Is Life Just Different?

生活怎么会像飓风一样呢？

How is life like a hurricane?

嗯，无论是生物还是大型热带风暴，都是具有整体组织的复杂系统。

Well, both a living creature and a massive tropical storm are complex systems with an overall organization.

两者都不处于平衡状态。

Neither one is in equilibrium.

它们最终都从太阳获取能量。

They both derive their energy, ultimately, at least, from the sun.

能量和物质都流经它们。

That energy and matter flow through both of them.

它们都有始有终，而且大部分由水构成。

Each one has a beginning and an end, and they're mostly made of water.

显然，这种比较只能到此为止，但它确实突显了生命还有更深层的意义。

Obviously, the comparison only takes us so far, but it does highlight that there's something more to life.

我是说，每个生物都是由与无生命物质相同的相互作用粒子、原子、分子、化学物质、化合物组成的。

I mean, every living thing is made up of the same kinds of interacting particles, atoms, molecules, chemicals, substances, compounds as something that's not living.

比如说，拿一个刚刚还活着的东西来看。

Take something that was recently alive, for example.

它由完全相同的物质组成，但已经不一样了。

It's made of the exact same stuff, but it's not the same.

我们再把这个问题往前推一步。

Let's take this idea one step further.

和地球上以及地球之外所有的物质、系统和事物相比，生命是不是有什么特别之处？

Compared with all the matter and all the systems and all the stuff out there on Earth and beyond, is life just special?

欢迎收听Quanta播客，我们在这里探索基础科学、数学，有时还有哲学的前沿问题。

Welcome to the Quanta Podcast, where we explore the frontiers of fundamentals, science and math, and in some cases, philosophy.

我是Samir Patel，Quanta杂志的主编。

I'm Samir Patel, editor in chief of Quanta Magazine.

要探讨生命是什么这个问题，一个思路是借助“生物能动性”这个概念。

One way to frame this question about what life is is through the idea of biological agency.

这个概念指的是，生物体是世界中具有目标导向的因果作用者，它们做事有目的、有理由，而且不只是人类，所有生命都是如此。

That's the notion that living creatures are goal directed causal agents in the world, that they have purpose and reasons for doing things, and not just people, but all life.

说实话，这个想法确实有点模糊，也很有争议，但这并不意味着我们应该忽视它。

It's admittedly a bit of a nebulous and quite contentious idea, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss it.

在我们最近的系列文章《Qualia》中，科学作家、长期撰稿人菲利普·鲍尔写了一篇题为《生命只是不同吗？》的文章，探讨了生物能动性及其潜在的科学价值。

In a recent entry in our essay series, Qualia, science writer and longtime contributor Philip Ball explored biological agency and its potential scientific value in a piece called, is life just different?

今天他来到我们节目，和我们一起聊聊这个话题。

And he's here with us today to talk through it.

欢迎回到节目，菲尔。

Welcome back to the show, Phil.

谢谢你，萨米尔。

Thank you, Samir.

那么，菲尔，这个想法的核心是什么？

So Phil, what's the big idea?

在这篇文章里，我主张把生物体看作具有能动性这一属性，是有价值的，甚至可能是至关重要的。

I'm arguing in this piece that it can be valuable, perhaps even essential, to think of living organisms as having this property of agency.

这个属性指的是，回到你之前举的飓风的例子，让生物体区别于飓风的地方，尽管它们有很多相似之处，就在于生物体做事是有原因的。

And that property refers to the fact if we come back to your example of a hurricane, the thing that makes living things different from a hurricane, given all of those similarities, is that living organisms do things for reasons.

它们有目标，有目的。

They have goals, they have purpose.

飓风没有我们能真正理解的目的，但生物有。

The hurricane has no purpose that we can meaningfully think of, but living things do.

它们试图达成特定的目标，我觉得把它们看作是在努力尝试是有道理的，即使这并不涉及任何有意识的思考。

They are trying to achieve particular goals, and I think it makes sense to really think of them as trying, even if that doesn't involve any sort of conscious reflection.

所以这就是我们谈论能动性时所说的意思。

So that's what we're speaking about when we talk about agency.

这是一种承认、思考，甚至可能理论化生物这一特性的方式，这个特性一直让生物学家感到困扰，那就是生命似乎是有目的的，它有目标，它做事是有原因的。

It's a way of acknowledging and thinking about, and perhaps even theorising about, this property of living organisms that has always kind of troubled biologists that life seems to be teleological, that it has goals, that it does things for reasons.

所以，能动性的概念实际上是在说，我们别再回避这一点了。

So the idea of agency is really saying, let's stop running away from that.

让我们承认这就是生命的本质，然后看看我们能否把它变成一个有用且有意义的科学概念。

Let's just recognize that this is the nature of life and try to see whether we can turn that into a useful and a meaningful scientific idea.

这里有很多可以深入探讨的地方，而且我已经能看到从科学角度来看，这会引发争议的地方。

There's so much to unpack here, and I can already see the places where this is gonna get contentious from a scientific point of view.

但我想像往常一样，先从几个定义开始。

But I wanna start, as we often do, with a few definitions.

我们现在来定义一下生命是什么，这个练习有必要吗？

Is it a useful exercise for us right now to define what we mean by life?

我知道这个问题不好回答。

I know that that's not an easy question to answer.

确实，这个问题一直没人能回答，因为生命根本没有一个定义。

Well, it's certainly one that hasn't been answered, because there is no definition of life.

你可以列一个清单，比如自我复制、新陈代谢、达尔文进化论，但这些并不能让我们走得很远，因为如果我们发现一个像飓风那样的系统，它具备其中一些特征，但不具备全部，那该怎么办？

You can start making a kind of shopping list of things to look for like self replication, metabolism, Darwinian evolution, but that doesn't really get us very far because what if we find a system like a hurricane that has some of those things but not all of them?

而且我们怎么知道清单上的东西都列对了呢？

And how do we know that we've got all of the right things on that list?

如果我们列这样一个清单，很难把那些我们想排除的、觉得没有生命的东西都排除掉，同时把想包括的全都包括进来。

It's very hard if we make a list like that to exclude everything we'd like to exclude things that we feel are non living and to include all the things that we'd like to include.

所以我的建议是，与其纠结于什么是活的、什么不是，不如想想什么有能动性、什么没有，这样可能更有用。

So what I'm suggesting is that perhaps rather than trying to think about what is living and what isn't, it might be more useful to think about what has agency and what doesn't.

比如说，如果我们想想病毒，很多争论就是在这里变得特别激烈：病毒到底算不算活着？

I mean, if we think about viruses, for example, that's where a lot of these arguments get really contentious: are viruses really alive or are they not?

与其非要得出一个“是”或“不是”的答案，我觉得更有意义的是思考病毒什么时候具有能动性。

Rather than trying to get a yes or no answer to that question, I think it makes more sense to think about when do viruses have agency?

当它们感染宿主时，它们就有能动性。

When they're in an infected host, they have agency.

当它们不在宿主里时，它们就像一小堆化学物质，只是蛋白质和核酸，什么也不做。

When they're not, they're like a little clump of chemicals they're just proteins and nucleic acids they don't do anything.

所以我觉得，能动性这个概念或许能帮助我们更清楚地理解生命的特别之处，而不必纠结于如何定义生命本身。

So I think that the idea of agency can perhaps help us to crystallize what's special about life without us having to wrestle with this question of how to define life itself.

也许我们可以先从人类的角度来思考能动性，因为我们有自我意识和自我反思的能力。

Maybe we could start actually by thinking about agency in a human context, because we have some capacity for self awareness or self reflection.

你所说的生物能动性，对于人类和病毒来说，有没有什么不同？病毒是我们最大的边缘案例，对吧，它也在某种程度上具有能动性。

Is there a way in which the biological agency, as you're talking about it, is different for, say, a human compared to and this is our biggest edge case, right, a virus itself having agency in some capacity.

我们说的能动性是不是有不同的含义，还是说这两个类别的能动性定义本来就不同？

Is there a different way that we're referring to agency, or is agency often defined differently for those two categories?

确实有明显的区别，但问题是这是程度上的区别还是本质上的区别。

Well, there clearly is a difference, but the question is whether it's a difference of degree or a difference of kind.

有些人，实际上很多生物学家，认为能动性应该只属于人类，因为在我们身上谈论能动性确实很自然，通常指的是我们能够理性思考、反思自己的决定，然后据此行动。

There are some people, many biologists in fact, who say agency is something that should be reserved for humans, that it does seem to make obvious sense to think and talk about agency in our context, and by that we often mean our ability to rationalize about something, to self reflect on our decisions and then to act accordingly.

意识是这种能动性的一部分。

Consciousness is a part of that sort of agency.

所以问题是，能动性一定要包含意识吗？

So the question is, does it have to be?

我觉得如果从人类的角度来理解能动性，很多人可能会觉得，其他大型猿类大概也有一定程度的能动性。

I think if we think about agency in that kind of human context, I suspect that a lot of people would be happy to think, well, probably other great apes have a degree of agency.

我们有充分的理由相信它们有意识，会反思自己的行为。

There are very good reasons to think that they have consciousness, that they reflect on what they do.

那狗呢？

Does that apply to dogs?

我觉得很多养狗的人会觉得他们的狗确实是有能动性的。

I suspect a lot of dog owners would feel that their dogs certainly act with agency.

那我们能往下走多远呢？

So how far down do we go?

最近有一组很有意思的实验，是关于大黄蜂的，看它们能不能即兴发挥，把事情搞定。

There was recently a lovely set of experiments looking at bumblebees and the ability of bumblebees to get stuff done in an improvised manner.

大黄蜂被关在一个隔间里，想够到食物，但食物太高了，它们够不着。

So bumblebees were trying to reach some food in this compartment that they were held in, and it was too high for them to get up to.

但那里有个球，它们可以摆弄，结果蜜蜂发现可以把球滚过来，爬上去，然后够到食物。

But they had a ball that they could manipulate and the bees figured out that they could roll the ball, climb up on the ball and get at the food.

这在进化过程中，它们肯定没遇到过，至少不是在这种具体情况下。

That's not something that they will have encountered in evolutionary terms, not in those exact circumstances.

这体现了它们的一种能力，就是利用手头的东西即兴发挥，来达到某个目标，这里就是够到食物。

That's an expression of this ability they have to improvise with what's available in order to achieve a particular goal, in this case getting at the food.

所以，把这看作它们能动性的一种表现，似乎挺合理的。

And so it seems to make sense to think of that as a kind of expression of their agency.

而且我觉得，当我们看到越来越简单的生物，可能最后到细菌，甚至病毒，它们的能动性就会低得多。

And I would suggest that as we get to simpler and simpler organisms and maybe ultimately to bacteria and maybe to viruses, then they have a much lower degree of agency.

细菌做的很多事情都是自动的，有点像刺激反应那种。

A lot of what bacteria do is kind of automatic it's kind of a stimulus response sort of thing.

但即使是细菌，也不总是这样。

But even for bacteria, that's not always the case.

所以我觉得，认识到这种行为的连续性更有用，人类的行为和我们的近亲相比并没有什么特别或例外的，实际上我们可以认为某种意义上的能动性贯穿所有生命。

So I think it's a more useful thing to be able to recognise this continuity of behaviours, that there's nothing special, exceptional about what humans do in relation to our near evolutionary relatives, and actually we can think of agency of some kind as pervading all of life.

我觉得归根结底就是目标导向这个问题。

And I think what it comes down to is this question of the goal directedness.

这没什么好争议的，比如像雅克·莫诺那样彻头彻尾的还原论分子生物学家，他因为基因调控的研究得了诺贝尔奖，他在1971年说过，所有生物共有的基本特征，无一例外，就是它们都是带有目的或计划的对象。

There's nothing really contentious about that, so a kind of dyed in the wool reductionist molecular biologist like Jacques Mono, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on gene regulation, he said in 1971 of the fundamental characteristics common to all living beings without exception is that they are objects endowed with a purpose or a project.

所以这就是我们的出发点。

So that's our sort of starting point.

然后问题就变成了我们怎么谈论所有生物都有的那个计划。

And then the question becomes how we talk about that project that all living things have.

我想从反方观点来谈谈这个。

I'd like to step into the counterargument on this.

那么，咱们把这个目的的概念再往前推一步。

So, like, let's take that idea of purpose a step further.

如果从进化论的角度来看，生命的目的就是某种形式的自我复制。

The purpose of life, if one was to take a evolutionary view of it, is to replicate itself somehow.

达尔文进化论产生了一套基因指令，这些指令带来了某种进化上的成功。

Darwinian evolution has created a set of genetic instructions that lead to some evolutionary success.

这种目的和你现在说的那种目的或目标有什么不同呢？

How is that purpose different from the kind of purpose or goals that you're talking about now?

因为蜜蜂的目标是获取食物，这在进化上是适应性的。

Because the goal of a b is to get the food, which is evolutionarily adaptive.

这和你说的那种能动性观点有什么不同呢？

Why is that different than the agentic view that you're talking about?

所以在这种情况下，进化提供了目标。

So evolution in that case is providing the goals.

进化赋予了蜜蜂获取食物的目标，而且正如你所说，它们都有内在的繁殖本能。

It's given the bee this goal of wanting to get food and as you say, they all have an inherent instinct to want to reproduce.

进化无法也不可能告诉每个生物体在每种具体情况下该怎么做才能实现那些目标。

Evolution does not and cannot tell every organism exactly what it should do in every single circumstance in order to achieve those goals.

它根本做不到。

It simply can't do it.

每个生物，尤其是任何有复杂性的生物，每天都在面对那些无法通过硬编码来解决的情况。

Every organism, and particularly any organism with any complexity, is all the time, every day facing circumstances that it cannot be hardwired to solve.

你知道，进化根本做不到这一点。

You know, evolution simply can't do that.

那些生物的祖先以前从未遇到过那种情况，所以进化不可能告诉它在每种情况下该怎么做。

The ancestors of those organisms have not faced that situation before, so there's no way evolution can tell it what to do in every circumstance.

对进化来说，更好的策略是创造具有能动性的个体，我认为这正是进化所做的。

It's a far better strategy for evolution to create agents, and I think that's what it does.

它创造出的生物具有解决问题的能力、创新能力和即兴发挥的能力，而真正的能动性就体现在这里。

It creates organisms that have this capacity for problem solving, this capacity for innovation, for improvisation, and that's really where the agency resides.

所以，这个观点与进化论并不冲突。

So this notion in no way conflicts with evolution.

事实上，我认为这正是我们应该期待进化去做的事情，因为它不可能、也显然不会把所有生物都预先设定好应对所有挑战的解决方案。

In fact, it's exactly, I think, what we should expect evolution to do, given that it cannot and clearly does not hardwire all organisms with a solution to all of the challenges that it's going to face.

所以你认为，即兴发挥、改变位置或环境、或者做一些并非基因预设的新事情的能力，都属于这种能动性的范畴。

So you're positing that the ability to improvise, to change their location or the environment, or to do something new that's not necessarily genetically programmed falls under this idea of agency.

而且我从你的文章里，还有对这个话题的一些了解中知道，对此的反驳意见是，正如你所说，进化确实产生了解决问题的能力，虽然不一定有基因脚本，但你在故事里用的词是塑性，行为塑性。

And I know from your piece, but also from being at least a little bit familiar with this topic, that the counterargument to this is that just as you said, that evolution has produced a ability to solve problems that, yes, it's not genetically scripted necessarily, but the term that I think you use in the story is plasticity, the behavioral plasticity.

尝试新事物或以不同方式达成目标的驱动力，本质上可能就编码在基因里，所以一个更机械论、更基于基因的解释，可能涵盖你所说的所有内容。

The drive to try something new or to accomplish a goal in different ways could essentially be hardwired in the genes so that a more mechanistic explanation, a more genetically based explanation could encompass all of the things that you're talking about.

对吧？

Right?

比如，作为人类，我们在基因上成功，是因为我们可能有一套脚本，让我们能通过多种不同方式达成目标。

Like, as humans, we're successful genetically because we have potentially a set of scripts that would allow us to accomplish a goal by a number of different ways.

我们能做到这一点，而不必说我们是代理，我还在试图理解，你所说的代理性，和这种基因行为适应性硬编码在体内的想法，到底有什么区别。

We could do that without suggesting that we're agents, and I'm still trying to get a little bit at what distinguishes agency as you're talking about it from this idea that we have some kind of genetic behavioral adaptability hardwired in.

我可能漏掉的这个区别是什么？

What is the distinction that maybe I'm missing a little bit?

那如果一切都是基因指令，这些指令在哪里呢？

So if it's all genetic instructions, where are those instructions?

那些告诉我现在该说什么、告诉你该怎么回应的指令在哪里？如果我们把话题引向观众的话。

Where are those instructions that are telling me what to say now that are telling you how to respond to that if we, you know, bring it to the audience?

我……我不知道。

I I don't know.

我们找不到它们的。

We will not find them.

两万个基因里不可能装得下这些。

They cannot be there in 20,000 genes.

它们不可能在那里。

They're not going to be there.

这就是为什么大脑赋予我们能动性，因为我们不可能被硬编码出所有这些反应。

This is why brains give us agency, because we can't be hardwired to have all these responses.

如果我们想想那些我们认为纯粹是本能行为的事情，比如我在文章里提到的，野兔被狐狸追赶时逃跑的例子。

If we think about something that we think is purely sort of instinctive behaviour, like for example, I talk in the piece about a hare running from a fox that's trying to catch it.

那我们是不是要说，在基因的某个地方，有指令告诉野兔每一刻该做什么动作，是往右闪还是往左闪，同时也告诉狐狸该怎么做？

So are we going to be claiming that somewhere in the genes there are instructions that tell the hare at every moment exactly what manoeuvre it should make, whether it should dart to the right or the left, telling the fox what to do.

所以，野兔有求生的本能，不想被狐狸吃掉，狐狸也有本能去抓野兔来吃，没错，这些可以说是进化上硬编码的目标，但这些本身并不是在非常具体的情况下告诉狐狸或野兔该做什么的指令。

So, the fact that the hare has an instinct to survive and not be eaten by the fox and the fox has an instinct to try to catch the hare to eat it Sure, those are evolutionarily hardwired goals, if you like, but those in themselves aren't instructions that tell the fox or the hare what to do in the moment in very specific circumstances.

所以，这就是我所说的能动性。

So that's really what I'm talking about as agency.

现在有些生物学家，我在文章里也引用了他们的话，他们说，好吧，好吧，没错，不是所有东西都是基因硬编码的，但剩下的部分就是行为科学。

Now there are some biologists, and I quote some of them in the piece, who say, well sure, sure, okay, it's not all genetically hardwired, but the rest of it is just behavioural science.

我们已经有研究行为的机制了。

We already have mechanisms for looking at behaviour.

能动性这个概念和那个想法并不矛盾。

This notion of agency is not at all inconsistent with that idea.

实际上，它是在说，我们需要一个总体的理论或一套想法来理解那种行为，因为我们可以把那种行为一直追溯到单个细胞。

In fact, what it's suggesting is we need to have an overarching theory or set of ideas for understanding that kind of behaviour, because we can track that behaviour all the way down to single cells.

我们可能会把单个细胞，比如细菌，或者我们身体里的单个细胞，看作更像是机器。

We might think of individual cells bacteria or even the individual cells of our body we might think of those as much more like machines.

你给一个刺激，细胞就会自动地做出反应。

You get a stimulus and the cell responds in an automatic way to that stimulus.

但如果你去做实验，发现的情况并不是这样。

If you do the experiments, that's not what we find.

一群理论上完全相同的细胞，甚至基因完全相同的细胞，在受到同样的刺激时，行为也不总是一模一样的。

Colonies of notionally identical cells, even genetically identical cells, will not always behave in exactly the same way when a stimulus is given to all of them.

其中一部分是随机的，因为分子世界里本来就有随机性，但另一部分是因为这些细胞内部的状态不同，导致它们倾向于以不同的方式做出反应。

Some of that is just randomness because there's randomness in the molecular world, but some of it is because of the internal states of those cells that give it a different propensity to behave this way or that.

我们开始能够追踪到细胞内部到底是什么让它们能够把从外界接收到的信息和它们自身已有的信息——这些信息来自它们各自的历史——整合起来，然后根据具体情况做出决策。

And we can start to track down what it is in cells that enables them to integrate the information they're getting from the outside with the information that exists already in them because of the particular histories that they have and integrate all of that information to make contextual decision about what to do.

这就是我们所说的“能动性”，也就是整合信息的能力。

That's really what we're talking about when we talk about agency that ability to integrate information.

所以，在这个图景里，能动性并不是什么神秘的决策力量。

So there's nothing in this picture that makes agency some sort of mystical decision making force.

我们完全可以用机械论的术语来研究它，但它所承认的是，生物体并不像机器那样运作。

We can totally study it in mechanistic terms, but what it's recognising is that organisms are not like machines.

它们并不是仅仅被环境中的信号推着走。

They're not just pushed around by the signals they're receiving from their environment.

内部有某种东西在起作用，同时也有某种情境因素在起作用。

There's something internal going on, and there's something contextual going on as well.

我得承认，在写完这篇文章并和你通过邮件讨论的过程中，我可能个人更倾向于机械论这一边。

I'll confess after working on this essay and chatting with you a little bit about it over email as we were doing it, that I might be personally falling a little bit more on the mechanistic side.

因为有人可能会说，进化通过机械的方式创造了一个本身就具有内在灵活性的系统，对吧，这个系统可以接收输入，并以多种不同的方式处理它们，因为这本身就是适应性的，会产生有助于生存的行为。

Because one could argue that evolution mechanistically created a system that has inherent flexibility in it, right, that can take in inputs, can process them in any number of different ways because that itself is adaptive, that would result in behaviors that contribute to survival.

如果我们说，好吧。

If we were to say, okay.

我们本质上就是自动机，但是是那种内置了某种硬连线系统的自动机，这个系统允许行为灵活性和一点随机性，这与机械论的观点并不矛盾。

We are essentially automata, but automata that have some kind of built in hardwired system that allows for behavioral flexibility and a little bit of randomness, that's not mutually exclusive with a mechanistic view of how it works.

那么，能动性的火花是什么？它能让我们回答哪些科学问题，而灵活机器的生命版本却无法回答？

So what is the spark of agency, and what does it get us in terms of scientific questions that we can answer that a flexible machine version of life doesn't get us.

嗯，萨米尔，我觉得你刚才描述的其实就是能动性，但你似乎不太愿意承认这一点。

Well, Samir, I think I think you've just described agency, but you seem reluctant to problem.

我觉得这就像，

I think it's like,

对，我觉得我确实描述了能动性，但为什么一定要叫能动性呢？

yeah, I think I feel like I have described agency, but why does it have to be agency?

嗯，这就是你刚才说的。

Well, so this is what you've just said.

你说，好吧。

You said, okay.

我们可以把自己看作机器，但一台能做自己想做的事、自己找目标、很灵活的机器。

We can think about us as a machine, but a machine that kind of does what it wants to do and finds its own goals and is flexible.

所以基本上，就是一个能动体。

So basically, an agent

这其实不是我的意思。

will That's do not what I said, actually.

我没说它会自己找目标。

I didn't say it finds its own goals.

我说的是，当面临生存问题时，那个基因机器，不管我们怎么称呼它，可以朝很多不同的方向发展。

I said that presented with a survival problem, that that genetic machine, whatever we wanna call it, can go any number of different directions.

所以也许这就是在描述能动性。

And so maybe that is describing agency.

嗯，我会说这确实是在描述能动性。

Well, I would say that it is describing agency.

我觉得这里要明确的一点是，能动性的概念并不排斥对过程进行机械论式的还原。

I think maybe the point to be clear about here is that there is nothing in the idea of agency that would resist a mechanistic reduction of what's going on.

事实上，我认为很多研究能动性的人会说，这正是我们需要的。

And in fact, I think that a lot of people who are working on agency say this is precisely what we need.

如果我们有一个好的能动性理论，我们应该能够，而且必须能够把它分解成你需要具备哪些特征才能拥有能动性，才能有那种灵活性，那种依赖情境的行为，而不是像我们通常谈论机器时那样，不是那种意思。

If we had a good theory of agency, we would be able to, and we should be able to break it down into what are the characteristics that you need to have agency, to have that flexibility, to have that context dependent behaviour, rather than normally when we talk about machines, that's not what we're talking about.

我们通常说的是那种像发条一样运作的机器，完全可预测，如果我们给它这个刺激，它就会做那个反应，而且我们知道它会那样做。

We're talking about something that works by clockwork, that works entirely predictably, that works so that if we give it this stimulus, it's going to do that, and we know it's going to do that.

所以这就是真正的区别。

So that's really the distinction.

如果我们决定把这个实体称为某种具有机械运作机制，但又具备这种偶然性、灵活性和根据遭遇重新调整目标的能力的东西。

If we decide to call this entity that has some kind of mechanistic functioning, but that has this contingency and flexibility and ability to reorient its goals because of what happens to it.

如果我们决定把它称为另一种机器，那也行。

If we decide to call that another kind of machine, fine.

但它不像我们制造过的任何机器。

But it's not like the machines we've ever made.

它当然不像自动机。

It's certainly not like an automaton.

你说过，也许我们是一种具有灵活性的自动机，可以根据环境做各种事情。

You said maybe we're an automaton with kind of flexibility that can do various things depending on the context.

这就是我们讨论的。

That is what we're talking about.

我认为这就是能动性的全部，但我们还没有一个很好的普遍解释来说明生物体是如何做到这一点的。

I think that is really all agency is, but we don't have a good general explanation for how it is that living organisms are able to do that.

我明白你的意思。

I can see what you're saying.

即使它是一台内置了某种随机引擎的机器，我们也无法确切地说出这是怎么发生的，我理解这一点。

Even if it is a machine that has some kind of randomness engine built into it, we can't exactly say how that happens, and I get it.

不过，你之前确实把能动性和意识联系起来了。

However, you actually connected agency to consciousness earlier.

而且我知道，这个术语本身有一些历史包袱，能动性这个词本身就带有一些含义。

And I know that there's some history to this term that agency by itself does carry some baggage with it.

那么，能动性带来的包袱是什么，以至于一些生物学家会有相当激烈的反应？他们可以跟你走到这一步：好吧，我们可能不知道这具体是怎么发生的，但它并不抗拒机械论的解释。

So what is some of the baggage that comes with agency that leads to what I would say is a pretty dramatic reaction from some biologists who will go with you as far as, Okay, we may not know exactly the mechanistic ways that this happens, but it's not resistant to a mechanistic explanation.

能动性会激发人们的情绪，我想知道是什么让它如此特别。

Agency inspires emotions in people, and I wanna get at what it is that makes it different.

有些人说，能动性”这个词承载了太多包袱，因为我们在某些语境下倾向于专门用它来描述人类行为，比如我们反思自己的选择、运用自我意识做决定等等。

There are some who say this word, agency, carries too much baggage because we have tended in some contexts to use it specifically for human behaviour, for situations where we are reflecting on our options, we're using our self awareness in order to make decisions and so forth.

如果从这个角度想，那听起来就像是在说，连细菌都能退一步思考：我现在该做什么？

If we think about it in that context, then it sounds as though we're giving maybe even a bacterium the ability to kind of stand back and think, what should I do now?

对，这确实带上了心理学的色彩。

Yeah, it brings psychology with it.

确实看起来是这样。

It does seem to do that.

我想说的是，完全没有理由非得这样理解，非得把能动性放在那个框架里。

What I'm saying is there is absolutely no reason why that has to be the case, why we have to think of agency in that context.

而且不仅如此，还有一个非常成熟的传统，就是不这么看。

And not only that, there is a very well established tradition of not doing so.

比如说，进化中有个现象叫行为驱动，基本上就是生物利用它们的能动性来影响自身的进化。

For example, there's a phenomenon called behavioural drive in evolution, which is basically the organisms using their agency to affect their own evolution.

它们决定，我要去那边看看那边有什么，不是因为这样做有什么明显的适应优势，或者我要开始吃这种食物而不是那种。

They decide, I'm going to go over there and see what's over there, not because there's any clear adaptive advantage to doing so, or I'm going to start having this diet rather than that one.

同样，不是因为有什么明确的驱动力或适应好处，而仅仅是因为它们是能动的主体，它们可以选择，它们有好奇心去做这些。

Again, not because there are any clear drivers, any adaptive benefit to doing so, but simply because they are agents, that they can choose, that they have curiosity to do that.

通过这样做，它们改变了自己所经历的选择压力，也改变了它们的进化路径。

And by doing so, they change the selective pressures that they experience and change their evolutionary course.

这是进化中一个公认的现象，经常用生物的能动性来描述，所以这个想法本身没什么可忌讳的，但正如你所说，仍然有很强的反对声音，因为它似乎暗示了某种心理层面的东西。

This is a well established phenomenon in evolution and it's often spoken of in terms of the agency of organisms, So there need be nothing heretical about this idea, but as you say, there is still this very strong reaction against it because it seems to impute something psychological.

我想说的是，如果你能放下那个想法，把生物性理解为一种更广义的、对环境的灵活反应，考虑到生物体的历史和内部状态，你就不需要那些心理上的包袱了。

I guess I would say, okay, if you're able to let go of that idea and think of biological in this more general sense of it being a contextual, flexible response to circumstances that takes into account the history of the organism and its internal state, you don't need any of that psychological baggage.

但是萨米尔，你接着问了一个非常重要的问题：'好吧，就算我们这么做了，这能带来什么呢？'

But Samir, you then ask the really important question: 'Okay, even if we do this, where does it get us?

如果我们走这条路，能提出哪些新的科学问题呢？'我觉得是有答案的。

What new scientific questions can we frame if we go down that route?' And I think there are answers.

比如，如果我们从能动性的角度来思考，就可以提出关于多细胞生物起源的问题。

For example, if we think in agential terms, we can pose questions about the origin of multicellularity.

你看，有这么多单个细胞，它们各自作为独立的能动体在活动，但到了某个时刻，出于某种原因，它们开始作为一个集体行动，这个集体有它自己的集体能动性，有整个多细胞结构所拥有和共享的目标。

So you have all these individual cells that are acting as agents in their own right doing stuff, and at some point, for some reason, they start behaving as a collective with its collective agency with goals that the whole multicellular assembly has and shares.

这是怎么发生的呢？

How does that happen?

单个细胞是如何协调它们的目标，使它们能够作为一个整体行动，就像它们现在在我们和其他多细胞生物体内那样？

How do single cells align their purposes so that they can act as a single entity, as they clearly now do in us and other multicellular organisms?

所以，从能动性的角度思考，给了我们看待这个问题的不同视角。

So thinking in agential terms gives us a different perspective on that problem.

但我也想提出一点：如果我们不在生物学中开始思考能动性，它就会以隐晦的方式出现。

But I'd also suggest this: that actually, if we don't start thinking about agency in biology, it just crops up cryptically.

我们无法摆脱它。

We can't get rid of it.

能动性、目的和目标在生物学中是固有的，所以让我们对此保持清晰和诚实，把它公开讨论，看看我们能做些什么，而不是假装它不存在，然后又偷偷把它带回来。

Agency and purpose and goals are intrinsic to biology, so let's be clear and honest about that and bring it into the open and see what we can do with it rather than pretending it's not there and then smuggling it back in.

你为这个故事采访的不同人，他们的背景或研究领域不同，对能动性这个想法的接受程度是否有很大差异？

Was there a big difference among the different people that you spoke to for this story based on what their background is or what their area of research is and whether they were receptive to this idea of agency or not?

我认为学科之间存在普遍的差异。

I think there there is a general difference in disciplines.

根据我的经验，去年我参加了国际生物学历史与哲学会议，在那里我发现很多生物学哲学家对这个思维方式非常感兴趣，并且非常投入，而对于一般的实验室生物学家来说，为什么要深入这些问题呢？

In my experience, I went last year to the International Conference for the History and Philosophy of Biology and there I found that there are a lot of philosophers of biology who are very interested in this way of thinking and are very much engaged with it, whereas for the average bench biologist, why do you have to get into these questions?

但有趣的是，我为这篇文章采访了两位哲学家，布里斯托大学的萨米尔·阿卡舍和伦敦弗朗西斯·克里克研究所的詹姆斯·德·弗里斯科，他们是两位对能动性持相当怀疑态度的生物学哲学家。

But interestingly, I spoke to two philosophers for this piece Samir Akasher at the University of Bristol and James de Frisco at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and they are two philosophers of biology who are both quite sceptical about agency.

但他们更多是从哲学立场来论证，而我认为对于许多实践生物学家来说，这并不影响他们的工作。

But they are making that argument more from the point of view of a philosophical position, whereas I think for a lot of practicing biologists it doesn't inform what they do.

但我想说的是，实际上，“生物是活的”这个观念，并不会影响大多数从事实际研究的生物学家的日常工作。

But I would suggest that actually the idea that living things are alive does not inform what most practicing biologists do.

而且，事实上，我脑海里一直回响着弗朗索瓦·雅各布的一句话，他是另一位分子生物学家，也是在1970年说的，他说生物学家其实不再研究生命了。

And in fact, know, always these days ringing in my ears is a quote from Francoise Jacob, another molecular biologist, also in 1970, who said biologists don't really study life anymore.

他真正的意思是，他们研究的是生命的机制，但“生命”这个概念本身在日常生物学中似乎并不起什么作用。

What he really meant by that is, you know, they study the mechanisms of life, but the notion of life itself doesn't seem to perform any role in day to day biology.

我认为“能动性”这个概念也是如此。

And I think the same would be true of the notion of agency.

当然，这并不能成为否定它的理由。

That of course would not be a reason to dismiss it.

实际上，这提醒我们，我们可能会忽视生物所拥有的那些非常独特的特性。

In fact, this is a warning of how we can possibly lose sight of the very special characteristics that living things have.

如果我们开始过度简化它们，认为它们只是通过力相互作用的分子，我们就会忘记，在某种程度上，它们显然不同于飓风或岩石，也忘记去追问为什么会这样。

If we start to become reductionistic about them to the degree that we think they're just molecules interacting via forces, we forget that actually at some level they are clearly different kinds of entity from hurricanes or from rocks and forget to ask the question of why that is.

而这些差异，正是我们这些非专业人士在生物和生物世界中时刻都能感受到的。

And it's those differences that we non specialists experience in living things, in the living world, all the time.

我觉得正是生命的活力和能动性让我们对生物体印象深刻。

I think it is the fact of their aliveness and of their agency that really strikes us about living organisms.

如果生物学忽视了这一点，那就失去了对其研究对象至关重要的认识。

If biology loses sight of that, then it's lost sight of something crucial about its object of study.

但这仍然可以看作是程度上的差异，而不是本质上的不同。

But that can still be discussed as a matter of degree as opposed to a matter of kind.

它只是一个更复杂的系统。

It's just a more complex system.

我想这归根结底还是取决于我们用来描述生命差异现象的语言。

I guess it really just does come back down to the, in some sense, the language that we use to describe this phenomenon of what makes life different.

我还怀疑，我觉得你在文章里也提到了一点，就是活力论、宗教和灵魂的遗留影响，当你把能动性推向极致时，这些因素会开始影响我们的看法。

I also suspect, and I think you bring this up a little bit in your piece, that there's some legacy of vitalism, of religion, of the soul that starts to inflect this a little bit when you pull agency as far in that direction as you can.

我认为这可能是人们对这个想法感到不安的部分原因，尽管生命确实有某种不同的东西。

I think that might be some of the source of the apprehension about it as an idea, even though there is clearly something about life that's different.

对。

Yeah.

我觉得这正是很多人对它感到不安的一个根源。

I think that is a source of a lot of the unease that is felt around it.

再加上生物学一直对目的论的出现感到棘手。

That and the way that biology has always struggled with the appearance of teleology in it.

但在这篇文章里，我探讨了都柏林圣三一学院的神经科学家凯文·米切尔和亨利·波特所做的工作。

But in this piece, I explore the work that the neuroscientists Kevin Mitchell and Henry Potter at Trinity College Dublin have done.

他们主张我们应该将能动性自然化，意思是我们可以构建一个理论，寻找能动者所具有的特征，并尝试用完全机械论的术语来理解它们，把它变成一种理论，认为没有理由说它应该不同于新陈代谢或光合作用的理论，这些是某些生物体所具有的其他特性，我们可以用机械论甚至分子层面的方式去探索。

They're making a case that we should naturalise agency, by which they mean we can make a theory of it that looks for the characteristics that agents have and tries to understand them in completely mechanistic terms and turn it into a theory that there is no reason why it should be any different from the theory of, say, metabolism or photosynthesis, which are other properties that some living things have that we can explore in a mechanistic and even in a molecular way.

原则上没有理由说能动性不能这样处理，而且他们已经开始勾勒出一种他们认为可以构建生物能动性自然化理论的方法，这种理论完全不需要任何神秘或神学的附属物。

There is no reason in principle why that can't be done with agency, and they have started to outline a way in which they think we could construct a naturalized theory of biological agency that has no place at all for any of that sort of mystical or theological paraphernalia that might come with it.

你刚才讨论的这个话题，有没有可能换个说法，比如叫行为可塑性，或者别的什么词，不带能动性这个词所承载的那种重量或包袱？

Is there any reason that the exact framing of the topic you were talking about can't be referred to as behavioral plasticity or something else that doesn't carry the weight or the baggage that agency does?

原则上，没有理由说不能这样。

There's no reason why it couldn't be, in principle.

事实上，我采访过的生物学哲学家詹姆斯·德·弗里斯科曾对我说，他希望我们确实能用类似的术语来讨论这个问题。

And in fact, James de Frisco, the philosopher of biology who I spoke to, has expressed to me the wish that actually we did talk about it in something like those terms.

我觉得，既然“能动性”这个词能这么清楚、这么直观地表达这个意思，为什么还要发明一个冗长的多词描述呢？

I guess I just feel why invent a long winded, multiword description for something that agency conveys so clearly and so intuitively?

我们当然可以那样做，但何必呢？

We could do it that way, but why on earth would we want to?

其实我并不完全认同它能清楚直观地表达这个意思。

I'm actually not entirely convinced that it conveys it clearly and intuitively.

也许你故事里的一个重点就是，建立能动性理论意味着要对它的含义有一个共同的定义。

Maybe that's part of the point of your story is creating a theory of agency means having some kind of shared definition of what that means.

而且我觉得，从某种意义上说，这个任务和给“生命”下定义一样难，而我们知道，我们对生命的定义也无法达成一致。

And I think ultimately that project is just as hard in some sense as the shared definition of what life is, which we know we can't agree on either.

嗯，我对此更乐观一些，因为我研究过人们在生物学语境中谈论能动性的各种方式，我觉得它们可以归结为一种能涵盖大多数情况的说法：当人们谈论生物能动性时，他们指的是某种东西，即一个实体为了达到某个目标而操纵自身和环境的能力，而且这个目标是它自己设定的。

Well, I am more optimistic about that because I've taken a look at the range of different ways in which people talk about agency in a biological context, and I think they can be encapsulated in a way that seems to encompass most of them that when people talk about biological agency, they're talking about something like this: the ability of an entity to manipulate itself and its environment in order to attain some sort of goal and a goal that it has set for itself.

所以，可能有一个总目标，比如生存或繁殖，但这并不能告诉你当下该怎么做。

So there may be an overarching goal to survive or to reproduce, but that doesn't tell you what to do in the moment.

所以，对于那只正在躲避狐狸的野兔来说，当下的目标不是“我必须活下去，这样我才能繁衍后代”，而是“我不想被吃掉”。这当然是一种拟人化的说法，但我想说，野兔当下的目标就是逃离狐狸，而不是什么崇高的进化使命。

So the goal for that hare running away from a fox in the moment is not 'I must survive so that I can pass on my offspring', it's 'I don't want to be eaten' this is to anthropomorphize it a lot, but I would suggest that is the immediate goal in the hare's mind to escape from the fox, not some high minded sort of evolutionary imperative.

所以，是的，我认为对于生物学背景下的能动性，有一个简洁且相当共识的看法。

So yeah, I think that there is a concise and a fairly consensual view of what agency in a biological context could mean.

现在，你提到了生物学背景下的能动性，我觉得这个概念的另一个延伸是现在在AI智能体背景下讨论的能动性。

Now, you mentioned agency in a biological context, and I think another extension of this now is the way that agency is being discussed in the context of AI agents.

你描述了一个机械系统，有输入和可预测的输出，那就是机器。

Now, you described a mechanistic system in which we have inputs and a predictable output, and that's a machine.

显然，没人会否认AI系统在某种程度上是机器，但这些系统存在一定程度的行为不可预测性。

Obviously, no one's gonna argue that an AI system isn't, in some sense, a machine, but there is a measure of behavioral unpredictability among these things.

那么，你现在谈到的生物能动性概念，如何开始影响我们对AI系统的看法，以及它们是否已经或可能发展出你描述的那种能动性？

So how does the concept of biological agency that you're talking about now start to inform our view of AI systems and whether they either have or could develop the same kind of agency that you're describing?

这也是我认为拥有一个合适的能动性理论会很有价值的另一个原因，因为它能让我们以更系统、更具体的方式来进行这个讨论。

This is another reason why I think it would be a valuable thing to have a proper theory of agency, because it would enable us to have this discussion in a much more systematic and concrete way.

所以，人们当然在谈论具有能动性的AI，但他们的意思并不明确。

So, people are talking, of course, about agential or agentic AI, and it's not really clear what they mean by that.

总的来说，我觉得他们的意思是，我们为AI设定了目标。

And in general, it seems to me what they mean by that is that we've set the goal of the AI itself.

我们允许它自己想办法去实现那个目标，但目标是我们自己设定的。

We allow it to find its own way to solve that goal, but we've set it ourselves.

所以我不太确定它是否真的具有我们一直在讨论的那种能动性，但我对制造真正有能动性的机器持完全开放的态度。

So it's not clear to me that it really is agentic in the sense that we've been talking about, but I'm entirely open minded about the possibility of making genuinely agential machines.

我猜这真的会发生，但如果我们有一个合适的能动性理论，那可能有助于我们明确要制造一个真正的能动体需要什么，而不是仅仅把大语言模型越做越大，然后希望它们能变得有能动性。

I suspect that will happen actually, but if we had a proper theory for agency, then it might help us to delineate what it requires to make a real agent rather than just making our large language models bigger and bigger and hoping that they're going to be agential.

我们可以更系统地判断它是否具有能动性，如果没有，就决定我们需要添加什么来赋予它这种能力。

We can be much more systematic about deciding whether it has agency, and if it doesn't, then deciding what we need to add in order to give it that ability.

我们是否真的想制造有真正能动性的人工智能，那是另一个问题，但如果我们确实把它作为一个目标，那么我认为我们需要非常清楚我们所说的能动性是什么意思，以及它需要什么。

The question of whether we'd want to make genuinely agential AI is another matter entirely, but if we do set that as a goal, then I think we'd need to be very clear about what we mean by agency and what it requires.

这个目标属于它自己的想法，无论是我们说的头发还是AI系统，设定自己的目标这个想法在这里确实很关键。

And this idea of the goals being its own, whether we're talking about the hair or an AI system, the idea of setting its own goals really seems to be distinguishing here.

不是进化设定的目标，也不是我们在AI情况下设定的目标，而是它自己的目标，我认为这是这个想法中非常重要的一点。

Not the goals set by evolution, not the goals set by us in the case of AI, but goals of its own is the turn, I think, that's very important to this idea.

是的，我觉得我们越来越接近那个目标了。

Yes, and I think we're getting closer and closer to that.

我相信有些人会说我们已经做到了，从某种意义上说，这些AI系统正在设定它们自己的短期或即时目标。

I'm sure some people would argue that we're already there, that in some sense, of these AI systems are setting their own immediate or short term goals.

而且我认为我们完全有可能达到那个目标。

And I think it's entirely possible that we will get there.

当然，这也没什么好惊讶的，我们作为生物体，作为已经拥有能动性的实体，能够弄清楚这种能动性由什么构成，存在于何处，以及我们如何将部分或全部能动性融入到我们制造的机器中。

And of course, there need be nothing surprising in this that we as biological agents, as entities that already have agency, are able to figure out what that agency consists of, where it consists, and how we can capture some of that or all of that agency in the machines that we make.

所以我认为这完全有可能发生。

So I think it's entirely possible that that will happen.

嗯，这确实是个很有意思的话题。

Well, is a very interesting topic.

我觉得这个问题短期内不一定能解决，但你至少听起来很乐观，认为能动性理论可能会以某种方式出现，既对生物学有用，也对计算机科学有用。

I think that it's not going to get resolved necessarily anytime soon, but you at least sound optimistic that a theory of agency could emerge in a way that would be useful biologically and useful in a computer science sense.

所以我觉得大家都应该读读你的文章，然后得出自己的结论。

So I think everyone should read your essay and come to their own conclusions.

谢谢你，萨米尔。

Thank you, Samir.

我也希望如此。

I'd love that to happen.

在结束之前，我们总是喜欢请嘉宾推荐点什么。

Before we let you go, we always like to ask our guests for a recommendation.

那么，这周有什么让你兴奋的想法吗？

So what's exciting your imagination this week?

这本书是让-巴蒂斯特·拉马克的新传记，他在达尔文之前就思考并谈论进化论，但现在经常被误解为完全错误的想法。

This book is a new biography of Jean Baptiste Lamarck, the person who thought and talked about evolution before Darwin and is very often dismissed now as having totally the wrong idea.

这本书的作者是杰西卡·里斯金，她是一位生物学史学家。

It's a biography by Jessica Ryskin, who's a historian of biology.

这是一本很棒的书，书名叫《生命的力量》，我特别提到它是因为拉马克是最早主张生物具有能动性的人之一。

It's a wonderful book, it's called the Power of Life' and I mention it in particular because Lamarck was one of the first to argue for the agency of living things.

他认为整个生物世界都具有这种创造性和创新潜力，这不仅仅是上帝安排的，而是生物本身在推动事情发生。

He saw the whole of the living world as having this creative, inventive potential that wasn't just sort of ordained by God, that it was the organisms themselves that were making things happen.

所以，推荐杰西卡·里斯金的《生命的力量》。

So The Power of Life by Jessica Ryskin.

是的。

Yes.

我也很想读那本书。

I'm excited to read that one too.

我已经有了。

I've got it.

它现在就在我的阅读清单最上面。

It's right at the top of my list now.

谢谢你的推荐。

Thanks for that.

不客气。

Pleasure.

另外，在本周的《Quanta》中，你还可以了解我们从未知极端微生物身上学到的东西，它们在地球各地恶劣环境中生存，以及线粒体和细胞能量如何可能对人类生活的许多方面至关重要，甚至包括情绪。

Also on Quanta This Week, you can explore what we've learned from amazing extremophile microbes living in tough conditions all over the planet, and also about how mitochondria and cellular energy might be critical to many aspects of human life, even emotions.

如果你一直喜欢《Quanta》播客，请花点时间给节目评分并留下评论。

If you've been enjoying the Quanta Podcast, please take a moment to rate the show and leave a review.

我们很期待听到你的反馈。

We'd love to hear from you.

《Quanta播客》是《Quanta杂志》旗下的播客，这是一本由西蒙斯基金会支持的独立编辑出版物。

The Quanta Podcast is a podcast from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation.

我是《Quanta》的主编，萨米尔·帕特尔。

I'm Quanta's editor in chief, Samir Patel.

西蒙斯基金会的资助决定不会影响本播客或《Quanta杂志》的选题、嘉宾选择或其他编辑决策。

Funding decisions by the Simons Foundation have no influence on the selection of topics, guests, or other editorial decisions in this podcast or in Quanta Magazine.

《Quanta播客》是与PRX制作公司合作制作的。

The Quanta Podcast is produced in partnership with PRX Productions.

制作团队包括阿里·巴德纳、黛博拉·J.

The production team is Ali Budner, Deborah J.

巴尔萨泽、吉纳维芙·斯庞斯勒和汤米·巴扎里安。

Balthazar, Genevieve Sponsler, and Tommy Bazarian.

PRX制作公司的执行制片人是乔斯琳·冈萨雷斯。

The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

来自《量子杂志》的西蒙·弗朗茨和我本人提供编辑指导，并得到塞缪尔·贝拉斯科、西蒙娜·巴尔和迈克尔·肯永戈洛的支持。

From Quanta Magazine, Simon Frantz and myself provide editorial guidance, with support from Samuel Velasco, Simone Barr, and Michael Kenyongolo.

我们的主题音乐来自APM音乐。

Our theme music is from APM Music.

如果你有任何问题或意见，请发送邮件至quantasimonsfoundation.org。

If you have any questions or comments for us, please email us at quantasimonsfoundation foundation dot org.

感谢收听。

Thanks for listening.