墨笛

§3. The Interanimation of Sentences

§3. 句子之间的互动

（小结：奎因在这一节里重申了他的理论和经验之间的联系的整体主义观点。与经验刺激发生直接联系的句子是观察层面的句子。但大多数句子并不能与经验发生直接联系，而必须与其他句子一起面对经验。由于奎因强调理论与经验之间的联系，所以他仍是一个经验主义者；但另一方面，由于他强调理论与经验联系的整体主义方式，这使他，作为一个经验主义者，更好地解释了我们的理论是如何越出观察的层面的，更好地解释了哪些看上去与经验没有关系的句子与经验之间千丝万缕的联系。因此他是一个更好也更彻底的经验主义者。）

‘Ouch’ was a one-word sentence. ‘Red’ and ‘Square’, when used in isolation in the ways lately imagined, are likewise best looked upon as sentences. Most sentences are longer. But even a longer sentence may still be learned as a single unit, like ‘Ouch’, ‘Red’, and ‘Square’, by a direct conditioning of the whole utterance to some sensory stimulation. Characteristically Humean problems, of how we acquire various ideas, may often be by-passed by representing the words in question simply as fragments of sentences which were learned as wholes.

‘Ouch’是一个独词句。‘Red’和‘Square’，当像上一节所想像的那样被独立使用时，最好也被看成句子。大多数句子是较长的。但即使是较长的句子，也可以像‘Ouch’、‘Red’和 ‘Square’那样，通过建立整个句子和某些感觉刺激之间的直接的条件作用，被当作一个整体而学会。休谟关于我们如何能获得各种各样的观念的问题，我们通常都可以绕过，而把考虑中的词径直看成作为整体而学会的句子中的片断。

Not that all or most sentences are learned as wholes. Most sentences are built up rather from learned parts, by analogy with the way in which those parts have previously been seen to occur in other sentences which may or may not have been learned as wholes. What sentences are got by such analogical synthesis, and what ones are got directly, is a question of each individual’s own forgotten history.

并不是所有或大多数句子都是作为整体而学会的。大多数句子都是由已经学会的组成部分构造而成的，方法是与这些部分在先前学会（或者作为整体而学会，或者不是作为整体而学会）的其他句子中的出现方式相类比。至于哪些句子实际上是由类比综合法而学会的，哪些句子是作为一个整体而直接学会的，这对每一个学习者来说都已经是遗忘了的历史了。

It is evident how new sentences may be built from old materials and volunteered on appropriate occasions simply by virtue of the analogies. Having been directly conditioned to the appropriate use of ‘Foot’ (or ‘This is my foot’) as a sentence, and ‘Hand’ likewise, and ‘My foot hurts’ as a whole, the child might conceivably utter ‘My hand hurts’ on an appropriate occasion, though unaided by previous experience with that actual sentence.

新句子可以通过类比从旧材料中构造出来并在适当的场合下被运用，这一点是很明显的。假定一个小孩已经通过直接的条件作用学会了‘Foot’或者‘This is my foot’（“这是我的脚”），同时也学会了‘Hand’（“这是我的手”），另外还学会了作为一个整体的‘My foot hurts’（“我的脚受伤了”），那么不难设想，他可能会在适当的场合发出‘My hand hurts’ （“我的手受伤了”），尽管他以前并没有用过这个句子。

But think of how little we would be able to say if our learning of sentences were strictly limited to those two modes: (1) learning sentences as wholes by a direct conditioning of them to appropriate non-verbal stimulations, and (2) producing further sentences from the foregoing ones by analogical substitution as in the preceding paragraph. The sentences afforded by mode (1) are such that each has its particular range of admissible stimulatory occasions, independently of wider context. The sentences added by (2) are more of the same sort—learned faster thanks to (2), but no less capable of being learned in mode (1). Speech thus confined would be strikingly like bare reporting of sense data.

但是，如果我们学习句子的模式被严格限制在下面两种：（1）通过与合适的非言语刺激建立条件作用而学会作为整体的句子，（2）通过上一段中的类比替换从已经学会的句子中产生新句子，那么想一下吧，我们能说的将会是多么地少！模式（1）所提供的句子是那样一些句子，其中每一个都对应着独立于更广大语境的特定的刺激场合。模式（2）只是增添了更多的这样的句子，它们其实也完全可以通过模式（1）而学会，模式（2）的作用只在于能使我们学得更快。如此受限的话语将惊人地类似于对感觉材料的纯粹报道。

（陈译：通过方式（2）所增添的句子更是如此，……）

（翟评：The sentences added by (2) are more of the same sort=The sentences added by (2) are more sentences of the same sort provided by (1)）

The objective pull described in §2 would indeed be there. The stimulations eliciting ‘It is square’ would indeed take in the odd lot of suitably circumstanced skew projections that social pressure requires. Yet the effect of this objective pull by itself is superficial: a mere warping of the pigeonholes; a gerrymandering, in the public interest, of the range of stimulations which each report embraces. Our idiom would remain very much the inadequate sort of idiom imagined in §1: the fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news. As there remarked, there would be no access to the past, beyond the negligible yield of an occasional memory trace of an unconceptualized stimulation.

§2中所描述的客观的拉力确实是存在的。迫于社会压力，引发‘It is square’的刺激确实包括了（适当情况下的）零星的倾斜投影。但是客观的拉力本身只有现象层面的效应：它只涉及到对现象的分类；从社会的角度对每个报告所涵盖的刺激范围进行再调整。我们的话语在很大程度上仍属于§1所想像的那种不充分的话语：一种想像出来的本身却毫无想像力的对未被污染的信息加以报道的媒介。正如在那一节里所评论的，这种媒介无法通达于过去，微不足道的例外只是对未被概念化的刺激的偶尔的记忆痕迹。

（陈译：如前所述，它无法通往过去，对未经概念把握的刺激不会留下些许偶有的记忆的遗迹。）

（翟评：beyond=except）

What more is needed in order to capitalize the riches of past experience is hinted in the remark (§1) that actual memories are mostly traces not of past sensation but of past conceptualization. We cannot rest with a running conceptualization of the unsullied stream of experience; what we need is a sullying of the stream. Association of sentences is wanted not just with non-verbal stimulation, but with other sentences, if we are to exploit finished conceptualization and not just repeat them.

为了能利用过去的丰富经验，我们还需要别的手段，这一点在前面§1里曾有暗示：实际的记忆多半不是对过去感觉的记忆，而是对过去的概念化过程的记忆。我们不能安于对未被污染的经验之流做重复的概念化处理；我们要敢于搅浑经验之流。如果我们要想利用已经完成的概念化过程而不只是重复它们，那么我们就不仅要让句子与非言语刺激发生联系，而且要让句子之间也发生联系。

Mode (2) above is already, in a way, an associating of sentences with sentences; but only in too restrained a way. Further interverbal associations are required which provide for the use of new sentences without tying them, even derivatively, to an fixed ranges of non-verbal stimuli.

上面的模式（2）在某种意义上已经是句子与句子发生联系了，只是联系的方式太受限制了。需要进一步的联系方式以引进新的句子，这些新引进的句子不必与固定范围的非言语刺激相对应，哪怕是在衍生的意义上。

The most obvious case of the verbal stimulation of verbal response is interrogation. It was already remarked in §2 the ‘Red’ as a one-word sentence usually needs a question for its elicitation. The question may be simply ‘What color is this?’. In this case the stimulus eliciting ‘Red’ is a compound one: the red light assails the eye and the question the ear. Or the question may be ‘What color will you have?’ or ‘what color did it use to be?’. In such a case the stimulus eliciting ‘Red’ is the verbal one unaccompanied by red light; though its power to elicit ‘ Red’ depends, of course, on an earlier association of ‘Red’ with red light.

引发言语发应的最明显的言语刺激是发问。在§2里我们曾经指出，要引发独词句‘Red’，通常需要一个问句。问句可以只是‘What color is this?’（“这是什么颜色？”）在这种情况下，引发‘Red’的刺激是个复合刺激：袭击眼睛的红光和袭击耳朵的问话。问句也可以是‘What color will you have?’（“你将会看到什么颜色？”）或‘what color did it use to be?’（“这曾经是什么颜色？”）在这种情况下，引发‘Red’的刺激就只是言语刺激，而没有伴随红光；当然言语刺激所以能引发‘Red’，还是要依赖先前在‘Red’和红光之间建立起来的联系。

The opposite dependence is also common: the power of a non-verbal stimulus to elicit a given sentence commonly depends on earlier associations of sentences with sentences. And if fact it is cases of this kind that best illustrate how language transcends the confines of essentially phenomenalistic reporting. Thus someone mixes the contents of two test tubes, observes a green tint, and says ‘There is copper in it.’ Here the sentence is elicited by a non-verbal stimulus, but the stimulus depends for its efficacy upon an earlier network of associations of words with words; viz., one’s learning of chemical theory. Here we have a good glimpse of our workaday conceptual scheme as a going concern. Here, as at the crude stage of (1) and (2), the sentence is elicited by a non-verbal stimulus; but here, in contrast to that crude stage, the verbal network of an articulate theory has intervened to link the stimulus with the response.

相反的依赖关系也是常见的：非言语刺激所以能引发某个句子，要依赖于先前在句子之间建立起来的联系。事实上，这种情形最能让我们认清语言是怎样决定性地超越现象主义报道模式的。例如，某人将两个试管中的溶液加以混合并看到了绿色，然后他说：‘There is copper in it.’（“里面有铜。”）在这里，句子是由非言语刺激引发的，但是这个刺激之所以能发挥效用，却要依赖先前的由语词和语词相互联系而形成的网络，即要依赖他对化学理论的掌握。在这里，我们可以看到，我们的日常概念系统是在不断发展着的。在这里，正像在模式（1）和（2）这样的原始阶段一样，句子是由非言语刺激而引发的；但是，与那些原始阶段不一样的是，有一个理论的言语网络插进来在刺激和反应之间起了联结作用。

The intervening theory is composed of sentences associated with one another in multifarious ways not easily reconstructed even in conjecture. There are so-called logical connections, and there are so-called causal ones; but any such interconnections of sentences must finally be due to the conditioning of sentences as responses to sentences as stimuli. If some of the connections count more particularly as logical or as causal, they do so only by reference to so-called logical or causal laws which in turn are sentences within the theory. The theory as a whole—a chapter of chemistry, in this case, plus relevant adjuncts from logic and elsewhere—is a fabric of sentences variously associated to one another and to non-verbal stimuli by the mechanism of conditioned response.

插入的理论是由多种方式相互联系的句子所组成的，但这些联系的方式却不易重构出来（即使是在猜想中也不易重构出来）。其中有些联系是所谓的逻辑联系，有些联系是所谓的因果联系；但任何这样的相互联系最终都是由于句子之间的条件作用，其中一些句子作为刺激，另一些句子作为反应。如果某些联系被特别地作为逻辑联系或因果联系提出来，那么也只是相对于所谓的逻辑规律或因果规律而言的，而逻辑规律和因果规律也不外是理论内部的其他一些句子。作为整体的理论（在我们的例子中，是化学中的一章加上来自逻辑和别处的附加语句）是一个由句子组成的编织物，通过条件作用的机制，一方面在内部发生各种各样的联系，另一方面在外部与非言语刺激发生联系。

（陈译：作为整体的理论（这里指化学的一个章节加上来自逻辑和他处的一些辅助理论）是由许多句子组成的一个编织物，这些句子以各种方式相互联系，并通过条件反应机制而与非言语刺激相联系。）

（翟评：条件作用机制不只作用于言语反应和非言语刺激之间，也作用于言语反应与言语刺激之间。）

Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as is the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring middle-sized physical objects. In either case, theory causes a sharing, by sentences, of sensory supports. In an arch, an overhead block is supported immediately by other overhead blocks, and ultimately by all the base blocks collectively and none individually; and so it is with sentences, when theoretically fitted. The contact of block to block is the association of sentence to sentence, and the base blocks are sentences conditioned in the modes (1) and (2) to non-verbal stimuli. Perhaps we should think of the arch as tottering on an earthquake; thus even a base block is supported, now and again, only by the other base blocks via the arch.

理论可能是精心构造的（如某个化学理论），也可能是第二天性（如关于中等尺度的持存的物理对象的悠久学说）。无论是哪一种情况，感觉支持都会在理论中的句子中得到扩散。在一个拱形建筑中，某个顶砖的直接支撑物是其他的顶砖，而最终则由底砖所支撑，但并不是由某一块底砖所支撑，而是为全部底砖集体支撑；胜任理论的句子就相当于顶砖。砖与砖之间的接触相当于句子与句子之间的联系，底砖相当于通过模式（1）和（2）与非言语刺激建立起条件作用的句子。也许我们还应该考虑拱形建筑遭遇地震时的摇晃；因此，即使是底砖，也会不时地通过整个建筑而被其他底砖所支撑。

Our example ‘There is copper in it’ is an overhead block, along with ‘Copper oxide is green’ and others. One of the base blocks is perhaps the sentence ‘The stuff has gone green’, a sentence directly conditioned to the sensory stimulation got from the test tube.

我们的例子‘There is copper in it’（“这里有铜”）就是一块顶砖，算做顶砖的还有‘Copper oxide is green’（“氧化铜是绿色的”）和其他句子。而‘The stuff has gone green’（“东西变绿了”）这样的句子则可以算做底砖，它与得自试管的感觉刺激之间是一种直接的条件作用关系。

In the series of sentence-to-sentence associations ultimately linking ‘The stuff has gone green’ with ‘There was copper in it’, all steps but the last are evidently unspoken, but more are just skipped as the theory becomes second nature. Such skipping, which exceeds the arch analogy, seems a basically humdrum affair: a transitivity of conditioning.

最终将‘The stuff has gone green’ （“东西变绿了”）和‘There was copper in it’ （“这里有铜”）联结起来的一系列的句子与句子之间的联系，除了最后的这一步外，其他的联系显然是未曾明言的。随着理论变成了第二天性，这些环环相扣的联系甚至干脆被省略掉了。这样的做法越出了拱形建筑物的类比，但基本原因却寻常得不值一提：条件作用具有传递性。

Another point that exceeds the arch analogy is the difference between occasion sentences like ‘There was copper in it’, true anew for each of various experimental occasions (§9), and eternal sentences like ‘Copper oxide is green’, true for good (§40). The occasion sentence is elicited from the practicing chemist time and again. The eternal sentence may well be elicited from him just once, in his youth, by the university examiner. The eternal ones tend most of all to drop out under the transitivity of conditioning, leaving no trace except implicitly in the patterning of conditioning of residual sentences.

另外一个越出拱形建筑物类比的地方是像‘There was copper in it’ （“这里有铜”）这样的场合句(§9)和像‘Copper oxide is green’ （“氧化铜是绿色的”）这样的永恒句(§40)之间的区别，前者的真值与实验场合有关，后者的真值是永恒的，不随场合而变化。场合句会不时地从正在做实验的化学家的口中发出。而永恒句可能只是在他年轻的时候回答大学考官的发问而从他的口中说出一次。因为条件作用的传递性，大多数永恒句都从句子联系的链条中脱落了，它们只是起作终端句子的条件作用的缺省配置的作用。

（翟评：true for good这个说法是不严谨的，应为true or false for good。）

What comes of the association of sentences with sentences is a vast verbal structure which, primarily as a whole, is multifariously linked to non-verbal stimulation. These links attach to separate sentences (for each person), but the same sentences are so bound up in turn with one another and with further sentences that the non-verbal attachments themselves may stretch or give way under strain. In an obvious way this structure of interconnected sentences is a single connected fabric including all sciences and indeed everything we ever say about the world; for the logical truths at least, and no doubt many commonplace sentences too, are germane to all topics and thus provide connection. However, some middle-sized scrap of theory usually will embody all the connections that are likely to affect our adjudication of a given sentence.

句子之间发生联系的结果是形成了一个庞大的语言结构，它基本上是以一个整体与非言语刺激发生各种各样的链接的。非言语刺激直接链接的是单独的句子，至于哪些非言语刺激链接于哪些句子是因人而异的。但由于这些句子之间是相互约束的，而且进一步地与更加深层的句子发生联系，所以非言语刺激能不断向纵深扩展或者在压力下停止扩展。很明显，在某种意义上，这个由相互联系的句子所所组成的结构是一个单一的织造物，包括了所有的科学，甚至包括了我们关于这个世界的任何信念；至少，逻辑真理，以及许多常识信念是关乎所有主题的，因此它们提供了各主题间的联系。但是，从实践的角度看，某个中等规模的理论往往就足以体现影响我们对某个句子进行判断的所有联系了。

（陈译：因为至少逻辑真理，还有许多更常见的句子都是与一切题目相关的，从而要考虑到种种联系。然而有的不大不小的一点点理论却往往要把可能影响我们对某个句子的判断的一切关系囊括进来。）

（翟评：奎因在这里对他在“经验论的两个教条”一文中所表述的极端的整体主义进行了再评价。如果在字眼上较真，极端的整体主义仍是站得住脚的，因为毕竟逻辑以及像“有因就有果”这样的常识对理论和经验之间的联系是不可缺少的，从而是渗透于整个理论中的，也即提供了各种理论联系的纽带，各种理论通过逻辑的联系而成了一个整体。但是从实践的角度看，就没有必要这样墨守成规了。一个中等规模的理论本身就足以与经验发生各种各样的联系了。）

The firmness of association to non-verbal stimuli, the power of such association to withstand the contrary pull of a body of theory, grades off from one sentence to another. Roughly imaginable sequences of nerve hits can confirm us in the statement that there is a brick house on Elm Street, beyond the power of secondary associations to add or detract. Even where the conditioning to non-verbal stimulation is so firm, however, there is no telling to what extent it is original and to what extent it results from a shortcutting, by transitivity of conditioning, of old connections of sentences with sentences. Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.

句子对非言语刺激的联系的牢固性，以及这种联系抗拒来自理论的相反的拉力的能力，只是一个程度问题。我们大概可以想像，某个神经刺激的序列可以使我们坚信：榆树街上有个砖屋子，这个刺激与这个句子之间的联系并不受这个句子与其他句子之间的次级联系的影响。即使在句子和非言语刺激的联系非常牢固的情形里，我们也无法分清，哪些联系是原发的，而哪些联系是得之于在先的句子和句子之间可传递的条件作用，从而只是一串联系的缩略式。在我们交流的终端所出现的那种一致性的背后，是个体联系方式的纷乱的杂多性；对于每一个人来说，这种联系都处于不断的演进之。没有任何两个人学习语言的过程是一样的；同样地，在某种意义上，也没有任何两个人能在有生之年完成这个过程。

§2. The Objective pull; or, E Pluribus Unum

§2. 客观的拉力；或，合众为一

(小结：奎因从语言学习的角度考察了‘Ouch’， ‘Red’和‘square’这三个一词句，以此表明客观性是语言的生存价值。这三个词的客观性是依次递增的。‘Ouch’客观性最差，所以只能在语言中处于边缘地位。‘Red’就要强多了，因为别人可以很容易地检验说话者是不是真的看到了红色。‘square’的客观性最强，因为它适用的各种场合对人的刺激的差异性最大，学习者一开始就得适应社会的用法。奎因进一步指出，达到语言的客观性用法的途径是因人而异的，这些途径从语言的社会功能方面看是无关紧要的。)

‘Ouch’ is a one-word sentence which a man may volunteer from time to time by way of laconic comment on the passing show. The correct occasions of its use are those attended by painful stimulation. Such use of the word, like the correct use of language generally, is inculcated in the individual by training on the part of society; and society achieves this despite not sharing the individual’s pain. Society’s method is in principle that of rewarding the utterance of ‘Ouch’ when the speaker shows some further evidence of sudden discomfort, say a wince, or is actually seen to suffer violence, and of penalizing the utterance of ‘Ouch’ when the speaker is visibly untouched and his countenance unruffled.

‘Ouch’（“哎哟”）是个一词句，人们会时不时地用它来对当下的情况进行简短的评论。正确的使用场合是那些伴随有疼痛刺激的场合。这一用法，和一般情况下的语言的正确用法一样，是社会通过培训灌输给个人的；社会虽然并不分享个人的疼痛，但还是成功地灌输了正确的用法。社会的方法从原则上讲是这样的：当说话者表现了不适的进一步的证据（比如，畏缩），或被实际上看到遭受暴力，就奖励他说‘Ouch’；当说话者明明没有被碰到，而且他的面容也很平静时，就惩罚他说‘Ouch’。

For the man who has learned his language lesson, some of the stimuli evocative of ‘Ouch’ may be publicly visible blows and slashes, while others are hidden from the public eye in the depths of his bowels. Society, acting solely on overt manifestations, has been able to train the individual to say the socially proper thing in response even to socially undetectable stimulations. The trick has depended on prior concomitances between covert stimulation and overt behavior, notably the wincing instinct.

对于学会语言的人来说，引起‘Ouch’的一些刺激是公开的拳打脚踢，另一些刺激则隐藏在公共视线之外的脏器中。社会虽然只能对公开的表现作出反应，仍能培训个人对即使社会无法检测的刺激作出社会认可的适当的反应。这里的奥妙在于，在隐含的刺激和公开的行为之间有一种伴随关系，这方面的一个明显的例子是，人们在感到疼痛时，身体会本能地畏缩。

We can imagine a primitive use of ‘Red’ as a one-word sentence somewhat on a par with ‘Ouch’. Just as ‘Ouch’ is the appropriate remark on the occasion of painful stimulation, so ‘Red’, under the usage which I am now imagining, is the appropriate remark on the occasion of those distinctive photochemical effects which are wrought in one’s retina by the impact of red light. This time society’s method of training consists in rewarding the utterance of ‘Red’ when the individual is seen looking at something red, and penalizing it when he is seen looking at something else.

我们可以想像‘Red’（“红”）的一种原始的用法，在这方面它与‘Ouch’相似，也被当作一词句。正像‘Ouch’是对疼痛刺激的适当评论一样，‘Red’——在我们想像的用法中——则是对红光作用于人的视网膜产生的独特的光化学效应的适当评论。这一回社会的培训方法是：当个人被看到正看着红色的东西时，就奖励他说出‘Red’，当他被看见看着别的东西时，就惩罚他说出‘Red’。

Actually, the uses of ‘Red’ are less simple. Commonly ‘red’, unlike ‘ouch’, turns up as a fragment of longer sentences. Moreover, even when ‘Red’ is used by itself as a one-word sentence, what evokes it is usually not the mere apprehension of something red; more commonly there has been a verbal stimulus, in the form of a question. But let us keep for a moment to the fictitious usage described in the preceding paragraph; for it, by its similarity to ‘Ouch’, will help to bring out also a certain contrast.

实际上，‘Red’的用法并没有这样简单。通常‘red’都是作为较长的句子中的一部分而出现的，在这方面它并不像‘ouch’。而且，即使‘Red’自身被用作一词句，引起它的通常并不只是对红色的东西的感觉；为了引起它，往往需要一个以问句形式出现的言语刺激。但是，让我们暂时留驻于上一段中所描述的那种虚构的用法；这种用法因为与‘Ouch’的用法相似，会有助于我们同时做出某种对比。

The critic, society’s agent, approves the subject’s utterance of ‘Red’ by observing the subject and his viewed object and finding the latter red. In part, therefore, the critic’s cue is red irradiation of his own retina. A partial symmetry obtains between the subject’s cue for utterance and the critic’s cue for approval in the case of ‘Red’, which, happily for the critic, was lacking in the case of ‘Ouch’. The partial symmetry in the one case, and the lack of it in the other, suggest a certain superficial sense in which ‘Ouch’ may be spoken of as more subjective in reference than ‘Red’; ‘Red’ more objective than ‘Ouch’.

作为社会代表的教师，他会同时看着学生和他所注视的对象，如果后者确实是红的，他就会赞同学生所发出的‘Red’。因此，教师作出评判的部分线索是他自己的视网膜所接受到的红光照射。在‘Red’的情形中，学生发出声音所根据的线索和教师同意学生发声的线索，这两者之间有着部分的对称性，而这种对称性在‘Ouch’的情形中是没有的（因为很庆幸，老师在同意学生发声时无需自己有疼痛的刺激）。一种情形中有部分对称性，一种则没有，这解释了为什么我们会觉得‘Ouch’的主观意味要强于‘Red’， ‘Red’比‘Ouch’客观。

Exceptions are possible on either side. If the critic and the subject are fighting a fire and are scorched by the same sudden gust, then the critic’s approval of the subject’s ‘Ouch’ does not differ significantly from the imagined case of ‘Red’. Conversely, a critic may approve a subject’s ‘Red’ on indirect evidence, failing to glimpse the object himself. If we call ‘Ouch’ more subjective than ‘Red’, we must be taken as alluding thereby only to the most characteristic learning situations. In the case of ‘Red’, typically one’s mentor or critic sees red; in the case of ‘Ouch’, typically he does not get hurt.

这两种情形都可能出现例外。如果教师和学生在一起救火并同时被灼伤，那么教师对学生发出的‘Ouch’的赞同便与想像的‘Red’情形没有什么实质的不同。另外一方面，教师可能并没有看到红色，而只是根据间接的证据赞同学生发出的‘Red’。所以，当我们说‘Ouch’比‘Red’更主观时，我们是就一般的学习情形而论的。在‘Red’的情形中，教师自己通常是看到红色的；而在‘Ouch’的情形中，教师自己通常并没有受伤。

‘Ouch’ is not independent of social training: one has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word. But in its subjectivity it is a little unusual. Words being social tools, objectivity counts toward their survival. When a word has considerable currency despite the subjective twist, it may be expected, like the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’, to have a valuable social function of some exceptional sort. The survival value of ‘Ouch’, from a social point of view, is as a distress signal. And the word is of only marginal linguistic status, after all, being incapable of integration into longer sentences.

‘Ouch’并不独立于社会培训：你只要戳一下一个外国人，便会知道这是英语词。它的不寻常之处在于它的主观性。语词作为社会工具，客观性才是其生存价值。如果一个词，尽管主观性很强，但仍有相当大的使用频率，那么我们就会想，它可能与“我”、“你”这样的代词一样，有着某种特别有价值的社会功能。从社会的观点看，‘Ouch’的生存价值在于它可以用作遇险的信号。但这个词在语言中只占有一个边缘的席位，毕竟它不能融入到较长的句子中。

The usual premium on objectivity is well illustrated by ‘square’. Each of a party of observers glances at a tile from his own vantage point and calls it square; and each of them has, as his retinal projection of the tile, a scalene quadrilateral which is geometrically dissimilar to everyone else’s. the learner of ‘square’ has to take his chances with the rest of society, and he ends up using the word to suit. Association of ‘square’ with just the situation in which the retinal projection is square would be simpler to learn, but the more objective usage is, by its very intersubjectivity, what we tend to be exposed to and encouraged in.

对客观性的一般重视可以用‘square’（“正方形”）很好地说明。一群人中的每一个人都从自己的角度看一块瓷砖，并一律称它为正方形；这块瓷砖在他们视网膜中的投影都是不等边四边形，且彼此之间在几何上都不相似。‘square’的学习者必须设法适应社会，最终形成与社会一致的用法。如果‘square’只与视网膜上的投影是正方形的情况相联系，那么这个词将是比较容易学会的，但更加客观的用法，由于其主体间性，才是我们往往会碰到并被鼓励学会的用法。

In general, if a term is to be learned by induction from observed instances where it is applied, the instances have to resemble one another in two ways: they have to be enough alike from the learner’s point of view, from occasion to occasion, to afford him a basis of similarity to generalize upon, and they have to be enough alike from simultaneous distinct points of view to enable the teacher and learner to share the appropriate occasions. A term restricted to squares normal to the line of sight would meet the first requirement only; a term applying to physical squares in all their scalene projections meets both. And it meets both in the same way, in that the points of view available to the learner from occasion to occasion are likewise the points of view available to teacher and learner on simultaneous occasions. Such is the way with terms for observable physical objects generally; and thus it is that such objects are focal to reference and thought.

一般说来，如果某个词是通过对观察到的例子进行概括而学会的，那么这些例子之间必须以下面两种方式彼此相似：不同场合的例子从学生的角度看必须足够相似，从而为他提供一个进行概括的相似性的基础；同一场合下的例子从学生和教师的不同角度看也必须足够相似，从而能使师生分享适当的场合。如果‘square’被限定运用于视线下的正方形投影，这只能满足第一个要求；但如果它运用于具有各种不等边的投影的物理的正方形，那就能同时满足两个要求。它满足这两个要求的方式是一样的：不同场合下学生可以有的角度也就是同一场合下老师和学生可以有的角度。表示可观察的物理对象的语词大致说来都是以这种方式学会的，因此，也正是这些对象处于指称和思想的焦点地位。

‘Red’, unlike ‘square’, is a happy case where a nearly uniform stimulatory condition is shared by simultaneous observers. All the assembled retinas are irradiated by substantially the same red light, whereas no two of them receive geometrically similar projections of the square. The pull toward objectivity is thus a strong pull away from the subjectively simplest rule of association in the case of ‘square’, and much less so in the case of ‘red’. Hence our readiness to think of color as more subjective than physical shape. But some pull of the same kind occurs even in the case of ‘red’, insofar as reflections from the environment cause the red object to cast somewhat different tints to different points of view. The objective pull will regiment all the responses still as ‘red’, by activating myriad corrective cues. These corrective cues are used unconsciously, such is the perfection of our socialization; a painter has even to school himself to set them aside when he tries to reproduce his true retinal intake.

‘red’的情形比起‘square’的情形是比较幸运的，因为同时在场的观察者享有几乎一样的刺激条件。他们的视网膜受到实质上一样的红光的照射，而在‘square’的情形下，它们接受到的正方形投影在几何上并不相似。所以，在‘square’的情形下，客观性的拉力是一股远离主观上最简单的联想规则的强大的拉力，而在‘red’的情形下，这股力就要弱得多。这就是我们为什么认为颜色比起物理形状是一种更为主观的性质的原因。但是，同一种强大的拉力甚至也可以在‘red’的情形下起作用，如果红色物体反射的周围光线从不同的角度看色调多少有些不同。受制于客观的拉力，人们通过激活各种各样的校正性的线索，仍会以‘red’作出一律的反应。这些校正性线索的使用是不知不觉的，这正是我们的社会化过程臻于完善的标志；画家为了重现他的视网膜摄入的真实映像，甚至得通过训练才能把这些校正性线索抛开。

The uniformity that unites us in communication and belief is a uniformity of resultant patterns overlying a chaotic subjective diversity of connections between words and experience. Uniformity comes where it matters socially; hence rather in point of intersubjectivity conspicuous circumstances of utterance than in point of privately conspicuous ones. For an extreme illustration of the point, consider two men one of whom has normal color vision and the other of whom is color-blinded as between red and green. Society has trained both men by the method noted earlier: rewarding the utterance ‘red’ when the speaker is seen fixating something red, and penalizing it in the contrary case. Moreover the gross socially observable results are about alike: both men are pretty good about attributing ‘red’ to just the red things. But the private mechanisms by which the two men achieve these similar results are very different. The one man has learned ‘red’ in association with the regulation photochemical effect. The other man has painfully learned to be stimulated to ‘red’ by light in various wavelengths (red and green) in company with elaborate special combinations of supplementary conditions of intensity, saturation, shape, and setting, calculated e.g. to admit fire and sunsets and to exclude grass; to admit blossoms and exclude leaves; and to admit lobsters only after boiling.

在交流和信念中把我们联系起来的一致性是终端模式的一致性；在一致性的背后是语词和经验之间主观联系方式的混乱的杂多性。一致性出现于有社会重要性的地方，这样的地方只能是主体间显眼的场合，而不是纯私人的显眼场合。我们来举一个极端的例子说明这一点。假定有两个人，一个人色觉正常，另一个红绿色盲。社会对这两个人的培训方法已如前述：当他们眼睛盯着某个红色的东西，就鼓励他们说出‘red’，反之就惩罚他们说出‘red’。进一步地，社会可以观察到的培训结果大体上也是一样的：两个人都能很熟练地将‘red’正好应用于红色的事物。但是，这两个人获得这些结果的内在机制却是大不一样的。其中一个人只消将‘red’与一定范围内的光化学效应相联系就能学会这个词。而另一个人则比较麻烦，他必须在不同波长的光（红和绿）的刺激这一线索以外，寻求额外的线索，如强度、饱和度、形状、背景，才能学会适当地使用这个词：火和落日是红的，青草不算；花是红的，叶子不算；虾只有在煮熟后才能算作红。

Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

成长于同样语言环境中的不同的人，就像被修剪成同样的大象形状的不同的灌木一样。完成大象形状的各个灌木的枝杈的具体形状纷乱杂陈，但整体的外观却是一样的。

（译者按：楷体字部分与现有的陈启伟译本（中国人民大学出版社，2005）大相径庭，陈译放在括号内，以示对照。我的译文可能也仍有错误，甚至也有可能我认为陈译错了的地方恰恰是译对了。欢迎批评指正。）

Chapter One

Language and Truth

第一章        语言和真理

§1. Beginning with Ordinary Things

§1. 从日常事物开始

（小结：经验主义的根本原则，即关于外间对象的一切知识都来源于感觉经验，无疑是正确的。我们却不能同意贝克莱等古典经验主义者和罗素、卡尔纳普等现代经验主义者的现象主义本体论：真实存在的只是感觉经验，物理对象只是整理感觉经验的工具。经验主义原则说到底是常识和科学的原则，是人们对人这种物理对象的认识活动的一种说明，因此不但不足以据此取消常识和科学上认可的各种对象，而且是以对它们总体上的承认为前提的。诚然，科学是在演化中的，我们的本体论观点有朝一日可能会和现在的观点完全不同，但整个演化过程却是渐进的。所以，我们只能从现在被接受的本体论观点出发展开我们的科学和哲学探究。）

This familiar desk manifests its presence by resisting my pressures and by deflecting light to my eyes. Physical things generally, however remote, become known to us only through the effects which they help to induce at our sensory surfaces. Yet our common sense talk of physical things goes forward without benefit of explanations in more intimately sensory terms. Entification begins at arm’s length; the points of condensation in the primordial conceptual scheme are things glimpsed, not glimpses. In this there is little cause for wonder. Each of us learns his language from other people, through the observable mouthing of words under conspicuously intersubjective circumstances. Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.

这张熟悉的桌子抵住了我的压力，把光反射到我的眼中，它通过这些方式展示自己的存在。一般地说，物理事物，不管多远或多近，要能为我们所知，都必须通过它作用于我们感觉表面所产生的效果。然而，我们通常在谈起物理事物时，并不借助于更加密切的感觉术语的解释。实体化过程开始于与我们不即不离之处；在最初的概念系统中，被实体化的是感觉到的事物，而不是感觉本身。这一点是不足为奇的。我们每一个人都从别人那里学习语言，方法是在主体间清晰可辨的场合下模仿可以观察得到的发声。从语言的观点看，从而从概念的观点看，处于焦点的事物是那些足够公开从而可以公开谈论的事物，那些足够寻常和清晰从而可以经常谈论的事物，足够接近从而很快能用名字标识和熟识的事物。这些事物是语词最先运用于其上的事物。

（陈译：我们日常对物理事物的谈论并不是借助于解释，而是以直接的感觉的语词进行的。）

（翟评：理解完全错误，但这个错误在读到下一段时应该能纠正过来的：不是物理事物要借感觉性质解释，而是恰恰相反，感觉性质倒是常常要用物理事物解释。）

Talk of subjective sense qualities comes mainly as a derivative idiom. When one tries to describe a particular sensory quality, he typically resorts to reference to public things—describing a color as orange or heliotrope, a smell as like that of rotten eggs. Just as one sees his nose best in a mirror, removed to half the optimum focal distance, so also he best identifies his sense data by reflecting them in external objects.

对感觉性质的谈论主要是以派生的方式出现的。当人们试图描述某个特殊的感觉性质时，典型的做法是诉诸公开的事物，例如，把某种颜色描述为橘子的颜色或天芥菜的颜色，把某种气味描述为像臭鸡蛋的气味。正像人只有通过镜子（移至焦点距离的一半）才最能看清自己的鼻子一样，同样，他也只有借助对外部对象的观照才能最好地认清他的感觉材料。

Impressed with the fact that we know external things only mediately through our senses, philosophers from Berkeley onward have undertaken to strip away the physicalistic conjectures and bare the sense data. Yet even as we try to recapture the data, in all their innocence of interpretation, we find ourselves depending upon sidelong glances into natural sciences. We may hold, with Berkeley, that the momentary data of vision consist of colors disposed in a spatial manifold of two dimensions; but we come to this conclusion by reasoning from the bidimensionality of the ocular surface, or by noting the illusions which can be engendered by two-dimensional artifacts such as paintings and mirrors, or, more abstractly, simply by noting that the interception of light in space must necessarily take place along a surface. Again we may hold that the momentary data of audition are clusters of components each of which is a function of just two variables, pitch and loudness; but not without knowledge of the physical variables of frequency and amplitude in the stimulating string.

外间的事物，只有通过我们的感官才能间接地为我们所知；这一事实给贝克莱以来的哲学家深刻的印象，他们开始着手去除物理主义的假设，使感觉材料裸化。然而，即使抛开对感觉材料的解释，而只是再现它们，我们也会发现要用到一点自然科学知识才能做到。我们可以像贝克莱一样认为，瞬间的视觉材料由分布在二维空间上的颜色所组成；但我们所以能得出这个结论，却是因为我们想到了视觉表面的二维性，或者是因为想到像油画、镜子这样的二维人工制品是可以产生立体幻觉的，或者更抽象地，只是因为想到光在空间的截面只能采取平面的形式。我们也可以认为，声觉材料是由许多个取决于两个变量（声调和响度）的成分所组成；但如果没有关于振动的弦的频率和振幅这两个物理量的知识就不会有这样的想法。

（陈译：然而，即使我们不对感觉材料做任何解释以力求其还原再现，我们发现自己也还是要瞥视自然科学知识。）

(翟评：不对感觉材料做解释和再现它们两者之间并无转折或递进关系。)

The motivating insight, viz. that we can know external things through impacts at our nerve endings, is itself based on our general knowledge of the ways of physical objects—illuminated desks, reflected light, activated retinas. Small wonder that the quest for sense data should be guided by the same sort of knowledge that prompts it.

我们只有通过作用于我们神经末梢的效果才能认识到外间的事物，这一洞见激发了贝克莱这样的哲学家们的工作。但是这个洞见本身却是以我们关于物理对象——被照亮了的桌子，被反射的光，被激活的视网膜——的行为方式的一般知识为基础的。所以用不着感到奇怪，对感觉材料的探索应该受促成这一探索的同类知识的导引。

Aware of the points thus far set forth, our philosopher may still try, in a spirit of rational reconstruction, to abstract out pure stream of sense experience and then depict physical doctrine as a means of systemizing the regularities discernable in the stream. He may imagine an ideal “protocol language” which, even if in fact learned after common-sense talk of physical things or not at all, is evidentially prior: a fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news. Talk of ordinary physical things he would then see as, in principle, a device for simplifying that disorderly account of the passing show.

即使注意到了上面的论点，我们的哲学家可能仍希望——本着理性重建的精神——抽象出纯粹的感觉经验之流，并将物理学说看成系统地处理见之于感觉经验之流中规律的手段。他可能设想一种理想的“记录语言”，虽然这种语言在事实上是后于常识的物理事物语言而习得，甚至根本就无法习得，但它在证据上却居于优先地位：一种想像出来的但本身却毫无想像力的用来报道未被修饰的信息的媒介。通常的物理事物的语言，在原则上可以看成简化对转瞬即逝的感觉经验的杂乱无章的报道的手段。

（陈译：他也许因此会设想一种理想的“记录语言”，这种语言不论事实上是不是从日常对物理事物的谈论中吸取来的，它都显然比日常语言更占有优先地位：它是对原本未加粉饰的信息的一种幻想出来的却无任何幻想力的媒介。）

（翟评：evidentially prior译错了。如果看过奎因的“设定物及其实在性”一文，就会知道，奎因区分了三种不同的在先性：日常对象在概念上conceptually在先，感觉材料在证据上evidentially在先，基本粒子在自然上naturally在先。）

But this is a misleading way of depicting matters, even when the idea of a sense-datum “language” is counted frankly as metaphor. For the trouble is that immediate experience simply will not, of itself, cohere as an autonomous domain. Reference to physical things are largely what hold it together. These references are not just inessential vestiges of the initially intersubjective character of language, capable of being weeded out by devising an artificially subjective language for sense data. Rather they give us our main continuing access to past sense data themselves; for past sense data are mostly gone for good except as commemorated in physical posits. All we would have apart from posits and speculation are present data and present memories of past ones; and a memory trace of a sense datum is too meager an affair to do much good. Actual memories mostly are traces not of past sensations but of past conceptualization or verbalization.

即使感觉材料“语言”被直截了当地看成是隐喻，这也是对事情真相的令人误解的描述。困难在于，当下的经验本身绝不能构成一个自足的论域。对物理事物的提及对于它的聚拢是个基本的条件。它们并不只是语言最初的主体间性的无关紧要的残留，从而可以通过设计一种用于感觉材料的人为的主观语言即可加以去除。对物理事物的提及毋宁是我们不断通向过去的感觉材料本身的主要渠道；因为过去的感觉材料大多数已经一去不复返了，留下的只有在物理设定物中的记录。除去物理的设定物和关于它们的推想，我们只拥有当下的感觉材料以及对过去感觉材料的当下的记忆；但对感觉材料的记忆痕迹是太微弱了，并没有什么用处。现实的记忆多半不是过去的感觉的痕迹，而是过去的概念化或言语化过程的痕迹。

There is every reason to inquire into the sensory or stimulatory background of ordinary talk of physical things. The mistake comes only in seeking an implicit sub-basement of conceptualization, or of language. Conceptualization on any considerable scale is inseparable from language, and our ordinary language of physical things is about as basic as language gets.

我们有充分的理由探究普通的物理事物语言的感觉或刺激的背景。错误只是在于寻求概念化或语言的隐含的基础。任何值得考虑的概念化都是与语言分不开的，而最基本的语言就是我们关于物理事物的普通语言。

Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat. If we improve our understanding of ordinary talk of physical things, it will not be by reducing that talk to a more familiar idiom; there is none. It will be by clarifying the connections, causal or otherwise, between ordinary talk of physical things and various further matters which in trun we grasp with help of ordinary talk of physical things.

诺伊拉特曾将科学比作漂浮在海上的一艘船，如果我们想要重建它，必须是一块板一块板地重建，而且必须同时呆在这艘船上。哲学家和科学家都在这同一艘船上。如果我们想增进对物理事物的普通语言的理解，并不能指望把它还原为一处更熟悉的语言；没有比物理事物的普通语言更熟悉的语言了。我们所能做的只能是：澄清物理事物的普通语言和通过这种语言的帮助而掌握的各种进一步的东西之间的因果联系或其他联系。

On the face of it there is a certain verbal perversity in the idea that ordinary talk of familiar physical things is not in large part understood as it stands, or that the familiar physical things are not real, or that evidence for their reality needs to be uncovered. For surely the key words ‘understood’, ‘real’, and ‘evidence’ here are too ill-defined to stand up under such punishment. We should only be depriving them of the very denotations to which they mainly owe such sense as they make to us. It was a lexicographer, Dr. Johnson, who demonstrated the reality of a stone by kicking it; and to begin with, at least, we have little better to go on than Johnsonian usage. The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.

如果我们过于较真，就会有下面这种语词上的偏执：关于熟悉的物理事物的普通语言在很大程度上不能照字面上理解，或者熟悉的物理事物是不实在的，或者它们的实在性的证据还有待揭示。这里的关键词“理解”、“实在”和“证据”的含义远不是清楚的，所以是不堪这样的重负的。如果我们接受上面的想法，我们也就剥夺了这些词的指谓功能，而这些词对我们的含义主要地就是得之于它们所指的事物。有一位词典编纂学家，约翰逊博士，曾论证说，石头的实在性的证据就在于我们能踢它；我们并没有比约翰逊的办法更好的证明实在性的办法，至少在开始阶段是如此。熟悉的物质对象也许不是实在的事物的全部，但却是它们的典范。

There are, however, philosophers who overdo this line of thought, treating ordinary language as sacrosanct. They exalt ordinary language to the exclusion of one of its own traits: its disposition to keep on evolving. Scientific neologism is itself just linguistic evolution gone self-conscious, as science is self-conscious common sense. And philosophy in turn, as an effort to get clearer on things, is not to be distinguished in essential points of purpose and method from good and bad science.

但是，有些哲学家过分重视了这个思路，他们把日常语言看成是神圣不可侵犯的。他们过于抬举日常语言，甚至否定它自身的一个特点，即它的不断演化的特点。科学上的新词本身就是自我意识到的语言演化的结果，就像科学是自我意识到的常识一样。同样地，哲学，作为把事情弄清楚的一种努力，无论在目的还是方法上，都不能与科学（无论是好的科学还是坏的科学）有实质上的不同。

In particular we shall find, as we get on with organizing and adjusting various of the turns of phrase that participate in what pass for affirmations of existence, that certain of these take on key significance in the increasingly systematic structure; and then, reacting in a manner typical of scientific behavior, we shall come to favor these idioms as the existence affirmations “strictly so-called.” One could even end up, though we ourselves shall not, by finding that the smoothest and most adequate overall account of the world does not after all accord existence to ordinary physical things, in that refined sense of existence. Such eventual departures from Johnsonian usage could partake of the spirit of science and even of the evolutionary spirit of ordinary language itself.

特别地，当我们组织和调整各种不同的存在断言时，会发现其中某些断言在系统化日益增长的结构中起着关键的作用。我们会进而看重这些断言，称之为“严格意义上的”存在断言；这种反应是完全符合科学精神的。在组织和调整结束时，人们可能会发现——尽管我们自己不会走到这一步——对世界作最通畅和最适当的整体描述时，用不着将严格意义上的存在性赋予普通的物理事物。这种与约翰逊式的实在性标准的最终背离，仍可能是符合科学精神的，甚至也符合日常语言本身的进化精神。

Our boat stays afloat because at each alternation we keep the bulk of it intact as a going concern. Our words continue to make passable sense because of continuity of change of theory: we warp usage gradually enough to avoid rupture. And such, in the beginning, is the case for Johnsonian usage itself, since our questioning of objects can coherently begin only in relation to a system of theory which is itself predicated on our interim acceptances of objects. We are limited in how we can start even if not in where we may end up. To vary Neurath’s figure with Wittgenstein’s, we may kick away our ladder only after we have climbed it.

我们的船一直漂浮在海面上，因为我们在每次修理时都使船身的大部分保持不变，以保证它能持续运行。我们的语词由于理论的连续性而能继续为人理解：我们对用法的调整是渐进的，足以避免出现断层。作为出发点的约翰逊式的用法也是这种情形，因为只有相对于某个（暂时）承认某些对象的实在性的理论系统，我们才可能对另一些对象的实在性提出质疑。无论如何，我们在调整开始时是要受到一些框框的限制的，尽管以怎样的结局收场可能是开放的。我们可以用维特根斯坦的比喻来改写诺伊拉特的比喻：只有在爬过梯子之后才能将梯子踢开。

So the proposition that external things are ultimately to be known only through their action on our bodies should be taken as one among various coordinate truths, in physics and elsewhere, about initially unquestioned physical things. It qualifies the empirical meaning of our talk of physical things, while not questioning the reference. There remains abundant reason to inquire more closely into the empirical meaning or stimulatory conditions of our talk of physical things, for we learn in this way about the scope of creative imagination in science; and such inquiry is none the worse for being conducted within the framework of those same physical acceptations. No inquiry being possible without some conceptual scheme, we may as well retain and use the best one we know—right down to the latest detail of quantum mechanics, if we know it and it matters.

因此，外间的事物最终只有通过它们对我们身体的作用才能被知道这一主张，应被视为物理学和其他科学中关于（一开始无可怀疑的）物理事物的许多相互联系的真理中的一个。它确实规定了关于物理事物的陈述的经验意义，但并不怀疑物理事物的实在性。有充分的理由更仔细地探究关于物理事物的陈述的经验意义或刺激条件，因为我们正是通过这样的探究才了解到科学中的创造性的想像力的范围；这样的探究要受包含承认物理对象的同样的框架所限制，这并不会降低它的价值。离开了这样那样的概念框架，任何探究都是不可能的，因此我们完全可以坚持和运用我们所知道的最好的概念框架——直至量子力学的最新的细节，如果我们知道而且这种细节又很重要的话。

Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race. In assimilating this cultural fare we are little more aware of a distinction between report and invention, substance and style, cues and conceptualization, than we are of a distinction between the proteins and the carbohydrates of our material intake. Retrospectively we may distinguish the components of theory-building, as we distinguish the proteins and carbohydrates while subsisting on them. We cannot strip away the conceptual trappings sentence by sentence and leave a description of the objective world; but we can investigate the world, and man as a part of it, and thus find out what cues he could have of what goes on around him. Subtracting his cues from his world view, we get man’s net contribution as the difference. This difference marks the extent of man’s conceptual sovereignty—the domain within which he can revise theory while saving the data.

不论我们如何分析理论的构造，我们都必然从中间开始。在概念上初始的东西是大小和距离都适中的事物，我们对它们以及其他所有东西的引进都发生于人类文化演进的中途。我们在吸收这份文化食粮时，很少注意到报道和发明、内容和风格、线索和概念化之间的区别，就像我们摄取物质食粮时，很少注意到蛋白质和碳水化合物之间的区别一样。后来的区分是反思的产物，我们通过反思区分了理论构造的组成部分，就像我们通过反思区分了食物中的蛋白质和碳水化合物一样，但我们仍要依赖这些成分维持文化上的和物质上的生命。我们不可能逐句逐句地剥开概念的陷阱，达到对客观世界的纯描述的境界；但是我们可以探索世界以及作为世界之一部分的人，从而发现他所处的这个世界可能会给他哪些线索。从他的世界观中减去这些线索，其差值就是纯粹由人提供的东西。这个差值是人在概念上的自主性的标识——在这个领域内他可以在拯救感觉材料的基础上修改他的理论。

In a general way, therefore, I propose in the introductory chapter to ponder out talk of physical phenomena as a physical phenomenon, and our scientific imaginations as activities within the world that we imagine. Later chapters will treat more closely of details.

因此，在这开篇的第一章中，我要笼统地提议认真考虑下面这个事实：我们对物理现象的谈论本身也是一种物理现象，我们的科学想像活动本身也是我们所想像的这个世界中的一种活动。后面的各章将予以更详细的考察。

（陈译：因此，我在这开篇的第一章里一般地提出要对我们将物理现象作为物理现象的谈论和作为我们所想像的世界内的活动的科学想像加以思考。）

（翟评：陈译基本上没看懂原文。）