Griffin__: переводы

→There certainly are a number of good points behind this strategy. In complex domains, as historical experience shows, scientific breakthroughs are frequently achieved simply by stumbling onto highly relevant data, rather than by carrying out rigorously systematized
research programs. Insight often comes as a surprise. From a purely heuristic perspective, narrowing down the scope of one's search too early certainly is dangerous, for instance, by making attempts at excessive, but not yet data-driven formal modeling. A certain degree of open-mindedness is necessary. On the other hand, it is simply not true that everyone has a rough idea of what the term "consciousness" refers to. In my own experience, for example, the most frequent misunderstanding lies in confusing phenomenal experience as such with what philosophers call "reflexive self-consciousness," the actualized capacity to cognitively refer to yourself, using some sort of concept-like or quasi-linguistic kind of mental structure. According to this definition hardly anything on this planet, including many humans during most of their day, is ever conscious at all. Second, in many languages on this planet we do not even find an adequate counterpart for the English term "consciousness" (Wilkes 1988b). Why did all these linguistic communities obviously not see the need for developing a unitary concept of their own? Is it possible that the phenomenon did not exist for these communities? And third, it should simply be embarrassing for any scientist to not be able to clearly state what it is that she is trying to explain (Bieri 1995). What is the explananduml What are the actual entities between which an explanatory relationship is to be established? Especially when pressed by the humanities, hard scientists should at least be able to state clearly what it is they want to know, what the target of their research is, and what, from their perspective, would count as a successful explanation.

→In the now flowering interdisciplinary field of research on consciousness there are two rather extreme ways of avoiding the problem. One is the attempt to proceed in a highly pragmatic way, simply generating empirical data without ever getting clear about what the explanandum of such an enterprise actually is. The explanandum is that which is to be explained. To give an example, in an important and now classic paper, Francis Crick and Christof Koch introduced the idea of a "neural correlate of consciousness" (Crick and Koch 1990; for further discussion, see Metzinger 2000a).

→A related second goal consists in finding out if, and how, our Cartesian intuitions—those deeply entrenched intuitions that tell us that the above-mentioned experience of being a subject and a rational individual can never be naturalized or reductively explained—are ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds. Intuitions have to be taken seriously. But it is also possible that our best theories about our own minds will turn out to be radically counterintuitive, that they will present us with a new kind of self-knowledge that most of us just cannot believe. Yes, one can certainly look at the current explosion in the mind sciences as a new and breathtaking phase in the pursuit of an old philosophical ideal, the ideal of self-knowledge (see Metzinger, 2000b, p. 6ff.). And yes, nobody ever said that a fundamental expansion of knowledge about ourselves necessarily has to be intuitively plausible. But if we want it to be a philosophically interesting growth of knowledge, and one that can also be culturally integrated, then we should at least demand an understanding of why inevitably it is counterintuitive in some of its aspects. And this problem cannot be solved by any single discipline alone. In order to make progress with regard to the two general epistemic goals just named, we need a better bridge between the humanities and cognitive neuroscience. This is one reason why this book is an experiment, an experiment in interdisciplinary philosophy.

→The epistemic goal of this book consists in finding out whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone, resulting from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be convincingly analyzed on subpersonal levels of description.

→This book is also, and in a number of ways, an experiment. You will find conceptual tool kits and new metaphors, case studies of unusual states of mind, as well as multilevel constraints for a comprehensive theory of consciousness. You will find many well-known questions and some preliminary, perhaps even some new answers. On the following pages, I try to build a better bridge—a bridge connecting the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind more directly. The tool kits and the metaphors, the case studies and the constraints are the very first building blocks for this bridge. What I am interested in is finding conceptually convincing links between subpersonal and personal levels of description, links that at the same time are empirically plausible. What precisely is the point at which objective, third-person approaches to the human mind can be integrated with first-person, subjective, and purely theoretical approaches? How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? Today, I believe, this is what we need to know more than anything else.

→This is not your fault. Evolution has made you this way. On the contrary. Arguably, until now, the conscious self-model of human beings is the best invention Mother Nature has made. It is a wonderfully efficient two-way window that allows an organism to conceive of itself as a whole, and thereby to causally interact with its inner and outer environment in an entirely new, integrated, and intelligent manner. Consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective are fascinating representational phenomena that have a long evolutionary history, a history which eventually led to the formation of complex societies and a cultural embedding of conscious experience itself. For many researchers in the cognitive neurosciences it is now clear that the first-person perspective somehow must have been the decisive link in this transition from biological to cultural evolution. In philosophical quarters, on the other hand, it is popular to say things like "The first-person perspective cannot be reduced to the third-person perspective!" or to develop complex technical arguments showing that some kinds of irreducible first-person facts exist. But nobody ever asks what a first-person perspective is in the first place. This is what I will do. I will offer a representationalist and a functionalist analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective is.

→This is a book about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective. Its main thesis is that no such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognized as models. The phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process—and the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious information-processing system operates under a transparent self-model. You are such a system right now, as you read these sentences. Because you cannot recognize your self-model as a model, it is transparent: you look right through it. You don't see it. But you see with it. In other, more metaphorical, words, the central claim of this book is that as you read these lines you constantly confuse yourself with the content of the self-model currently activated by your brain.