维特根斯坦论心身平行论

Wittgenstein on Psycho-Physical Parallelism

维特根斯坦在关于心理学哲学的评论中明确表达了自己对于心身平行论的批判,认为大脑的神经生理过程与人的心理现象之间并不存在必然的因果联系,因而我们从大脑的生理变化中无法找到心理现象的任何有意义的表征。也就是说,心理现象完全有可能从混乱的生理过程中得出自己的秩序,就像种子可以长出一株植物那样,所以使心理现象变得可理解的,与其说是某些大脑生理过程,倒不如说是它们据以形成的环境和历史。他在七十五年前提出的这些洞察仍然焕发着生机活力,很有可能颠覆当代认知神经科学和实验心理学最根深蒂固的一系列偏见。

In his remarks on psychological philosophy Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly expressed his criticism in psycho-physical parallelism,and argued that there was no necessary causal correlation between the neural-physical process in one’s brain and his psychological phenomena,and,therefore,we could not find out any meaningful representations of one’s psychological phenomena from his physical changes in his brain.In other words,one’s psychological phenomena may emerge their order completely from the chaos of one’s physical process,just like a plant may produce from a seed,thus it means that what makes a psychological phenomenon intelligible is not some physical brain process but some environment and history from which it has been formed.Although made around seventy-five years ago,Wittgenstein’s observations have still retained their freshness and forcefulness,probably undermine some of the deepest preconceptions of contemporary cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology.