考自由意志这个议题开始，虽然你已经对此有所讨论，但我很好奇你能否进一步阐述一下你对自由意志的处理方式，以及你在本书中是如何界定它的？

You begin that process by considering that question of free will, and you've already talked about it to some extent, but I was wondering if you could perhaps elaborate a bit upon your approach to free will and how you conceptualize it for purposes of examining it in this book?

是的，我做的其中一件事就是避免一开始就锁定一个定义，因为我认为这已经引发了很多问题。

Yeah, well, so one of the things I do is avoid locking in a definition right from the get go because I think that has caused all kinds of problems.

人们以某种方式定义自由意志，然后围绕它争论，但其实只是因为定义的方式本身出了问题。

People define free will in a certain way and then have arguments about it but it's just because of the way it was defined.

例如，如果你把自由意志定义为完全不受任何先前原因影响的绝对自由，那这个概念本身就是自相矛盾的。

So for example, if you define free will as having absolute freedom to act free from any prior causes whatsoever then that's just an incoherent notion.

我的意思是，一个在行动时完全不考虑任何先前原因的有机体或主体，只会是一个随机行为生成器。

I mean an organism or an agent that's doing things with no prior causes in mind would be just a random behavior generator.

所以，这种观念根本毫无意义。

So it's a kind of just a notion that makes no sense.

它把自由意志抬高到只有神秘、魔法般的过程才能满足的程度，而二元论的思维方式也是如此——你可能会说，机器里必须有个幽灵，一种与物理物质不同的东西。

It inflates free will to a level where only a mystical magical kind of process could actually satisfy those criteria, and the same is true for what you can think of as a dualist way of thinking where you can say again there must be a ghost in the machine, a different kind of thing from the physical stuff.

因此，必须存在某种精神、物质或实体在控制一切，但这种观点从一开始就自我否定了，因为它完全依赖于一种超自然的框架。

So there must be some mental stuff or substance or entity in there that that's controlling things but again that that basically rules itself out right from the get go because it really relies on a kind of a supernatural framing.

所以我想要做的是从现象本身开始。

So what I wanted to do instead was just start with the phenomenon.

让我们先就我们所讨论的内容达成一致，这个现象其实就是我们觉得自己在做决定。

Let's agree on what we're talking about to begin with and the phenomenon really is that we feel like we make decisions.

所以我们整天都在做选择，这些选择不是随机的，而是基于某种理由，我们知道这一点，因为我们能谈论这些理由，也能向他人说明这些理由，还能揣测他人做事情的原因。

So we go around all day long, we're making choices, we're not doing it at random, we're doing it for reasons and we know that because we can talk about those reasons and we can even tell each other about those reasons and we can wonder about other people's reasons for doing things.

因此，这种现象学构成了我们日常经验的基石——我们掌控着自己。

So that phenomenology is really the bedrock of our everyday experience that we're in control of ourselves.

这并不是说我们完全不受约束，而是说我们拥有某种程度的自由，能够运用自身的能动性来决定自己的行为。

It's not that we're acting without any constraint but that we have some degrees of freedom and that we ourselves can exercise our own agency to decide what we do.

有了这样的框架，问题就变成了：这怎么可能呢？

And so with that kind of framing then the question is, well how could that be?

因为当你开始思考，也许这不过是神经回路的作用，也许不是‘我’在做决定，但为什么只停在神经回路呢？

Because you kind of run into this problem that you know once you start thinking well maybe it's just the neural circuits, maybe it's not me, but you know why stop at the neural circuits?

也许这根本只是物理学的产物。

Maybe it's just physics.

神经回路归根结底是由原子、分子、电子、量子场和粒子等构成的，它们都遵循物理定律。

Neural circuits after all are made of atoms and molecules and electrons and quantum fields and particles and so on, and they're going to obey the laws of physics.

那么，我的思考或欲望如何能影响这些分子的行为，并促使我的身体做出某些举动呢？

So how could me thinking something or wanting something have any effect on what happens to all those molecules and be able to cause, you know, my physical being to do certain things.

因此，这里存在一个谜团，挑战就在于试图弄清楚如何解决这个问题。

So there's a mystery there and that's the challenge is to try and figure out how to address that.

一种方法是直接面对形而上学问题，尝试进行抽象思考。

One way to do it is to just tackle the metaphysics head on and try and think in the abstract.

原则上，这种事怎么可能发生呢？

Well, how could it be in principle that that kind of thing could happen?

但我采取的方法则深深植根于真正导致我们拥有这些能力（或至少看似拥有）的过程，即进化。

But the approach that I take is very much grounded in what actually led to our having these capacities or at least seeming to, which is the process of evolution.

因此，我真正做的是从最开始出发：如果你想理解人类如何控制自己的行为，你就必须追问，任何生物是如何控制自身行为的？

And so what I do is really start at the beginning and say, well look if you want to understand how it is that a human being can control what they do, you really have to ask how does any living thing control what to do?

要把握这一点，一种方法是从最简单的生命形式入手，比如单细胞生物，然后观察进化是如何逐步构建出控制系统的，使它们能够随着时间推移管理自身行为。

And one way to get a handle on that is to start with the simplest things like single celled organisms and then see how evolution built the control systems that allow them to manage their own behavior over time.

我真的很喜欢你书中的一个方面，就是你通过回归起点、从最基础的元素入手，引导读者了解这种方法，然后随着生命复杂性的增加，逐步构建出对人类如何运作的解释。

That's one of the things that I really enjoyed about your book was you take it, you introduce the reader to the approach by going back to the beginning, by starting with the most basic elements, and then showing as as life gains and complexity, so too, you're building to the explanation of how it works in humans.

我想请你更详细地阐述一下生命如何涌现，这一过程是如何发展的，以及随着时间推移，生物是如何逐渐获得能动性的——我觉得你对这一点的探讨非常引人入胜。

I was wondering if you could elaborate upon that in a bit more detail in terms of the emergence of life and how this process develops, and how in that emergence over time beings develop agency, which I thought was very fascinating examination there.

是的，谢谢。

Yeah, thanks.

对我来说，这是一种关键的方式，可以将一些听起来很模糊的概念具体化，比如目的、意义和价值，它们似乎不那么科学，但实际上它们是科学的，我们可以通过自然化的方式理解它们。一种方法是思考：究竟什么是生命？生命到底是什么？归根结底，生命是一组以特定方式组织起来的过程，能够通过自身运作维持这种组织状态。

I think for me it was a key way to ground some concepts that are otherwise a bit vague sounding things like purpose and meaning and value they don't sound very scientific, but they are and we can naturalize them and one way to do that is to think well what does it mean at all to be a living thing what is a living thing really, And ultimately it's a set of processes that are organised in a certain way and that are capable of doing some work to keep themselves organised that way.

即使是单细胞生物，也拥有某种物理结构，由一系列分子以特定方式组织而成，同时还具备大量内部动态过程，比如新陈代谢等，这种模式能够持续存在；令人惊叹的是，尽管构成它的物质成分不断更替，进出生物体，这种模式依然稳定。

So even a single celled organism is basically it's got, know, some physical structure, a bunch of molecules organized a certain way and then it's got a lot of internal dynamical processes of metabolism and so on and that pattern persists and amazingly even though the bits that make it up, you know, are in flux, they'll go in and out of the organism.

它可能一天之内连一个原子都不再是原来的，但这种模式却始终存在。

It may not have any of the same atoms in it, you know, from one day to the next, but the pattern persists.

所以这有点像龙卷风，对吧？

So it's a bit like a tornado, right?

尽管组成它的个体成分不断进出，但模式本身始终存在。

The pattern is there even though the individual bits are flying in and out of it.

当然，不同之处在于龙卷风会很快自行消散，而生命体则会主动做一些工作来确保自己不会消散。

The difference of course is that a tornado blows itself out pretty quickly and living things do some work to make sure that they don't blow themselves out.

因此，从这个意义上说，生命体首先是非常动态的，它是一系列相互关联的过程构成的整合性整体。

So really the living thing in that sense, first of all, a very dynamic, it's this set of interlocking processes, and it's an integrative whole entity.

关键就在于，这个整体正在做这种整合性的工作，让所有部分相互制约，共同构成这个整体，并使其在时间中持续存在。

And that's really the crucial thing is that the whole entity there is doing this integrative work to where all of the parts are constraining all of the other parts to make up that whole thing and keep it persisting through time.

当然，其中一个挑战是，比如细菌可能以某种方式配置其代谢通路，吸收某些营养物质，进行新陈代谢，并排出废物等，但环境可能正在变化。

Now, one of the challenges of course is that, you know, say a bacterium may be configured a certain way with its metabolic pathways, taking in some nutrients and it's performing its metabolism and it's getting rid of waste products and so on, but the environment may be changing.

因此，它所依赖的食物可能会消失。

And so it may be that the food it was eating, you know, disappears.

也许它把所有食物都消耗完了。

Maybe it uses up all the food.

所以，当环境变化时，它可能需要重新配置其代谢系统，以利用其他食物来源，但另一种保持自身持续存在的方法是能够移动。

So, it might for example have to reconfigure its metabolism to make use of some other food source as the environment changes, but another way that it can keep itself persisting is to be able to move.

这是宇宙中一种全新的现象——能够自主移动的实体，它们不仅仅被动地受外力作用，而是作为整体能够在世界中主动移动。

And that's a new thing in the universe, things that can move themselves about, you know, they're not just acted on by other forces, they as an entity can move in the world.

一旦这种能力进化出来，能够知道该往哪里移动就变得极具适应性。

And once that evolved, then it became really adaptive to be able to know where to move.

因此，生物开始意识到周围环境中的事物。

And so organisms became aware of things in their surroundings.

它们体表有感觉器官，即使是单细胞生物也有，能够探测到糖类、危险化学物质等，并能向糖类移动，远离危险化学物质。

They have sensors on their outside, even single celled organisms do, and they can detect things like sugars or dangerous chemicals or whatever, and they can move towards the sugars and away from the dangerous chemicals.

所以，即使在这种最简单的场景中，你也有了目的，那就是维持生存。

So even in that simplest sort of scenario, you've got purpose, which is to persist.

你有了价值，即某事物是否有助于你维持生存。

You've got value, which is whether something helps you persist or not.

因此，向糖类移动是一件有价值的事。

So moving towards a sugar is a valuable thing to do.

你有了意义，即来自外界的信息信号——细菌并非单纯被能量或外力驱使，而是对世界中的信息做出反应，并且其结构使其行为能恰当地回应这些信息。

You've got meaning, which is the signal that comes in into, you know, it's not a, the bacterium is not being driven around by energy or forces, it's responding to information about what's out in the world and it's configured in a way such that its actions are appropriate response to that.

而且，这其实也是高度整合和整体性的，因为细菌并非一次只对一件事做出反应。

And it's also, you know, really integrative and holistic because the bacterium is not just responding to one thing at a time.

它从外界接收了大量信号。

It's got loads and loads of signals out in the world.

它拥有各种各样的背景信息，这些信息整合在一起以实现适应性行为。

It's got all kinds of context that integrates in order to behave adaptively.

一旦我们认识到这一点，生物体作为一个整合的整体，自主控制其在世界中的行为，就不再那么神秘了；从这里开始，我们可以沿着进化路径逐步展开，最终解释人类的出现。

And once I think we once we see that, then you know the idea an organism being an integrative whole thing that controls its own behavior in the world is not so mysterious, and from there we can just sort of elaborate as we go through the evolutionary pathway that eventually led to human beings.

你明确指出，这些所谓的‘选择’并非简单的反应或偶然行为，而是确实对输入做出回应并作出选择。

You make it clear that what you're those, you know, choices, shall we say, that are being made are not necessarily simple reactive or incidental, that they are indeed responding to inputs and making choices.

我发现，例如，你对决定论的探讨非常有趣，因为你谈到了其中涉及多种因素。

I found, for example, your examination of determinism to be very interesting because you talk about how there are various factors involved.

这并不仅仅是像过去那样，膝盖被敲一下就做出反应那么简单。

It's not simply a matter of like, you know, the old, you know, getting your knee knocked and just having it reacted.

选择确实存在，但它们受到你所指出的三个关键因素的塑造。

Choice is being made, but they're being shaped by three key factors that you identify.

没错，关键是要摆脱那种机械式的因果观，即认为因果关系只是像古老的原子台球相互碰撞那样，或者是牛顿式的观点，甚至是对神经系统运作的电学式理解。

Yeah, and I mean, the key thing is to get away from a kind of a mechanistic view of causation where it's just, you know, the old sort of atomic billiard balls knocking into each other, Newtonian sort of view or even an electrical kind of a view of what's happening in the nervous system.

当生物进化出多细胞结构时，它们就面临一个问题：需要协调自身的各个部分。

So when organisms evolve that are multicellular, then they have a problem in that they need to coordinate their bits.

因此，如果它们要在这个世界中移动或对世界采取行动，就必须能够协调自己的各个部分，而神经系统正是为此而进化出来的，用于连接肌肉、协调动作，同时也感知外界环境。

So if they're going to move in the world or they're going to act on the world, they need to be able to coordinate their parts, and the nervous system evolved as a means to do that to connect up, you know muscles and coordinate actions, but also to sense what's out in the world.

所以，就像单细胞生物一样，关键在于了解外界发生了什么，然后知道该如何做出有益的反应，这种反应能帮助你持续生存下去。

So again, just like in the single celled organism what's important is to know what's out in the world, and then to know what's a good thing to do about it, that will be an adaptive thing to help you persist through time.

因此，真正驱动这些过程的，或者说神经系统运作的基础，并不是电能。

And so really what's driving these, or what the nerve nervous system runs on is it's not electrical energy.

它不像电路那样只是彼此驱动。

It's not like electrical circuits that are just driving each other.

而是意义，对吧？

It's meaning, right?

这些神经元想要知道我接收到的这个信号意味着什么，而生物体则希望理解这些内部神经模式的含义，从而推断出外界的情况，将其与自身存储的记忆和动机联系起来，并基于自身的动机和内部状态，从众多可能的物理行为中选择一种做出回应。

These neurons want to know what's the meaning of this signal that I'm getting and the organism wants to know what's the meaning of these internal neural patterns that the organism can infer what's out in the world and link it to its sort of stored memory and drive or choose one out of many possible physical actions in its repertoire in response to that based also on its own motivations and its own internal states.

因此，我们拥有这一切生物学机制，它们本质上被设计成一个庞大的控制系统，以尽可能长久地维持生物体的生存，当然最终目标是繁殖等等。

So we have all of this biology that's really designed as a big control system to keep organisms persisting for as long as they can and of course ultimately reproducing and so on.

但重要的是要意识到，这是一个信息系统的概念，对吧？

But the important thing is to realize that's an informational system, right?

这是一个意义的系统。

It's a system of meaning.

它并不是那种牛顿式意义上的单纯机械系统。

It's not a system of just mechanism in that Newtonian kind of sense.

想到这些对我们来说极其简单的生物竟有如此复杂的特性，真的非常有趣。

It really is fascinating to think about how these, you know, the sophistication of what, you know, for us are incredibly simple organisms.

是啊。

Yeah.

我们是如何从那里发展出更高阶的特征的呢？

How do we get from there to the development of higher order features?

是的，正如我所说，其中一种方式是当多细胞生物出现时，关于真核生物——如真菌、动物和植物等——是如何起源的，这段历史非常引人入胜。

Yeah, so, one of the ways, as I said, is when multicellular organisms arose and there's a whole sort of really fascinating history about how what are called eukaryotic organisms arose, so fungi in animals and plants and so on.

而其中一项关键发展就是神经系统的发明。

And one of the key developments is, is the invention of the nervous system.

因此，在单细胞生物中，你有一些传感器，一些能够驱动细菌运动的执行器，以及一些生物化学机制来传递信号，并整合多种信号和时间上的信息，以产生适应性行为。

And so if you have an in a single celled organism, you've got some sensors, you've got some, you know, some, some motors that can drive the the bacterium around say, and you've got a few bits biochemistry intervening that will relay signals and that will also integrate signals both over, you know, multiple kinds of signals and over time to drive an adaptive behavior.

但在单细胞或简单生物中，感觉和行动是紧密耦合的。

But really, you know, sensation and action are pretty closely coupled in single organism, simple organisms.

在更复杂的生物体中，比如我们和许多动物，我们拥有能够感知外界事物的神经元。

In more complex organisms like us and many animals, we've got neurons that can sense things out in the world.

我们拥有能够控制肌肉、驱动行动的神经元。

We've got neurons that can control muscles so they can drive action.

但随着神经系统变得越来越大，我们还出现了许多中间层，正是在这里，复杂性真正显现出来，并以多种方式实现。

But we've also, as the nervous system got bigger and bigger got all these intervening layers and that's where the sophistication really emerges and it does so in multiple ways.

首先，它使我们能够理解视觉信号之类的资讯。

First of all, it allows us to make sense of things like visual signals.

因此，细菌或像蠕虫这样的简单生物，只能对它们直接接触的分子做出反应。

So, you know, a bacterium or simple things like worms and so on, they can respond to molecules that they directly contact.

所以它们实际上是在‘嗅觉’，但这意味着它们必须直接接触这些物质；或者它们能对触觉做出反应，但它们的感官都是极其即时的。

So they're smelling things effectively, but that means they're directly contacting them Or they can respond to touch, but their senses are all very immediate.

它们只能感知此刻非常接近的事物。

It's things that are very close to them right now.

因此，它们活在当下，反应非常直接。

So they inhabit the here and now and they're very reactive.

但当视觉和听觉进化之后，这些感官并不直接探测物体，而只是探测电磁场的扰动或空气中的振动。

But when vision evolved then and hearing as well, those are senses that don't directly detect objects, they just detect disturbances in the electromagnetic field or vibrations in the air.

然后，生物体必须进行一些处理，以推断出是什么导致了击中我视网膜的光子模式或击中我耳膜的振动。

And then the organism has to do some work to infer well what's causing that pattern of photons that are hitting my retina or vibrations that are hitting my eardrum.

因此，我们的神经系统中存在着各种复杂的电路结构，使生物体能够推断出外界存在的物体，因为这才是它们真正关心的东西，对吧？

And so we have all this sophisticated levels of circuitry in the nervous system that let organisms infer what are the objects that are out in the world because that's what they care about, right?

它们并不关心击中视网膜的光子，那毫无意义。

They don't care about photons hitting their retina, that's not meaningful.

有意义的信息是：这是外界的某个物体，那是另一个物体，然后它们可以将这些信息与自身存储的知识联系起来。

The meaningful information is here's that object, here's this object out in the world, and then they can link that to their stored knowledge about things.

因此，神经系统的另一个巨大优势在于，它专为学习而设计。

So the other huge, huge advantage of the nervous system is it's designed for learning.

它的设计目的是在不同事物之间建立联系。

It's designed for making connections between different things.

它的设计目的是了解事物的属性之间的关联，同时也连接时间上的事件，使得当A发生时，B总是紧随其后，或者当我做C时，D就是结果。

It's designed for knowing that you know the connecting the properties of things, but also connecting events in time so that when A occurs, B always occurs after it, or if I do C, D is the result.

生物体可以从中学到东西，因此当它们观察外界时，能够根据自身的过往经验判断什么是该做的，当前情境中有哪些因果关系在起作用，然后它们可以在内心模拟可能的行动结果，而无需真的去现实中尝试，从而避免可能的死亡，对吧？

And organisms can learn from that, so that when they see what's out in the world, they can have a sense based on their own past experience of what's a good thing to do, what are the causal properties that are at play in that scenario, and then they can evaluate the possible outcomes of their actions internally without having to test it out in the world and possibly die, right?

所以，它们可以提前模拟一下，心想：如果我这么做，结果恐怕不会好。

So, they can sort of simulate it ahead of time and say you know what if I do this, not going to turn out well.

我不该这么做。

I shouldn't do it.

因此，随着神经系统在进化过程中变得越来越复杂，能动性也变得越来越精细；同样地，在个体的一生中，随着生物体不断学习世界、积累因果知识，它们在世界中的因果力量也随之增强——对世界运行机制了解得越多，这种力量就越强。

And so, thereby, you know, they both evolutionarily as the nervous system got more complex, the powers of agency got more sophisticated, but that's also true over an individual lifetime as individual organisms learn about the world and accumulate causal knowledge, and that really gives them causal power in the world the more that they know about how the world works.

我认为那个步骤尤其引人入胜，就是你如何从单纯的反应性，过渡到你所定义的这种关于‘意义’的过程。

That's what that step that I thought was especially intriguing, how you go from the notion of simply, you know, reactive to where you start this process and the way you define it in terms of meaning.

我想知道你能否进一步阐述一下，你是如何在描述这种发展过程中使用‘意义’这个概念的？它又如何与‘自由意志’的概念相联系？

I was wondering if you could perhaps elaborate a bit upon how you use the notion of meaning in terms of describing this development towards or how it connects to the concept of free will?

是的，其中一个关键问题，也是主要的反驳观点，就是认为这不过是神经回路在放电，对吧？

Yeah, well, so one of the key sort of issues, the key counter arguments is this idea that it's all just neural circuits firing, right?

我可以这么说，这些神经回路具有某种意义，比如表征外部世界的事物，或表征内部状态、信念、欲望或动机状态等等。

I can say what I want about these neural circuits meaning something like representing there's something out in the world or representing an internal state or a belief or a desire or a motivational state and so on.

但反驳者总能说：看吧，这本质上只是复杂的电子设备。

But the rejoinder can always be look it's just complicated electronics basically.

它只会驱动将要发生的一切。

It's going to drive whatever is going to happen.

它们所代表的意义在系统中并不具有因果效力。

What they mean doesn't have any causal power in the system.

而实际上，我想颠覆这种观点。

And actually I want to reverse that view.

我认为这种看法完全颠倒了，因为如果真是这样，那么当你改变神经放电的细节时，结果就应该随之改变。

I think that's completely backwards because actually if that were true, then it should be the case that if you change the details of the neural firing that what happened should change.

但事实并非总是如此。

And that's not always true.

事实上，这往往根本就不是真的。

In fact, it's often not true at all.

首先，神经元是嘈杂的。

So neurons are noisy in the first instance.

并不是所有神经放电的细节都具有因果力量，甚至不会在整个系统中传递下去。

They're not really, you know, it's not the fact, it's not the case that all the details of all the neural firing has causal power or even percolates through the system.

许多这些细节都会丢失。

A lot of those details are lost.

重要的是这些模式所代表的意义。

What matters is what the patterns mean.

例如，当一个神经元监测另一个神经元的活动时，它可能对某一时间段内的放电速率敏感。

So, for example, when one neuron is monitoring the activity of another one, it may be sensitive to the rate of firing over some time period.

在那个时间段内，无论是一下子出现10个尖峰，还是均匀分布，或是五个、一段间隔、再五个，都没有关系。

And within that time period, it doesn't matter if there's say, you know, 10 spikes that come all at once or if they're spaced out or if it's five and then a gap and then five.

重要的是在那个时间段内共有10个尖峰。

What matters is it's 10 spikes over that time period.

因此，这种模式的意义在于放电速率，而不在于细节。

So, the meaning of that pattern is in the rate of firing, it's not in the details.

当你观察神经元群体时，这一点也成立，它们共同编码某些信息，比如在视觉系统中，我们会抽象出关于世界中物体的信息，甚至达到能够识别出一张脸的层次——无论这张脸在视觉场景中的位置或角度如何，我们都知道它是谁，对吧。

And that's true when you look at populations of neurons where they collectively encode something like for example in the visual system where we abstract information about an object in the world, or even, you know, get up to a level where we know if there's a face and we recognize a face, and it doesn't even matter where it is in the visual world, visual scene, what angle it's at, we know who it is, right.

因此，我们对它的抽象表征并不依赖于神经放电的具体细节。

So we have an abstract representation of that that doesn't depend on the specifics of the neural firing.

所以，真正重要的是这些状态的意义，对吧？

So what's important to what happens is the meaning of those states, right?

它们所具有的概念内容才是关键，而任何时刻的神经放电都是偶然的。

The conceptual content that they have, the neural firings at any given moment are incidental.

它们可能是任意的，可能在不同实例之间发生变化。

They may be arbitrary, they may change from, you know, instance to instance.

因果力量并不在于此。

That's not where the causal power lies.

因果力量在于意义。

The causal power is in the meaning.

因此，神经模式只有通过代表A、B或C才在系统中具有因果力量。

So the neural patterns only have causal power in the system by meaning A or B or C.

我认为这是一种稍微颠覆传统观点的方式。

And I think that's a way of flipping the script a little bit.

所以，与其说所有认知都可以还原为神经放电，不如说神经放电之所以具有因果力量，是因为它们代表了这些认知元素。

So rather than saying all this cognition can be reduced to neural firings, I would say no, the neural firings only have causal power because they represent these cognitive elements.

我认为这是一个非常关键的视角转变，我希望它能帮助我们超越一种简单的还原论。

I think that's a really, really key perspective shift, I think that I hope can get us beyond a kind of a simplistic reductionism.

到目前为止，你所描述的是我们生物上如何发展出这些认知能力，以及它们如何能够体现自由意志。

Now what you described here so far is the process by which biologically we've developed these cognitive abilities and how they, you know, can stand for free will.

那么，你能由此建立联系吗？

Can you make the connection then that you do?

因为说实话，这种复杂性让我有些困惑。

Because to be honest, the complexity kind of alludes me.

那么，这难道不只是一种更复杂的反应过程吗？

So then does not simply be, say, for example, well, is just simply a more complex reactive process?

我的意思是，这种选择的元素从何而来？

I mean, where does that element of choice come in?

是的，与其思考选择，我更喜欢把选择看作一种行为。

Yeah, well, so I would say rather than thinking about choice, I like to think about choosing as an activity.

所以，任何生物在遇到某种情境时，都会进行这种计算，对吧？

So, any organism when it encounters some scenario will do this kind of calculation, right?

它会观察外界的情况，了解自己对它的认知，自己的内在状态，以及对各种目标的动机驱动力。

It'll see what's out in the world, what do I know about it, what are my internal states, what are my motivational drives for various goals?

而且至关重要的是，自己的长期活动是什么，对吧？

And also crucially, what are my long term activities, right?

因为任何生物都不只是对当下做出反应，我们会持续地在时间中保持活动模式。

Because any organism doesn't just react to things in the moment, we sustain patterns of activity through time.

这一点在人类身上尤其明显，因为我们有可以持续数十年的计划，对吧？

And that's especially true in humans because we have plans that can last for decades, right?

我们会做出承诺，制定政策，当然也拥有一生中养成的诸多习惯，但所有这些都存在，对吧？

We make commitments, we have policies, of course we have a lot of habits that we've developed over our lifetime, but all of those things are there, right?

在任何给定的时刻，我们不仅仅是对事物做出反应，而是在持续执行某些行为，同时也在适应不断出现的新情况。

In any given moment, we're not just reacting to things we're carrying out some sustained behaviors and we're accommodating to new things as they happen.

因此，我喜欢摆脱这种仅限于瞬间、二元选择的观念，因为这种说法太过人为和虚假。

And so I like to, you know, move away from this notion of just momentary choice between binary decisions, because it's just a super, super artificial framing.

当然，这正是我们在实验室中研究问题的方式——高度控制的实验、孤立的刺激、二元决策。

And of course, that's how we study things in the lab, tightly controlled experiments, isolated stimuli, binary decisions.

甚至哲学家们设计思想实验时，也常常如此，这说来有趣，但这并非生物体感知世界的方式。

It's even how philosophers often, you know, design their thought experiments funnily enough, but it's not how organisms encounter the world.

生物体不仅仅是对事物做出反应，它们还会在时间中持续维持行为模式。

And they don't just react to things, they sustain patterns of behavior through time.

因此，归根结底，如果一个生物体正在这样做，并且在所有这些目标之间进行整体性的整合，它就是在多种多样的刺激中优化自己的行为，其中许多刺激的信息是模糊的，但它正尽其所能以一种整体性的方式找出最佳行动方案，而不是被孤立的部分所驱动。

And so, you know, ultimately if an organism is doing that and it's doing this holistic, you know, integration across all these goals, it's optimizing its behavior over many, many sort of different stimuli, many of which, you know, it has ambiguous information about, but it's trying its best to figure out what's the best thing to do in a really holistic way that's not being driven just by isolated parts.

这整套系统在运作，不同的组成部分各自关注不同的时间尺度——有些关注长远目标，有些则只关心执行该行为所需的即时动作。

It's absolutely the whole thing working different elements working, you know, over they're concerned with different time frames, you know, some concerned with very long term goals, some concerned with just what are the motor actions I need to do to execute this behavior.

所有这些都层层嵌套在一起，一旦你理解了这一点，我就看不出还有什么其他方式可以描述：生物体作为一个整体实体，正在控制自身行为，并在任何时刻在各种选项之间做出选择。

That's all sort of nested together and once you've got that, I don't see what else you would want to say it is the organism as a whole, as a whole entity that's controlling its behavior and that's choosing between options in any given moment.

现在，人类身上还有一个至关重要的额外层面，那就是我们拥有更高一级的控制系统。

Now, the one sort of further element in humans that's really crucial is that we have an extra level to these control systems.

这不仅仅是说我们拥有认知，能够对世界上的事物形成信念，以及对欲望和动机有一些表征。

It's not just that we have cognition that has, you know, beliefs about what's out in the world and some representations of desires and motivations.

我们还拥有一个更高的层面，能够俯瞰这些信念，思考这些想法，并推理这些理由。

We have an extra level that can kind of look down on those and think about those thoughts and reason about those reasons.

更重要的是，我们能够将它们表达出来。

And importantly, we can articulate them.

我们可以彼此交流这些想法，这使我们具备了惊人的集体行动能力，我认为这真正将人类与其他生物区分开来。

We can tell each other about them which enables this incredible capacity for collective action that I think really sets humans apart from other organisms.

因此，我们称之为元认知、内省或执行功能。

So we call that metacognition or introspection or executive function.

对我来说，正是在这个层面上，我愿意说：这就是自由意志。

And that for me is the level at which I'm happy to say, look, that's free will.

这是为了理由而行动，至少能够意识到自己的理由，能够重新思考并用其他理由来改变它们。

That's doing things for reasons, it's being potentially at least aware of your reasons, being able to rethink them, to change them for other reasons.

所以，一旦你到达那里，我认为我们已经达到了一个点，可以坦率地说：是的，这基本符合我们最初试图解释这一现象的标准描述。

And so once you're there, I think we're at a point where I'm happy to say, yeah, that's a fairly that meets the fairly standard description of the phenomenon that we set out to explain.

但你的书所做的不仅仅是解释这一现象。

Yet your book does more than simply explain the phenomenon.

它还探讨了这一现象对我们自身作为存在者，以及对我们如今随处可见的这个热门话题——人工智能——所带来的影响。

It also considers the implications of it, both for ourselves as beings and also for this new hot topic that we seem to be seeing everywhere nowadays, which is this question of artificial intelligence.

我想知道你是否能解释一下，这如何帮助我们更好地思考关于身份、自由意志概念，以及人工智能这一概念的更广泛问题，即它是否也符合这一标准而拥有自由意志。

Was wondering if you could perhaps explain how this helps us to better consider these broader questions about identity, notion of free will, and also the notion of this concept of an artificial intellect and whether or not it too, you know, by this criteria possesses free will.

是的。

Yeah.

首先，我认为，这听起来可能是一个非常非轰动性的结论，但事实上，尽管你可能从其他神经科学家、物理学家或其他哲学家那里听到不同的说法，我认为我们对自由意志的理解其实相当不错。

Well, of all, I think, I mean, it sounds like a very non sensationalist conclusion, but actually I think despite what you might hear from other neuroscientists or physicists or other, you know, philosophers, our notions of free will I think are pretty good.

我们的系统，比如法律体系，对责任的界定，实际上是建立在自由意志是一种能力且这种能力因人而异的基础上的。

And our systems, you know, the legal system for example of thinking about responsibility, they're really framed around the fact that free will is a capacity and that it varies, right?

它在不同的人之间是有所差异的。

It varies between people.

年轻人可能不像成年人那样拥有足够的认知控制能力，而受药物影响的人也可能缺乏这种控制力。

So young people may not have as much cognitive control as adults do, and someone who's under the intoxicating effects of drugs may not have as much control and on.

所以，我认为我们已经对这些方面有了相当深入的理解。

So we already, I think have a pretty sophisticated understanding of those things.

我认为这其实不需要改变。

Don't think it really has to change.

随着我们对生物学的更好理解，我们可能会在像痴呆症、精神分裂症等情况中获得更细致的认识，了解这些疾病如何影响人的认知控制和能动性。

I think it may be informed as we better understand the biology and we can see cases where, you know cases like dementia or schizophrenia or things like that where we will have a more nuanced understanding of how those impinge on cognitive control and agency of persons.

更广泛地说，我认为即使在科学或哲学层面，我们也能捍卫生物学作为一门独立学科的地位。

More broadly, I think even scientifically or philosophically, I think we can defend biology as a science unto itself.

它不仅仅是复杂的物理学，生物体的行为有其原因，而这些是物理学无法涵盖的。

It's not just complicated physics, you know organisms are doing things for reasons that physics doesn't just doesn't encompass.

我认为这一点很重要，能动性是生物学中一个核心概念，但尚未被充分认识到它是区分生命与非生命的关键因素。

I think that's important and I think agency is a really central idea in biology that hasn't really been realized as a hugely important factor that distinguishes living things from non living things.

生命体能够主动行动，而不仅仅是被动地受外界影响，它们可以成为世界中的因果力量。

And that living things do things, they're not just acted upon, they can act as causes in the world.

而对于人工智能，我认为，我们现在拥有的系统在某些情况下能够非常出色地完成有限数量的任务，但要实现通用人工智能，我认为我们可能需要构建一个智能体。

And then for artificial intelligence, I think, you know, the systems that we have right now are very, very capable of doing a limited number of tasks incredibly well in some cases, but to get to artificial general intelligence, I think we may have to build an agent.

我认为我们可能需要构建一种能够智能地在世界中行动、对世界进行因果干预、学习世界中的因果关系、拥有某种关心的理由、成为哲学家所说的关注中心，并且具有自我意识的实体，我们可能还需要以某种方式赋予它身体才能做到这一点。

I think we may have to build something that is able to intelligently behave in the world, to intervene in the world causally, to learn about causal relations in the world, to have some reason to care, to be what philosophers call a locus of concern and to be me and we may have to embody it in some way in order to do that.

然后，如果我们开始思考这一点，并回顾进化是如何构建自然智能的，我们就能看到支撑它的架构，原则上我们或许能够在人工系统中复制这些架构，但随之而来的是关于我们是否应该这样做的巨大伦理问题，而这完全是另一个领域，

Then, you know, if we start thinking about that and we look to what we know about how evolution has built natural intelligence and we can see the architectures that enable it, in principle we may be able to duplicate those in artificial system and then we have these huge, huge ethical questions about whether we should and that's the whole other area that,

你

you

我知道，我在书里回避了这个问题，只是留给读者自己去思考。

know, I cop out in the book and I just leave it hanging for readers to consider.

当然，我完全理解，这不仅是个巨大的问题，而且你在书中已经探讨了这么多内容。

Well, all due respect, don't blame you because not only is it a huge question, you tackle so much as it is in the book.

是的，如果我深入探讨这个问题，书会长得多，没错。

Yes, would have been a lot longer if I'd have gone into that, yeah.

非常感谢你抽出时间与我们交谈，但在结束之前，你能告诉我们你目前在研究什么吗？

Well, we appreciate the time you've taken to speak with us, but before we go, could you tell us what you're working on now?

当然，我现在正在思考一些与我早期研究相关的内容，即生物体的形态是如何编码在其基因组中的，人们对于‘编码’这个术语存在争议。

Sure, what I'm working on right now is thinking kind of back to my roots a little bit about development, thinking about how the form of an organism is encoded in its genome and people argue about that term encoded.

这个词听起来很像计算机术语，但实际上并非如此。

It sounds very computer like and it isn't like that.

它有点像某种东西，但究竟像什么，以及我们该如何理解，比如为什么猫生小猫、狗生小狗，这并不明显。

It's like something, but it's not obvious what it's like or how we can understand, you know, basically why cats have kittens and dogs have puppies.

还有为什么小猫和小狗之间会有不同的天性。

And also why kittens and puppies have different nature between them.

你知道，这些本能是如何被 Wiring 到它们的大脑中并表现为行为的？

Know, where do those how do those instincts get wired in to their brains and expressed in behavior?

所以我认为这是一个有趣的话题。

And so I think that's an interesting topic.

它让我思考了各种各样的问题。

It's got me musing on all kinds of things.

因此，我打算花些时间深入思考这个问题。

So, I think I'm going to spend some time thinking about that.

听起来是个非常有趣的话题。

Sounds like a fascinating topic.

我期待看到你如何深入研究这个主题。

I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

是的，非常感谢。

Yeah, thanks very much.

凯文，非常感谢你抽出时间与我们交谈。

Kevin, thank you very much for taking some time out of your schedule to speak with us.

希望你今天过得愉快。

I hope you have a wonderful day.

谢谢。

Thanks.

非常愉快，感谢邀请我参加。

It's been a pleasure, thanks for having me on.