實在論的多副面孔

用戶評論 (總計7條)

•   是由學(xué)生譯的，語名不通順，翻譯的不好，可惜了名作。
•   　　這本東西的渣翻譯真的可以去死了
  　　貼第一部分，可以對照來看。
  　　
  　　
  　　
  　　The man on the street, Eddington reminded us, visualizes a table as 'solid'--that is, as mostly solid matter. But physics has discovered that the table is mostly empty space: that the distance between the particles is immense in relation to the radius of the electron or the nucleus of one of the atoms of which the table consists. One reaction to this state of affairs, the reaction of Wilfrid Sellars, 1 is to deny that there are tables at all as we ordinarily conceive them (although he chooses an ice cube rather than a table as his example). The commonsense conception of ordinary middle-sized material objects such as tables and ice cubes (the 'manifest image') is simply false in Sellars's view (although not without at least some cognitive value--there are real objects that the 'tables' and 'ice cubes' of the manifest image 'picture', acccording to Sellars, even if these real objects are not the layman's tables and ice cubes). I don't agree with this view of Sellars's, but I hope he will forgive me if I use it, or the phenomenon of its appearance on the philosophical scene, to highlight certain features of the philosophical debate about 'realism'.
  　　
  　　First of all, this view illustrates the fact that Realism with a capital 'R' doesn't always deliver what the innocent expect of it. If there is any appeal of Realism which is wholly legitimate it is the appeal to the commonsense feeling that of course there are tables and chairs, and any philosophy that tell us that there really aren't--that there are really only sense data, or only 'texts', or whatever, is more than slightly crazy. In appealing to this commonsense feeling, Realism reminds me of the Seducer in the oldfashioned melodrama. In the melodramas of the 1890s the Seducer always promised various things to the Innocent Maiden which he failed to deliver when the time came. In this case the Realist (the evil Seducer) promises common sense (the Innocent Maiden) that he will rescue her from her enemies (Idealists, Kantians and Neo-Kantians, Pragmatists, and the fearsome self-described "Irrealist" Nelson Goodman) who (the Realist says) want to deprive her of her good old ice cubes and chairs. Faced with this dreadful prospect, the fair Maiden naturally opts for the company of the commonsensical Realist. But when they have travelled together for a little while the 'Scientific Realist' breaks the news that what the Maiden is going to get isn't her ice cubes and tables and chairs. In fact, all there really is--the Scientific Realist tells her over breakfast--is what 'finished science' will say there is-whatever that may be. She is left with a promissory note for She Knows Not What, and the assurance that even if there aren't tables and chairs, still there are some Dinge an sich that her 'manifest image' (or her 'folk physics', as some Scientific Realists put it) 'picture'. Some will say that the lady has been had.
  　　
  　　Thus, it is clear that the name 'Realism' can be claimed by or given to at least two very different philosophical attitudes (and, in fact, to many). The philosopher who claims that only scientific objects 'really exist' and that much, if not all, of the commonsense world is mere 'projection' claims to be a 'realist', but so does the philosopher who insists that there really are chairs and ice cubes (and some of these ice cubes really are pink), and these two attitudes, these two images of the world, can lead to and have led to many different programs for philosophy.
  　　
  　　Husserl 2 traces the first line of thought, the line that denies that there 'really are' commonsense objects, back to Galileo, and with good reason. The present Western worldview depends, according to Husserl, on a new way of conceiving 'external objects'-- the way of mathematical physics. An external thing is conceived of as a congeries of particles (by atomists) or as some kind of extended disturbance (in the seventeenth century, a 'vortex', and later a collection of 'fields'). Either way, the table in front of me (or the object that I 'picture as' a table) is described by 'mathematical formulas', as Husserl says. And this, he points out, is what above all came into Western thinking with the Galilean revolution: the idea of the 'external world' as something whose true description, whose description 'in itself', consists of mathematical formulas.
  　　
  　　It is important to this way of thinking that certain familiar properties of the table--its size and shape and location--are 'real' properties, describable, for example, in the language of Descartes' analytic geometry. Other properties, however, the so-called 'secondary' properties, of which color is a chief example, are not treated as real properties in the same sense. No 'occurrent' (nondispositional) property of that swarm of molecules (or that space-time region) recognized in mathematical physics can be said to be what we all along called its color.
  　　
  　　What about dispositional properties? It is often claimed that color is simply a function of reflectancy, that is, of the disposition of an object (or of the surface of an object) to selectively absorb certain wavelengths of incident light and reflect others. But this doesn't really do much for the reality of colors. Not only has recent research shown that this account is much too simple (because changes of reflectancy across edges turn out to play an important role in determining the colors we see), but reflectancy itself does not have one uniform physical explanation. A red star and a red apple and a reddish glass of colored water are red for quite different physical reasons. In fact, there may well be an infinite number of different physical conditions which could result in the disposition to reflect (or emit) red light and absorb light of other wavelengths. A dispositional property whose underlying non-dispositional 'explanation' is so very non-uniform is simply incapable of being represented as a mathematical function of the dynamical variables. And these--the dynamical variables-are the parameters that this way of thinking treats as the 'characteristics' of 'external' objects.
  　　
  　　Another problem 3 is that hues turn out to be much more subjective than we thought. In fact, any shade on the color chart in the green part of the spectrum will be classed as 'standard green' by some subject--even if it lies at the extreme 'yellow-green' end or the extreme 'blue-green' end.
  　　
  　　In sum, no 'characteristic' recognized by this way of thinking--no 'well-behaved function of the dynamical variables'--corresponds to such a familiar property of objects as red or green. The idea that there is a property all red objects have in common--the same in all cases-and another property all green objects have in common-the same in all cases--is a kind of illusion, on the view we have come more and more to take for granted since the age of Descartes and Locke.
  　　
  　　However, Locke and Descartes did give us a sophisticated substitute for our pre-scientific notion of color; a substitute that has, perhaps, come to seem mere 'post-scientific common sense' to most people. This substitute involves the idea of a sense datum (except that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century vocabulary, sense data were referred to as 'ideas' or 'impressions'). The red sweater I see is not red in the way I thought it was (there is no 'physical magnitude' which is its redness), but it does have a disposition (a Power, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century idiom) to affect me in a certain way--to cause me to have sense data. And these, the sense data, do truly have a simple, uniform, non-dispositional sort of 'redness'.
  　　
  　　This is the famous picture, the dualistic picture of the physical world and its primary qualities, on the one hand, and the mind and its sense data, on the other, that philosophers have been wrangling over since the time of Galileo, as Husserl says. And it is Husserl's idea--as it was the idea of William James, who influenced Husserl--that this picture is disastrous.
  　　
  　　But why should we regard it as disastrous? It was once shocking, to be sure, but as I have already said it is by now widely accepted as 'post-scientific common sense'. What is really wrong with this picture?
  　　
  　　For one thing, solidity is in much the same boat as color. If objects do not have color as they 'naively' seem to, no more do they have solidity as they 'naively' seem to. 4 It is this that leads Sellars to say that such commonsense objects as ice cubes do not really exist at all. What is our conception of a typical commonsense object if not of something solid (or liquid) which exhibits certain colors? What there really are, in Sellars's scientific metaphysics, are objects of mathematical physics, on the one hand, and 'raw feels', on the other. This is precisely the picture I have just described as "disastrous"; it is the picture that denies precisely the common man's kind of realism, his realism about tables and chairs.
  　　
  　　The reply to me (the reply a philosopher who accepts the post-Galilean picture will make) is obvious: 'You are just nostalgic for an older and simpler world. This picture works; our acceptance of it is an "inference to the best explanation". We cannot regard it as an objection to a view that it does not preserve everything that laymen once falsely believed.'
  　　
  　　If it is an inference to the best explanation, it is a strange one, however. How does the familiar explanation of what happens when I 'see something red' go? The light strikes the object (say, a sweater), and is reflected to my eye. There is an image on the retina ( Berkeley knew about images on the retina, and so did Descartes, even if the wave aspect of light was not well understood until much later). There are resultant nerve impulses ( Descartes knew there was some kind of transmission along the nerves, even if he was wrong about its nature--and it is not clear we know its nature either, since there is again debate about the significance of chemical, as opposed to electrical, transmissions from neuron to neuron.) There are events in the brain, some of which we understand thanks to the work of Hubel and Wiesel, David Marr, and others. And then--this is the mysterious part--there is somehow a 'sense datum' or a 'raw feel'. This is an explanation?
  　　
  　　An 'explanation' that involves connections of a kind we do not understand at all ("nomological danglers", Herbert Feigl called them 5 ) and concerning which we have not even the sketch of a theory is an explanation through something more obscure than the phenomenon to be explained. As has been pointed out by thinkers as different from one another as William James, Husserl, and John Austin, every single part of the sense datum story is supposition--theory--and theory of a most peculiar kind. Yet the epistemological role 'sense data' are supposed to play by traditional philosophy required them to be what is 'given', to be what we are absolutely sure of independently of scientific theory. The kind of scientific realism we have inherited from the seventeenth century has not lost all its prestige even yet, but it has saddled us with a disastrous picture of the world. It is high time we looked for a different picture.
  　　
  　　
  　　
  　　
  　　
•   　?。牐犉仗啬习阉麑κ澜绲男拍羁偨Y(jié)為一句話：“心靈與物質(zhì)一起創(chuàng)造了心靈與物質(zhì)”，他把他的這種觀點稱為“內(nèi)在的實在論”。
  　　“實在論”意味著相信確有一個外在的世界存在，這個世界的存在獨立于觀察、思想、想象等主觀行為；而所謂“內(nèi)在的”，以我的理解，大概是說，不存在所謂“事物的客觀的（或本來的）存在方式”，由于任何關(guān)于“存在方式”的言說必然是在特定的“概念關(guān)系”之下得出，因此并不存在客觀和主觀的天然界限，因此，通過這種“內(nèi)在的實在論”，普特南以他的方式解決（或取消）了一個傳統(tǒng)的重要的認(rèn)識論的問題：即主觀與客觀如何符合。
  　　本書的任務(wù)在于消弭某種二分法，這種二分法可以被表述為不同的二元組：主觀－客觀，科學(xué)（嚴(yán)格科學(xué)、真理）－人文（意見、文化），絕對－相對，等等。普特南認(rèn)為，一方面，這些被普遍接受的二分法并不像想象中的那樣堅實，另一面，取消這些二分也并不意味著必然滑向懷疑論和相對主義。
  　?。牐犓噲D在否定知識的絕對“客觀性”的條件下仍然捍衛(wèi)知識的有效性——這是威廉·詹姆斯、皮爾士以降的實用主義者的典型立場。
  　?。牐犜谶@本書里，普特南從兩個方面來達到他的目的（兩手都要硬）：一方面，他認(rèn)為即使是最精密最嚴(yán)格的科學(xué)也不是被實在本身直接規(guī)定的，也就是說，并非就是實在的“客觀存在的方式”，另一方面，他又認(rèn)為，即使是那些相對模糊、非量化、蓋然的知識（如歷史知識、道德學(xué)說等）也是有效的知識。
  　?。牐牥⑵罩赋?，一般所謂知識的“客觀”，是就其能夠得到普遍公認(rèn)而言的。他舉了一個簡單的例子來說明“概念關(guān)系”與知識的關(guān)系：假設(shè)一個僅有3個獨立對象(x1, x2, x3)的世界，在這個世界里，如果提問“一共有多少個對象”的問題，則，按照卡爾納普式的邏輯，回答是3個，但按照華沙學(xué)派的觀點，則可能是7個，因為后者認(rèn)為兩個對象的和，如"x1+x2"，也可以被看作一個對象；阿普認(rèn)為，這兩種邏輯體系，是無法相互化約的，也沒有正確、錯誤之分，它只是一種“概念關(guān)系”（或知識范型）的選擇，因此即使對于如此簡單的世界中的簡單的問題，也不可能有絕對“客觀的”的、無爭議的回答。
  　?。牐牭前⑵振R上指出，這并不自然地導(dǎo)向懷疑論和犬儒主義，雖然選定不同的概念體系會產(chǎn)生不同的知識，但這知識不是任意的，如果我們選用卡爾納普的范型，我們必須說有3個對象，如果選用華沙學(xué)派的范型，則必須說有7個對象，因此，雖然我們不能達到普遍一致，但并不意味著我們的知識沒有反映現(xiàn)實——這就是說，我們的知識雖然不是“客觀的”，但也絕不是“主觀的”。說得更清楚一點：出問題的是“客觀”、“主觀”這對概念本身，如果取消或改變這概念，就可以消除傳統(tǒng)形而上學(xué)的種種悖謬，使得我們既可以承認(rèn)知識的相對性又可以承認(rèn)知識的有效性。
  　?。牐爩τ谌宋闹R，阿普主要討論了歷史和道德兩個領(lǐng)域；其中尤以關(guān)于道德的一系列論述為精到。阿普首先剖析了康德的道德形而上學(xué)，他指出康德在純粹理性批判（即科學(xué)知識理論）與實踐理性批判（道德理論）之間的內(nèi)在矛盾，在科學(xué)理論中，作為第一本體的“物自體”沒有任何可描述的屬性，除了“不可認(rèn)知”以外，關(guān)于“物自體”沒有任何可說，但在道德哲學(xué)中，“物自體”卻成了道德的超越性的來源，實際上就是上帝的替身。
  　?。牐牥⑵占炔怀姓J(rèn)道德的超越性的起源，也不認(rèn)為可能存在一種完全建立在“客觀性”之上的道德論，作為后者的代表，他選擇了功利主義作為剖析的對象。一般認(rèn)為，功利主義由于其純工具性（手段性）的思路以及對任何先在的超越性道德律令的拋棄，達到了一種客觀性和科學(xué)性，但阿普指出，在功利主義中，同樣有一些基本的前提是無法被經(jīng)驗化的，阿普提出了一系列的問題：為什么假定每個人都更愿意幸福而不是痛苦？如何度量幸福？每個人是否是自身的幸福程度的良好的度量者？在追求社會的福利最大化時，我們是以現(xiàn)時人們對于幸福的觀念為準(zhǔn)，還是以他們的幸福觀念可能被改變成的樣子為準(zhǔn)？通過改造人民關(guān)于幸福的觀念去達到人類社會的最大福利，與另一種方式，即改造外在現(xiàn)實去適應(yīng)當(dāng)前人們關(guān)于幸福的觀念，這兩者是同樣合法的嗎？
  　?。牐牥⑵张e了赫胥黎的《美好新世界》為例，在那個世界里，在一個善良的獨裁者的控制下，人民心滿意足地生活著，他們?nèi)绱藵M意的代價是他們的精神發(fā)展受到控制，以至于在情感上和理智上都永遠(yuǎn)處于準(zhǔn)幼兒期的水平，于是終日興致勃勃、興高采烈。對于一個來自我們的社會的（擁有發(fā)展成熟的感性和理性的）人來說，這個“美麗新世界”是無法忍受的虛假和幼稚的，但對于那個世界中的人來說，他們的確真誠地感覺到快樂（是的，永遠(yuǎn)的青春?。敲?，從功利主義的觀點，這個世界是完美的嗎？去創(chuàng)建這樣一個社會是值得追求的理想嗎？
  　?。牐牬藭凶詈笥懻摿艘粋€關(guān)于“理性”的問題。他舉了一個非常有趣的例子，假設(shè)給一個人一次唯一的機會，讓他選擇從兩堆撲克中的一堆中抽一張牌。第一堆中有24張黑色牌、一張紅色牌，第二堆中有24張紅色牌、一張黑色牌。無論他選擇哪一堆，如果最后他抽到的是紅牌，則得到幸福的永生，如果是黑牌，則得到痛苦的永生，那么，這個人“應(yīng)該”選擇從哪一堆牌中抽牌？毫無疑問，根據(jù)理性，他當(dāng)然應(yīng)該從第二堆牌中抽！因為那樣的話，成功律是24/25，而第一堆的成功率只有1/25。
  　　但是，普特南指出，在只有唯一一次機會，而且生死攸關(guān)的機會時，概率到底有何意義？概率本來的含義是在對大量隨機事件進行抽樣的時候表現(xiàn)出來的傾向，那么，如果不存在大量的、重復(fù)的抽樣，而只有一次機會，這時說“更有可能”是什么意思呢？阿普認(rèn)為，在這時，我們采取更“理性”的選擇（即：概率更大的選擇），實際上是假想著自身不僅僅是自身、更是一個理想的大抽樣群體中的代表，我們與其是在“理性”地行動，毋寧說我們就覺得有一種義務(wù)去表現(xiàn)得“理性”，而這種理性實際上只有在為一個群體的福利著想時才是真是有效的“理性的”（因為概率只有在大抽樣的時候才有實在的意義），所以這種理性本質(zhì)上是“利他”的。
  　　通過識別出選擇中的“理性”與概率、利他之間的關(guān)系，似乎普特南覺得他在一定程度上從進化論中發(fā)現(xiàn)了道德的實在性：一種“道德映象”，盡管不是一種客觀的知識，但它或許實際上根植于我們理性的“利他”傾向，因此對于種群的適應(yīng)和進化是有益的，因此也就是一種有效的知識，并不能將其歸約于文化的相對性而完全取消其作為知識的價值。
  　　普特南的《實在論的多副面孔》是他四次演講的文字記錄，因此并非他最深刻嚴(yán)密的哲學(xué)著作，但卻被一群哲學(xué)家（主要是英美大學(xué)中的哲學(xué)教授）評為“近50年最重要的西方哲學(xué)著作”之一，可見影響還是比較大的。
  　?。牐犖胰珣{記憶的介紹肯定不能忠實地反映這本書的精彩之處，但我還是希望我傳達的足以引起大家的閱讀興趣。不管怎樣，作為一本哲學(xué)“名著”，這本書不算難讀，篇幅也不大，漢譯不到100頁，缺點則是翻譯比較差，還有：價格比較昂貴！
  　　
•   “我”所作出的“理性”的行為，實際上只是“我”認(rèn)為這是“理性”的，也就是說，“我”這樣做實際上是在維護這種“理性”。但問題是，個體的理性是否就代表群體的理性？有人會說，個體關(guān)于理性的意識就來自群體，比如說一個人不會憑空擁有關(guān)于概率的知識。但這不盡然，變態(tài)殺人狂會認(rèn)為自己的殺人行為是“理性”的，但這和群體的理性沒有什么關(guān)系。所以——我們就覺得有一種義務(wù)去表現(xiàn)得“理性”，而這種理性實際上只有在為一個群體的福利著想時才是真是有效的“理性的”，所以這種理性本質(zhì)上是“利他”的——這個論斷不那么令人信服。個人覺得有義務(wù)表現(xiàn)的“理性”，并不一定就是有效的理性（即所謂為群體福利著想），只是他認(rèn)為他體現(xiàn)的“理性”。什么是理性，它只是指行為的的一種合理依據(jù)。我沒看出這種合理依據(jù)必須指向群體的必然性在哪里？
•   “選定不同的概念體系會產(chǎn)生不同的知識，但這知識不是任意的”，這還是假定人是理性的，但是人有非理性的一面，人的知識可以不來自任何概念體系（即便有，也可能只是自認(rèn)的而不是公認(rèn)的），甚至也可以是任意的。至于假設(shè)一個僅有3個獨立對象(x1, x2, x3)的世界，在這個世界里，如果提問“一共有多少個對象”的問題，這和人文領(lǐng)域的道德、理性問題并不是一會事，認(rèn)識理性和實踐理性也不是一回事。
•   Putnam說的意思大概是類似于“自私的基因”，只不過基因的“自私”從人類種群的角度上看就成了“無私”，所以他和E.O.Wilson以及R.Dawkins的取徑是差相仿佛的。
  你說的認(rèn)識理性和實踐理性分別是沒錯的，不過他舉那個例子是指的顯然是“認(rèn)識理性”。
•   沒看過這本書，不過聽作者介紹的那個抽牌的例子，讓我想起昆德拉的生命不能承受之輕，最開頭托馬斯就一直在思考，僅有一次，其實相當(dāng)于一次也沒有，讓我們對于這個僅有一次的生命做出選擇，是荒謬的。面對一切選擇，到底是遵循理性的非此不可，還是怎樣都行。
  不知道原著是什么意思，但是個人感覺，選擇理性行事，另一方面或者是出于一種生存的不安全感，所以更傾向于從眾。

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