感受质(qualia)概念史

“感受质”概念的历史渊源

先读的某篇中文文献,后来发现该文主要内容都是翻译……

  • Keeley, B., "Early History of the Quale" [A], Symons, J., Calvo, P. (Eds.), Routledge Campanion to Philosophy of Psychology[C], Routledge,2009, 80-87.
  • Lycan, W. G. (1996). Consciousness and experience. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press (A Bradford Book).
  • Crane, T. (2001). "The origins of qualia". In: Crane, T. and Patterson. S., 2002, (Eds.), History of the mind-body problem,Routledge: 169-94.

Keeley:“对于一个在当代文本中占据了如此重要地位的术语来说,它的历史得到的讨论如此至少,令人吃惊。”(Keeley, 2009, p.71)

1、柏拉图:

感受质一词在英语文献中的使用,最早可以上溯到Jowett1875年对柏拉图《美诺篇》的翻译。

…would laugh in your face, and say: “Stranger, you have far too good an opinion of me, if you think that I can answer your question. For I literally do not know what virtue is, and much less whether it is acquired by teaching or not.” And I myself, Meno, living as I do in this region of poverty [of wisdom], am as poor as the rest of the world; and I confess with shame that I know literally nothing about virtue; and when I do not know the “quid” of anything how can I know the “quale”? How, if I knew nothing at all of Meno, could I tell if he was fair, or the opposite of fair; rich and noble, or the reverse of rich and noble? Do you think that I could? (Plato 1875: 469-70)

  • Plato (1875). "Meno." The dialogues of Plato. B. Jowett. Ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1.

2、亚里士多德:

在对亚里士多德的英文翻译著作中可以发现更多关于“quale”和“qualia”的使用。在1889年出版的一本对亚里士多德著作翻译的英文书中,该书作者在翻译亚里士多德《工具论》的“范畴篇”中的“性质”一节时,其翻译的章节名即使用了“quale”一词,文中也多次使用了“quale”及“qualia”。(Owen, 1889, 26)在翻译者看来,像甜、苦、白等都是性质,而它们的拥有者或接收者则被称为“qualia”。学者泰勒(Thomas Taylor)在十九世纪早期分析亚里士多德的“性质”范畴时也评论说,在亚里士多德那里,甜、热、白及其他类似的都是性质,而它们的拥有者被非常合适地称为qualia。

(这种用法跟今天很不一样。)

  • Owen, O. F., Organon, or Logical Treatises of Aristotle: With the Introduction of Porphyry[M], George Bell&Sons, 1889.

3、皮尔斯:

While sense-data are largely a British invention, it is American philosophy which can lay claim to the invention of qualia. The first philosopher to use terms ‘quale’ and ‘qualia’ in something like its modern sense was C. S. Peirce. When Peirce wrote in 18662 that ‘there is a distinctive quale to every combination of sensation... a peculiar quale to every day and every week—a peculiar quale to my whole personal consciousness’, he was talking about what experience is like, in a general sense, not restricted to the qualia of experience in the sense in which it is normally meant today. William James occasionally used the term specifically to discuss sensation, but as far as I can see the term had no special technical significance in his philosophy or psychology. (Crane, 177-8)

(皮尔斯对quale的用法和今天也不一样。)

Keeley总结说:

感受质是个半新不旧的术语。在刘易斯之前用的不多,而当它在刘易斯之前被用到的时候,也并不是在清晰的、技术性意义上被使用的。(Keeley, p.73)

4、C. I. Lewis:

(Lewis, 1929)对quale一词的使用与当代哲学非常相似,是当代哲学讨论的直接来源。

在任何呈现中,这个内容要么是个特定的感受质(比如直接感知到的红色或喧闹),要么就是某种可以分析为这种感受质组成物的东西。呈现作为一个事件当然是唯一的,但是组成它的感受质却不是。从一个经验到另一个经验中,它们是可以被辨识出来的。(Lewis, 1929, p. 60)

感受质是主观的;它们在日常交谈中没有名字,但可以通过某些迂回说法来指示,比如“看起来是(looks like)”;它们不可言说,因为它们可能在两个心灵中不相同,但我们又不可能发现这一事实,而这也不一定会对我们关于对象或其属性的知识造成不便。如果想要说明一个感受质,所能做的全部就是将它在经验之中定位,也就是说,说明它重复出现的条件,或者其他关系。这种定位并未触及感受质自身……(Lewis, 1929, pp.124-5)

5、Feigl

费格尔《“心理的”与“物理的”》(Feigl, [1958]1967)可能是当代心灵哲学最早讨论感受质问题的著作。

  • Feigl, H., [1958] 1967, The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript[M], University of Minnesota Press,.

费格尔还是有点“上古时代”的感觉,毕竟维也纳学圈混过的,看他谈心灵哲学也总觉得是“心灵哲学前史”。但其实当代心灵哲学的很多基本问题形式是从他这里就确立下来的。这本书的主体内容1957年就写出来了;1967年版加了个很长的postscript。Chalmers那本心灵哲学文集节选过其中一部分,很久以前潦草读过,没留下太多印象。这次重新翻看了一下全书,比较吃惊的是他在五六十年代已经开始谈涌现(emergence)问题了(Essay IV, E)。其实也不奇怪,格式塔心理学、“整体大于部分之和”这些想法很早就已经准备好了,很多时候当代哲学的讨论也只是对老想法的各种精致化。

这本书谈感受质概念,语境一方面是针对行为主义(逻辑的/心理学的)、功能主义者;另一方面是早期比较质朴的感受质实在论。(在今天有点陈旧了。)费格尔用“主观性”、“亲知”、“现象性”描述感受质,最终目标还是让它们融贯于物理语言。“身心问题的症结就是说明原始感觉(raw feels)与神经过程的关系”(Feigl, p.79)

关于感受质问题可以分成两个子问题:1.感受质是否存在?2.感受质能否在物理框架中得到说明?费格尔的立场显然是1.感受质的确存在;2.感受质可以在物理框架中被说明。

  1. 对行为主义(认为感受质不存在)这派看法,费格尔说:

给你做手术的时候,你不想要麻醉吗?如果想要,你希望抑制的东西,不正是疼痛的原始感觉(raw feels of pain)吗?如果你对人类伙伴(以及你的狗、马等等)具有真正的关怀和同情,在残忍对待中你所反对的究竟是什么?不正是这些“他人”所经验的疼痛吗?不会仅仅是他们在物理上的残疾以及随之而来的功能故障。……这种意义上的主观经验,无法在逻辑上等同于机体的状态;也就是说,现象术语不能清晰地在物理1或物理2的术语的基础上得到定义。(Feigl, pp.23-4)

  1. 对二元论这派看法(认为感受质无法在物理框架中说明),费格尔说:

尽管天生的盲人没有对颜色性质或视觉形状的亲知,他们仍然可以通过关于具有视觉者的大脑枕叶过程的神经相关物推理获得知识【黑白玛丽的设想在这儿其实已经有雏形了。。Crane说了,“因为费格尔允许存在感受质的知识,他清晰陈述了如今的“知识论证”(当然他并没有得出物理主义错了这个结论。)”(Crane, p.181)】。这些神经过程的“内在本质”,对于盲人科学家来说仍然不是通过亲知获得的,这正如电流的“内在本质”对于拥有视力的科学家来说也是未知的,并且,对于那些看到电机和电线、受到电流刺激、看到电火花、感觉到电流产生的热量、读到伏特计和安培计、观察到电流的化学和磁效应的人来说,同样如此。(Feigl, p.65)

(但这好像并不是对看法2的回应?)

6、当代用法

(Crane, p.182)罗列的。后面那几位感觉没什么人引用。

When qualia are discussed in contemporary philosophy, how are they being conceived? As might be expected, there is not one answer to this question, since in the contemporary debate, the term ‘qualia’ is used in a number of different ways.

Dennett says ‘qualia are supposed to be properties of a subject’s mental states that are 1. ineffable; 2. intrinsic; 3. private; 4. directly or immediately apprehensible in experience’.【 Dennett , D., Quining qualia】

Sydney Shoemaker describes the objection that functionalism cannot account for qualia as substantially the same as the objection that functionalism ‘cannot account for the “raw feel” component of mental states, or for their “internal” or “phenomenological” character’.【S. Shoemaker, ‘Functionalism and qualia’, in Identity, Cause and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 185.】

Scott Sturgeon has said that qualia are ‘the features that give certain perceptions and sensations their characteristic subjectivity’.【Scott Sturgeon, ‘The epistemic view of subjectivity’, Journal of Philosophy XCI (1994), p. 221.】

Frank Jackson and David Braddon-Mitchell distinguish the use of the word ‘qualia’ to denote non-physical properties of the mind (according to which the existence of qualia is incompatible with physicalism) and the use of the word to denote intrinsic non-functional properties (according to which the existence of qualia is incompatible with functionalism).【David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson, Philosophy of Mind and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell 1996), pp. 123–4.】

M.G.F.Martin distinguishes (in the contemporary debate) between qualia conceived as properties of experiences, and qualia conceived as apparent properties of the objects of the experiences.【See M.G.F. Martin, ‘Setting things before the mind’, in Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind, ed. A. O’Hear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), pp. 158–63.】

Crane最后的结论既丧又简单,既然qualia的历史这么混乱,我们干脆不要管它算了。我内心深处是赞同的,但实际上这样不行,毕竟还有这么多人指着它吃饭呢。

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