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第 65 期 · 核心追问 Ⅰ·03「因果关系存在吗？」

David Hume's Philosophy - Bryan Magee & John Passmore (1987)

节目发布 2023-08-25

布布莱恩·马基约约翰·帕斯莫尔

核心Ⅰ·03 因果关系存在吗？

章节 · 点击跳转视频

0:00 休谟生平：夭折的杰作与多重身份 ▶ 正在看

3:19 橡皮球实验：因果只是恒常联结 ▶ 正在看

6:50 因果概念既无观察根据也无逻辑根据 ▶ 正在看

9:07 找不到的自我：束理论及其困境 ▶ 正在看

11:20 实验方法与意义理论、休谟之叉 ▶ 正在看

15:44 温和的怀疑主义：怀疑理性而非世界 ▶ 正在看

20:07 转向历史不是离开哲学 ▶ 正在看

23:13 恒常的人性：激情与古典证据 ▶ 正在看

26:19 归纳问题与黑天鹅 ▶ 正在看

31:49 善良的大卫：人格与文风 ▶ 正在看

35:08 合理信念的标准与科学中的想象力 ▶ 正在看

38:32 对爱因斯坦与康德的影响 ▶ 正在看

本期小问 · 档案清单

3:19 因果关系存在吗？ ▶ 正在看

9:07 什么是「我」？ ▶ 正在看

11:20 知识从哪里来？ ▶ 正在看

26:19 预测就是理解吗？ ▶ 正在看

本期讲者

布莱恩·马基英国哲学家、作家、广播人，曾任工党议员；主持BBC系列《伟大的哲学家》（1987），以与顶尖学者对谈的方式向公众介绍西方哲学。

约翰·帕斯莫尔澳大利亚哲学家（1914–2004），澳大利亚国立大学教授，著有《休谟的意图》《百年哲学》，也是环境伦理学的早期开拓者。

01休谟生平：夭折的杰作与多重身份

0:00

the philosopher most widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language is David Hume not an Englishman but a Scot born in Edinburgh in the year 1711. he did some of his best work very young at about 18 he experienced a sort of intellectual Revelation and over the next eight years he produced a large and revolutionary book called A Treatise of human nature it met with little attention and even less understanding in his own phrase it fell deadborn from the Press so in his 30s he tried to rewrite that book in what he hoped would be a more popular form this resulted in two smaller volumes one called an inquiry concerning human understanding and one called an inquiry concerning the principles of morals but these were scarcely any better received and he gave the impression then of turning away from philosophy in his 40s he wrote a history of Great Britain which for a hundred years was the standard work that's why he still sometimes categorized in libraries and books of reference as

公认在英语世界里写作过的最伟大的哲学家是大卫·休谟，他不是英格兰人，而是苏格兰人，1711年出生于爱丁堡。他最出色的一些作品是在很年轻的时候完成的。大约18岁时，他经历了一种智识上的顿悟，在随后的八年里，他写出了一部篇幅浩大、极具革命性的著作，名为《人性论》。这本书几乎没有引起关注，得到的理解就更少了。用他自己的话说，它一出版就夭折了。所以在三十多岁时，他试图把这本书改写成他希望更通俗易懂的形式，结果就有了两本篇幅较小的书，一本叫《人类理解研究》，另一本叫《道德原则研究》。但这两本书的反响也好不到哪儿去，于是他给人的印象是就此转身离开了哲学。四十多岁时，他写了一部《英国史》，这部书在此后一百年里都是权威之作。这就是为什么在图书馆和参考书里，他有时仍被归类为

便签笔记

1:03

David Hume historian in his own lifetime he made his reputation too as an economist and his monetary theories have been reattracting attention recently he was even in a modest way a man of Affairs in the war of the Austrian succession he served as a staff officer on two military Expeditions and for a couple of years in his early 50s he was secretary to the British Embassy in Paris and then after that under Secretary of State in London in all the many different circles in which he moved he was popular for his good nature as much as for his genius such was his gift for friendship that he almost brought off the impossible task of befriending his French contemporary philosopher Russo who at one time actually proposed making his home in Britain because Hume was there in France Hume was known as Le Bon David and in his native Edinburgh the street in which he lived was and is named after him sent David Street in view of the latter point it's perhaps ironical that in secret he'd been writing his final philosophical

历史学家大卫·休谟。在他有生之年，他还以经济学家的身份声名远播，他的货币理论近来又重新引起了关注。他甚至在不太张扬的意义上也算是个实干家：在奥地利王位继承战争中，他曾作为参谋军官参加过两次军事远征；五十出头时，他有几年担任英国驻巴黎大使馆秘书，之后又出任伦敦的助理国务大臣。在他出入的所有那些不同圈子里，他之所以受欢迎，既因为他的天才，也同样因为他的好脾气。他在交友上的天赋之高，几乎完成了一件不可能的任务——与他的法国同时代哲学家卢梭做朋友。卢梭一度真的打算把家安在英国，就因为休谟在那里。在法国，休谟被称为“善良的大卫”；在他的故乡爱丁堡，他住过的那条街当时以他命名，如今仍是把他送上了大卫街。考虑到后一点，颇具讽刺意味的是，他一直在秘密地撰写他最后一部哲学

便签笔记

2:09

Masterpiece a profound and damaging critique of natural religion which didn't come to light until after his death he died in 1776 and in 1779 his dialogues concerning natural religion were published some people consider it his best work he's an unusually attractive figure who should also be seen as part of that great flowering of intellectual life in Edinburgh in the 18th century which we now refer to as the Scottish Enlightenment in David Hume Adam Smith and James Boswell the Scottish Enlightenment produced the English language's foremost philosopher Economist and biographer and they all knew each other Adam Smith was one of hume's closest friends and was greatly influenced by him Boswell contemplated writing hume's biography though alas he never did there's no substantial literature on Hume and one of the best books in it hume's intentions was written by the person who is with me now to discuss his work professor John Passmore of the Australian National University in Canberra but as a Passmore whenever Hume

杰作——一部对自然宗教深刻而具破坏性的批判，这部作品直到他死后才面世。他于1776年去世，1779年他的《自然宗教对话录》得以出版。有些人认为这是他最好的作品。他是一位格外有魅力的人物，也应该被看作是18世纪爱丁堡知识生活大繁荣的一部分，我们如今称之为苏格兰启蒙运动。在大卫·休谟、亚当·斯密和詹姆斯·鲍斯威尔身上，苏格兰启蒙运动造就了英语世界最杰出的哲学家、经济学家和传记作家，而且他们彼此都认识。亚当·斯密是休谟最亲密的朋友之一，并且深受他的影响。鲍斯威尔曾考虑写休谟的传记，可惜他一直没有动笔。关于休谟的研究著作并不算多，而其中最好的一本《休谟的意图》，正是出自此刻与我一同讨论他作品的这位学者之手——来自堪培拉澳大利亚国立大学的约翰·帕斯莫尔教授。帕斯莫尔教授，每当休谟对自己的哲学作简要阐述时——他实际上这样做过两三次——

便签笔记

02橡皮球实验：因果只是恒常联结

3:19

uh gave a shorter exposition of his own philosophy which he in fact two or three times did he always put fundamental emphasis on what he had to say about causality that is to say what it is for one State of Affairs to bring about or cause another state of affairs the idea being that causality this cause and effect relationship is what binds together the whole of our Known World and he thought that what he had to say about that was the Cornerstone of his philosophy and in fact it would be true to say that it's what he's best known for today can you tell us what the nub of his argument on that was I think I'll try to by means of a practical exam people suppose a small child whose parents have always given it soft cotton toys which has had soft cotton dolls soft cotton dogs so on and so on everything's soft cotton one day somebody gives it a rubber ball the child drops the rubber ball over the side of the bed and the next thing he notices is the rubber ball bounces nothing else in his experience has ever

他总是把根本性的重点放在他关于因果性的论述上，也就是说，一种事态如何引发或导致另一种事态。这个想法是，因果性，也就是这种因果关系，是把我们所知的整个世界联结在一起的东西。而他认为，他关于这一点所说的内容，是他整个哲学的基石。事实上可以说，这也是他今天最为人所知的部分。你能告诉我们他这个论证的核心是什么吗？我想我可以试着通过一个实际的例子来说明。假设有一个小孩，他的父母一直给他柔软的棉布玩具，他玩的是软棉布娃娃、软棉布狗之类的等等，所有东西都是柔软的棉布做的。有一天有人给了他一个橡皮球，孩子把橡皮球从床边掉了下去，然后他注意到的第一件事就是橡皮球弹了起来。在他的经验里，从来没有任何东西弹起来过，

便签笔记

4:31

bounced before and here's this ball that begins bouncing now the first thing that David Jim says is that it didn't matter how long the child had looked at that ball turning it over looking at one side and another it could never have inferred that when it dropped the ball the ball would bounce this came to it as something it couldn't expect at prior to experience now take an adult who's watching what happens at this point the adult will say well what has happened is the child has caused the ball to Bounce by dropping it it would say the ball has a power which makes it possible for it to bounce I'd say there's a necessary connection between dropping this rubber ball and it's bouncing that is how the adult would talk now Hume comes along he says well what does the adult got which the child doesn't have after all all that has really happened is that on a number of occasions the adult has seen a ball drop and seen it bounce in fact it has found this always happens as what he calls a constant conjunction so you have two

而现在这个球开始弹了。休谟首先要说的是，不管这个孩子盯着那个球看了多久，把它翻过来看这一面又看那一面，他都不可能推断出，当他把球扔下去时，球会弹起来。这件事对他来说是先于经验、无法预料的。现在设想一个成年人在这个时候看着发生的事情，成年人会说：所发生的是，孩子把球扔下去，从而导致了球弹起来。他会说这个球有一种力量，使它能够弹起来。我会说，在扔下这个橡皮球和它弹起来之间，存在着一种必然联系。成年人会这么说。而休谟出现了，他说：成年人到底拥有什么是孩子没有的呢？说到底，真正发生的只不过是：在若干次场合中，成年人看见过球落下并看见它弹起。事实上他发现这总是会发生，这就是他所说的“恒常联结”。所以你有两件

便签笔记

5:44

things you first of all have somebody dropping a ball or doing something of that kind and then you'll have bouncing but suppose you'd seen this a hundred times instead of like the child only once what difference can this make after all it hasn't now seen something it hadn't seen before it hasn't seen a mysterious power in the ball it hasn't discovered a mysterious entity called a necessary connection and some sort of peculiar property all it is saying is various people dropping balls and the balls bouncing and yet in fact the adult does believe that there's a necessary connection between the dropping of the ball and it's bouncing or where's this idea come from because for him all ideas have to come from somewhere and he says it comes from nothing except the constant experience of this constant conjunction this works upon the mind as he says it forms the Habit in US of expecting a ball to bounce when we drop it but nothing more is involved than that I could put what you've just said to us in so to speak abstract general

事：首先是有人把球扔下去或做类似的动作，然后就是弹跳。但假设你看见过这情形一百次，而不像那孩子只看过一次，这又能有什么区别呢？说到底，他现在并没有看到任何他以前没看到过的东西，他没有看见球里有什么神秘的力量，他也没有发现什么叫做“必然联系”的神秘实体或某种奇特的属性。他所看到的全部就是各种人把球扔下去，球弹起来。然而事实上，成年人确实相信在球的落下和它的弹起之间存在一种必然联系。那么这个观念是从哪儿来的呢？因为在他看来所有观念都必须有个来源。他说，它只来自对这种恒常联结的不断经验。用他的话说，这作用于心灵，在我们身上形成一种习惯，让我们在扔下球时期待它弹起来，除此之外别无他物。我可以把你刚才对我们说的话用所谓抽象、一般的措辞表达出来，我想可以这样说：如果没有事物之间因果联系的观念，我们根本无法形成

便签笔记

03因果概念既无观察根据也无逻辑根据

6:50

terms I think by expressing it this way that we can't form any conception at all of an ordered world without the idea of causal connection between things but cause we discover when we try is something that we can't actually observe we may say that event a causes event B but we find when we examine the situation that all we actually observe is event a followed by event B and there isn't some third entity in the situation A causal link between them that we observe and it won't do to say that ah well yes but we know that event a is the cause of event B Because B always and invariably follows a because the fact is for example that day always and invariably follows night and night always and it variably follows day but neither is the cause of the other so we have this indispensable notion of cause which is at the very heart of our conception of the world and of our understanding of our own experience and yet this notion is not validated by experience or observation and it can't be validated by Logic either

任何关于有序世界的构想。但当我们试图去把握原因时，却发现它是我们实际上无法观察到的东西。我们可以说事件 A 引起了事件 B，但当我们审视这个情境时会发现，我们实际观察到的只是事件 A 之后跟着事件 B，情境中并不存在我们能观察到的第三种实体——把两者连接起来的因果纽带。而且这样说也不行：啊，是的，但我们知道事件 A 是事件 B 的原因，因为 B 总是不变地跟在 A 之后。因为事实是，比方说，白天总是不变地跟在夜晚之后，夜晚也总是不变地跟在白天之后，但两者谁也不是对方的原因。所以我们有了“原因”这个不可或缺的概念，它处于我们对世界的构想以及我们对自身经验的理解的核心，然而这个概念却得不到经验或观察的证实，也无法得到逻辑的证实。通过让我们意识到这一点，休谟在我看来点出了一个至今仍没有

便签笔记

8:02

and by making us aware of that uh Hume it seems to me has put his finger on a problem to which there's still no generally agreed solution would you agree to that yes there is people of course try various things most of which whom discusses in the traitors and gets rid of some will say oh well nature is uniform so the ball bounces once we'll go on bouncing but that's only to say that the same cause produces the same effect always and that's exactly the thing which has to be demonstrated she's begging the question he's begging the question by saying that and this is true if he says oh well at least it's now more probable that the ball will bounce than not but all probabilities him says are really based on our experience of connections so that this again is No real way out of the of the problem he used the same form of argument with another very fundamental question didn't that is the question of the self and the continuity of the self he said that although we take it for granted that we have selves and that we are continuous

公认解决方案的问题。你同意这一点吗？是的。当然人们尝试过各种办法，其中大部分休谟在《人性论》里都讨论过并驳倒了。有人会说，哦，大自然是齐一的，所以球弹过一次就会一直弹下去。但这只不过是在说，同样的原因总是产生同样的结果，而这恰恰就是需要被论证的东西——她这是在窃取论题，他这么说就是在窃取论题，而这是真的如果他说，哦，那至少球会弹起来比不弹起来更有可能——但他说的所有概率其实都建立在我们对各种联系的经验之上，所以这同样不是走出这个问题的真正出路。他用同样形式的论证处理了另一个非常根本的问题，不是吗？那就是自我的问题，以及自我的连续性问题。他说，尽管我们理所当然地认为我们有自我，而且我们是连续的

便签笔记

04找不到的自我：束理论及其困境

9:07

selves we discover that we can't actually locate this self in observation or experience that when we look inside ourselves what we actually see is individual thoughts feelings memories emotions and so on but we don't observe some other entity a self that has them now this is a very disconcerting and startling Doctrine isn't it what were its implications well I think one should add that Hume was never really quite satisfied with this as you said he kept on going back when he's giving an account of his theory to the doctor of causality because there he felt satisfied he'd done what he set out to do he'd shown that there is something about our character as human beings which compels us to believe that things are necessarily connected with one another even although we don't observe in the world that necessary connection but it gets terribly difficult when it comes to personal identity he'd said earlier that in respect to ordinary identity what happens is something like this actually every time we close our eyes

自我，但我们发现，实际上无法在观察或经验中定位这个自我；当我们向内审视自己时，我们真正看到的是一个个的思想、感受、记忆、情绪等等，但我们观察不到某个别的实体——一个拥有这些东西的自我。这可是个非常令人不安、令人震惊的学说，不是吗？它的含义是什么呢？嗯，我想应该补充一点，休谟对此其实从来都不太满意。正如你所说，他一直反复回到这个问题上。当他阐述自己的因果性理论时，他是满意的，因为在那里他觉得自己做到了他想做的事，他表明了我们作为人类的本性中有某种东西，迫使我们相信事物之间必然地相互联系，哪怕我们在世界中并没有观察到那种必然联系。但一到人格同一性的问题，就变得极其困难了。他早先说过，就一般的同一性而言，情况大致是这样的：其实每次我们闭上眼睛，

便签笔记

10:14

something the thing in front of us disappears it's no longer there as a perception but when we open our eyes again this is very rough and crude what we see is so similar to what we saw before we close our eyes that we're confused we treat this as having been an experience or identity because we because it's so like keeping our eyes open all the time and just having a single perception now that's all right perhaps in respect to the identity of other people you might say it's the same sort of thing we see them today and we see them tomorrow they're very like one another the actions that they perform on one occasion have certain cause or connections with the ones they they uh have on other occasions but let's take ourselves now we can't say that we become confused between this succession of perceptions and a strict identity because this assumes that there's some we there all the time to become confused and that's why Hume says I think this is why Hume says in the long run that he's very dissatisfied with this and this really

眼前的东西就消失了，它作为一个知觉已经不在那儿了；但当我们再次睁开眼睛时——这么说很粗糙、很简略——我们看到的东西和闭眼之前看到的太相似了，以至于我们被搞糊涂了，我们把它当作是一段连续的经验或同一性，因为它太像我们一直睁着眼睛、只有一个单一知觉的情形了。就他人的同一性而言，这么说或许还行，你可以说是同一类情况：我们今天见到他们，明天又见到他们，他们彼此非常相像，他们在某一场合做出的行为与他们在另一些场合的行为之间有某种因果或联系。但现在拿我们自己来说，我们不能说我们是在这一连串知觉和严格的同一性之间被搞糊涂了，因为这就预设了始终有一个“我们”在那里才会被搞糊涂。所以我认为，这就是为什么休谟最后说他对此非常不满意，这真的让他很苦恼，因为他一开始的假定是：只要人们谈论的

便签笔记

05实验方法与意义理论、休谟之叉

11:20

worried him because he'd begun from the assumption that so long as one talked only about the human mind and human perceptions one wouldn't get into any great intellectual problems or any intellectual confusions which couldn't be easily cleared away one thing that what he had to say about cause and what he has to say about the self have in common is that in both cases he says let's look for the actual observation the actual experience on which this every day idea is based and in each case when we look for them we discover through our amazement that they're not there it's as if he's trying to base his philosophy on fact now is that what he was referring to in the famous subtitle to his Masterpiece the treaties I've actually written it down here he describes his treaties as an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects was he trying to make philosophy scientific was that his idea well moral subjects of course he intended very broadly he would have included under that everything we now

仅仅是人类心灵和人类知觉，就不会陷入任何重大的理智难题，或任何无法轻易澄清的理智混乱。他关于因果的论述和他关于自我的论述有一个共同点，那就是在这两种情形下他都说：让我们去寻找这个日常观念所依据的实际观察、实际经验。而在每一种情形下，当我们去寻找它们时，我们惊愕地发现它们并不存在。这就好像他试图把自己的哲学建立在事实之上。那么这就是他在其杰作《人性论》那句著名副标题里所指的意思吗？我这儿其实抄下来了，他把自己的《人性论》描述为“将实验推理方法引入道德主题的一个尝试”。他是想让哲学变得科学化吗？这是他的想法吗？嗯，“道德主题”当然是他非常宽泛地使用的，他会把我们现在

便签笔记

12:27

call politics he would have included anything we would call psychology and as well as anything we would call moral philosophy and he did want to make these more scientific in a certain sense than they had ever been what he says is that when you approach these subjects you find that people who usually talk seriously and take evidence into account start making wild statements without any real evidence they start preaching at us rather than telling us what things are like they lay down laws for us rather than looking at the facts and that we ought to look at the facts in respect to political life and human Affairs just as we do in the Natural Sciences there's an implied theory of language and meaning isn't there in in this approach that we are now talking about because he very definitely thought that in order to for a word to mean anything at all it had to relate to a specific idea and for an idea to have real content it had to be derived from experience so in effect Hume is saying if you want to know what

所说的政治学全都包括进去，会把我们所说的心理学包括进去，也包括我们所说的道德哲学。而他确实想在某种意义上让这些学科比以往任何时候都更科学。他说的是，当你着手研究这些主题时，你会发现，那些平常说话严肃、注重证据的人开始说出毫无真凭实据的狂野论断；他们开始向我们说教，而不是告诉我们事情究竟是什么样子；他们给我们立规矩，而不是去看事实。而我们应当在政治生活和人类事务方面去看事实，就像我们在自然科学中所做的那样。在我们现在谈的这种进路里，隐含着一种关于语言和意义的理论，不是吗？因为他非常明确地认为，一个词要有任何意义，就必须关联到某个特定的观念；而一个观念要有真实的内容，就必须来自经验。所以实际上休谟是在说：如果你想知道一个词是什么意思，就去寻找它所由来的那个经验；如果你找不到

便签笔记

13:36

a word means look for the experience from which it's derived if you can't find an experience or an observation from which it derives then it doesn't mean anything that that so there's this whole theory of meaning is they're not underlying the philosophical approach that you've just been outlining yes he draws distinction and he's very keen on this although he doesn't mention it specifically very often between talking and thinking we're thinking only when we're operating with clear ideas which have a real Source in experience but He suggests that much of the time we're talking away and we're using what a really completely confused Nations which have no real foundation and experience if he looked at our contemporary political life and our contemporary talk he'd find I think that it was full of Nations which people use completely unreflectively and if you ask what the foundation and experience was of let's say ideas like social justice or ideas like accountability you might find it extremely difficult to see

任何它所由来的经验或观察，那它就什么也没有意思。所以在你刚才勾勒的这套哲学进路背后，是不是有这么一整套意义理论？是的，他做了一个区分——而且他对此非常执着，尽管他并不常常明确提到——那就是“说话”和“思考”之间的区分：只有当我们运用的是在经验中有真实来源的清晰观念时，我们才是在思考。但他指出，很多时候我们只是在夸夸其谈，使用的其实是完全混乱的概念，在经验中毫无根据。如果他来看看我们当代的政治生活和当代的言谈，我想他会发现，其中充满了人们完全不加反思就使用的概念；如果你问，比如像“社会正义”这样的观念，或者像“问责”这样的观念，它们在经验中的根据是什么，你可能会发现极难说清它们所指的

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14:42

what the actual factual situation was that these were referring they're concretely what they concretely mean and one of his main points is we should look and see what things concretely mean you'd be absolutely horrified by much of what now passes for literary criticism for example that was something he was very interested in but he thought he had to relate it very concretely to literature and now it becomes so much of a rather bad philosophy full of Expressions which humor I think would very rapidly show have no meaning on his theory of meaning it led him to develop something that came subsequently to be known as hume's Fork he said of Any Given body of ideas that when you're approaching it for the first time you must ask yourself two main questions do these ideas concern matters of fact in which case do they rest on observation and experience or do they concern the relations between ideas as in mathematics and logic if the answer to both those main questions is no then he says commit those writings to the

实际事实情形究竟是什么，它们具体指的是什么。而他的要点之一就是，我们应该去看看事物具体究竟意味着什么。如今许多被当作文学批评的东西会让你彻底震惊，举例来说，那本是他非常感兴趣的领域，但他认为必须把它非常具体地关联到文学作品本身；而现在它变成了大量相当糟糕的哲学，充斥着各种说法，我想按照休谟的意义理论，他会很快表明这些说法毫无意义。他的意义理论使他发展出后来被称作“休谟之叉”的东西。他说，对于任何给定的一套观念，当你初次接触它时，你必须问自己两个主要问题：这些观念是关乎事实问题吗？若是，它们是否建立在观察和经验之上？还是说它们关乎观念之间的关系，比如数学和逻辑中那样？如果这两个主要问题的答案都是否定的，那么他说，就把那些著作付之一炬吧，因为它们只能包含

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06温和的怀疑主义：怀疑理性而非世界

15:44

Flames because they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion he was a great as you've just said clearer in a way of intellectual rubbish uh not only in philosophy and politics but in religion and all sorts of other fields do you think that in the history of philosophy that's one of his most important uh function so to speak that he was a clear little way of Illusions I'm pretty sure about that the other thing was that there's one particular illusion he's constantly clearing away and that is that we can prove a great many things which we daily believe he's constantly showing that really we cannot demonstrate even such factors that things exist externally to us or that they continue to exist when we're not looking at them or again that some things are necessarily connected with other things and this means that he often sounds extremely skeptical and indeed he sometimes does Express himself in a very skeptical way but he thinks that it's impossible for any human being to be an all on all outseptic inevitably

诡辩和幻觉。正如你刚才所说，他是一位伟大的理智垃圾清扫者，不仅在哲学和政治领域，也在宗教以及各种其他领域。你是否认为，在哲学史上，这是他最重要的作用之一，可以这么说——他是幻觉的清扫者？我对这一点相当确信。另一点是，有一个特定的幻觉是他不断在清除的，那就是：我们能够证明许多我们每天都相信的东西。他不断表明，我们其实无法证明哪怕是这样一些事情：事物外在于我们而存在，或者当我们不看它们时它们仍继续存在，又或者某些事物之间有必然的联系。其他事情，这意味着他听起来常常极度怀疑，而且他有时确实会用非常怀疑的方式来表达自己但他认为，任何人都不可能做一个彻头彻尾的怀疑论者，你不可避免地必须相信，你必须行动

便签笔记

16:55

you you have to believe you have to act like any other human being and a certain measure of skepticism what he calls mitigated skepticism is very useful because it prevents you from falling into the Trap of large ideologies large ideas of every sort which have no real foundation and experience you will say to yourself well look I'm not really totally able to demonstrate the sun will rise tomorrow perhaps it won't and why should anybody that's in that position think that they can say something about the total existence of the world or some very elaborate concept of this kind wouldn't it be true to say that his skepticism was not actually about the world but about the capacities of human reason I mean I don't doubt for one moment but Hume just genuinely did believe that there is an independently existing world of material objects in space and time that causally interrelate to each other and that we have representations of these through our senses and that these representations are internal to us but give us an act an

得像其他任何人一样，而某种程度的怀疑——他称之为温和的怀疑主义——是非常有用的因为它能防止你落入各种大意识形态、各种宏大观念的陷阱，那些东西并没有真正的基础和经验。你会对自己说，你看，我其实并不能完全证明太阳明天会升起，也许它不会升起。那么处在这种境地的人，凭什么认为自己能够谈论世界的整体存在，或者某种非常精巧的这类概念呢？这样说是否准确：他的怀疑主义其实并不是针对世界，而是针对人类理性的能力？我的意思是，我一刻也不怀疑休谟真心相信，确实存在一个独立于我们的物质对象世界，它们在空间和时间中因果地相互关联，而我们通过感官获得关于它们的表象，这些表象是内在于我们的，但给了我们一幅关于周遭世界的准确图景。所有这些常识性的世界观，

便签笔记

18:02

accurate picture of the world around us all that the whole Common Sense view of the world I'm sure Hume believed but it seems to me that what he was contending was that none of this could be proved you couldn't actually show you couldn't prove that any of this was so and you had to just kind of take it for granted in ordinary living but I don't think he doubted it did he I don't think so after all it's essential to what he's saying about the possibility of constructing a theory of human nature and he's able to say two things that this that this will rest on one is our awareness of ourselves and the other is our awareness of other human beings our experience of other human beings well this does imply that human beings exist independently of us that we're not the only being on Earth just living in a world of his own perceptions there are other human beings they behave in various ways their behavior has particular effects and so on none of this does he doubt I think in the most serious sense of doubting

我相信休谟都是相信的。但在我看来，他所主张的是，这一切都无法被证明你实际上无法表明、无法证明其中任何一点确实如此，你在日常生活中只能把它当作理所当然的。但我不认为他怀疑这些，他怀疑吗？我想没有，毕竟这对他关于建构一门人性理论之可能性的说法是至关重要的。他能够说，这将建立在两样东西之上：一是我们对自身的意识，二是我们对他人的意识，我们关于他人的经验。这确实意味着，其他人是独立于我们而存在的，我们并不是地球上唯一的存在者，只活在自己的知觉世界里。存在着其他人，他们以各种方式行动，他们的行为产生特定的效果等等，这一切他都不怀疑——我是说在最严肃的怀疑意义上。的确，要怀疑这些就得是个疯子

便签笔记

19:04

indeed it have to be a Madman to do so but he's showing that reason can't prove it but he's showing that what we can prove is very much less than people believe even in the most fundamental Affairs of life so that strict proof plays a very small part in human life outside special areas like mathematics and he didn't even think that was all that important in human Affairs well he really felt that the important things were well he says politics morals literary criticism and what he calls logic which is his word he uses rather broadly to mean the theory of the human understanding anything else the sort of thing that physicists talk about let's say was no doubt important but at the second order the together a clear understanding of human beings and of the human understanding was indeed a necessary preliminary even to a soundly based physical science that learned with soundly based human science and I think he was a person to whom What mattered essentially were human beings now lots of philosophers haven't been like this

但他要表明的是，理性无法证明这些。他要表明的是，我们能证明的东西远比人们以为的少得多，即便在生活最根本的事务上也是如此。所以严格的证明在人类生活中所起的作用非常小，除了数学这样的特殊领域之外。而且他甚至认为数学在人类事务中也没那么重要。他真正觉得重要的东西是——他说是政治、道德、文学批评，还有他所谓的逻辑，这是他自己的用词，用得相当宽泛，指的是关于人类理解力的理论。还有别的吗？比如物理学家谈论的那类东西，无疑是重要的，但属于第二位的。相比之下，对人以及对人类理解力的清晰认识，甚至是建立一门有坚实基础的物理科学的必要前提，那要从有坚实基础的人的科学开始。我认为他是这样一个人：对他来说，本质上重要的就是人。而很多哲学家并非如此，他们多少把人给排除掉了，把个别的人排除掉了，转而关注抽象的东西，比如

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07转向历史不是离开哲学

20:07

they've rather got rid of human beings they're individual human beings concerned with abstractions like part of space and him talks about these to some degree but basically the human being lies at the center of his interests and in the old phrase he counts nothing human alien to him what that brings out is that in that famous subtitle to his great work which I read earlier an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning to moral subjects it's not only the phrase the experimental method of reasoning that's important which Everyone is always concentrated on but the phrase moral subjects he was applying it to everything that directly concerns human beings in my introduction to our discussion Professor Passmore when I referred to Hume moving on from writing philosophy to writing history I deliberately used the phrase he appeared to turn away from philosophy I didn't actually say he did because I know that you in your book about Hume have argued that in fact in his mind this was not a turning away at

空间的部分。休谟在一定程度上也谈这些，但从根本上说，人处在他关注的中心。用那句老话说，他认为凡是人的东西对他都不陌生。这就凸显了他那部伟大著作那个著名副标题的含义——我读过早些时候，他要把'实验推理方法'引入'道德主题'。重要的不只是那个短语'实验推理方法'——大家总是把注意力集中在这上面——还有'道德主题'这个说法，他把它应用于一切与人类直接相关的事情。在我为我们这次讨论所做的开场白里，帕斯莫尔教授，当我提到休谟从写哲学转向写历史时，我是特意用了'他似乎离开了哲学'这个说法我并没有真的说他离开了，因为我知道您在关于休谟的那本书里论证过，事实上在他自己心里，这根本不是什么转向，而是同一批关切的延续。我希望您能就此展开

便签笔记

21:10

all but a continuation of the same concerns and I'd like you to expand that a little bit well I think in the first place of course the use of the word philosophy in its very narrow modern sense is uh well as I just said very narrow very modern philosophy had a much broader sense when he wrote and even later indeed in Cambridge much later physics was called natural philosophy and subjects like economics and politics were included in moral philosophy and that's the very broad sense of philosophy that Hume is working with but I think there's another thing he wrote These works the treaters as basically he said as a necessary very preliminary to working on the subjects he took to be important morals and politics an essential preliminary nobody paid any real attention to them he tried to present them in a different form as you pointed out in their introduction in the inquiries people did still didn't pay their real attention to them and it would have been absurd for him to go on working at these it had no real

讲一讲。嗯，我想首先，当然，我们今天在极其狭义的现代意义上使用'哲学'这个词就像我刚才说的，那是很狭窄、很现代的用法。在他写作的年代，哲学的含义要宽泛得多，甚至到了后来，在剑桥，晚得多的时候，物理学还被叫做'自然哲学'，而经济学、政治学这类学科则被归入'道德哲学'。休谟所使用的正是这种极宽泛意义上的哲学。不过我想还有另一点，他写这些著作——《人性论》——基本上他自己说过，是为研究他认为重要的那些主题所做的必要的、非常初步的准备也就是道德和政治，一个不可或缺的前提准备。可是没有人真正注意到这些书。他试着换一种形式重新呈现，就像你在开场白里指出的那样，写成了两部《研究》，可人们还是没有真正注意到。而且他要是继续在这上面下功夫，那才荒唐——他并没有听到什么像样的批评，他也十分确信

便签笔记

22:13

criticism of them he was quite convinced he was right and in terms of his own views about things it was perfectly proper for him then to go on writing essays on politics writing history writing about economics writing about the population of the ancient world and discussing all these broad issues literary criticism again which he'd always regarded as Central it would have been idiotic for him to have continued all his life with what he regarded as being only preliminary to these centrally important inquiries because all of it was in his eyes what one might roughly call social philosophy wasn't it in a very broad sense as what we would Now call social philosophy but the first part one might very crudely call hume's methodology of the social sciences it ran beyond that but it's as if a social scientist were to spend all his life talking about his methodology and never actually doing any social science and him would have felt the same way if he'd spent all his life talking about his methodology and he says it's all the

自己是对的。就他本人对事情的看法而言，接下来去写政治论文、去写历史去写经济学、去写古代世界的人口问题、去讨论所有这些宏大议题再去写文学批评——他一向把文学批评看作核心之一——是完全正当的。要是他一辈子都耗在他自己视为只是那些真正重要研究之前奏的东西上，那才是愚蠢的。因为在他看来，这一切都可以大致称作社会哲学，对吧？在很宽泛的意义上，就是我们现在所说的社会哲学。而第一部分，我们可以很粗略地称之为休谟的社会科学方法论——当然它不止于此——但那就好比一位社会科学家一辈子都在谈他的方法论，却从来不真正去做社会科学研究如果休谟一辈子都在谈方法论，他也会有同样的感受。他说过，真正需要的全部

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08恒常的人性：激情与古典证据

23:13

logic that's really needed is in the treaters and not gone on to do the actual work that he thinks was of the greatest consequence now underlying this very broad concern with human Affairs there was a theory of human or a conception anyway of human nature and you referred to that actually a few minutes ago in our discussion can you now bring out what that conception of human nature was well it's a long story because really most of his subsequent work is a study of human nature in action in practice but one thing he never doubted was that there was such a thing as human nature and this is a point at which he differed from log Lark had been particularly intent on getting rid of the conception of original sin this was fundamentally important to him because he was a religious thinker as well as a as well as a philosopher and he had argued that human beings are born into the world with Minds which are like blank sheets of paper and then in his works on education for example the suggestion was

逻辑都在《人性论》里了，然后就不再去做他认为最有分量的实际工作。那么，在这种对人类事务的极其宽泛的关切背后，是有一套关于人性的理论，或者至少是一种人性观。刚才在我们的讨论中您其实几分钟前就提到过它。您现在能把那种人性观讲清楚吗？嗯，这说来话长，因为说到底他后来的大部分著作都是在研究人性在行动中、在实践中的表现。但有一点他从不怀疑，那就是确实存在'人性'这种东西。而这正是他与洛克分歧的地方。洛克特别急于摆脱'原罪'这个观念，这对他来说至关重要，因为他既是一位宗教思想家，也是一位哲学家。他主张，人生到这个世界上时心灵就像一张白纸。然后，比如在他论教育的著作里，其中的意思是

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24:12

that you could turn human beings in any direction you want to and many of the later thinkers of the French Enlightenment and really running on even to to Modern Marxism have taken this same sort of view that at least Society is the thing that makes human beings what they are now Hume didn't think that he says that he thought this was a ridiculous view that human beings do have Angus fears all the rest of it affections which are innate which are in born in them and which are constant throughout human history human in different societies they might have different forms and some of them may be strengthened and some weakened but there is a permanent human nature there in which the passions are Central it's striking I think in most of the thinkers of this period that they put an emphasis on passions and interests in a way in which many subsequent philosophers have not there are of course important exceptions to that part of the basis for what he had to say about human nature being always the same was his deep

你可以把人塑造成你想要的任何样子。后来法国启蒙运动的许多思想家，甚至一直延续到现代马克思主义，都持有大致相同的看法：至少，是社会造就了人使人成为他所是的样子。可休谟不这么想。他说他认为这是个荒谬的观点，人确实有愤怒、恐惧以及其他种种情感，这些是天生的、与生俱来的，并且在整个人类历史中恒久不变。在不同的社会里，它们可能有不同的表现形式，有些被强化，有些被削弱，但那里始终存在一种恒久的人性，而激情在其中居于核心。我觉得很值得注意的是，这个时期的大多数思想家都以某种方式强调激情和利益，而后来的许多哲学家并没有这样做——当然也有重要的例外。他之所以能说人性始终如一，部分依据来自他对古典语言的深厚造诣，对吧？他对希腊文和拉丁文的文学与历史

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25:19

learning in The Classical Languages wasn't it he he was deeply and widely read in Greek and Latin literature and history and what struck him one of the things that struck him about those times was that human behavior in very considerable detail had been just the same two thousand years before the time he was reading then he saw it around here as he saw it around him in his own time yes he was particularly interested in writers like Cicero and in what Cicero said about human nature and human beings and human society and he thought it wasn't so different from 18th century England and that human beings were still behaving in much the same kind of way it was the Latin writers rather than the Greek writers who particularly influenced him at that level and constantly quotes sister out so that was some of the evidence that he would have given for there being a permanent human nature but also when he writes about let us say the natural history of religion it's again on the assumption that human

读得又深又广。而令他印象深刻的一点是，在相当细致的层面上，人的行为在他所读的那些著作成书的两千年前，与他自己身处的时代所看到的完全一样。是的，他对西塞罗这样的作家尤其感兴趣，对西塞罗关于人性、关于人、关于人类社会所说的话尤其感兴趣。他认为那和十八世纪的英格兰并没有多大差别，人的行为方式基本上还是老样子。在这一层面上，对他影响特别大的是拉丁作家而不是希腊作家，他不断引用西塞罗。这就是他为'存在恒久人性'所举出的一部分证据。此外，当他写比如《宗教的自然史》时同样是基于这样一个假定：人一直大体相同，面对着同样的威胁、同样的

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09归纳问题与黑天鹅

26:19

beings have been much the same who have been faced by the same threats the same anxieties have had much the same ideals throughout history even in much earlier societies and the Greek and Romans Etc it's not only an assumption is it I mean he tries to demonstrate this with a great deal of factual example he tries to demonstrate by a factual example but it is all the same I think to some measure something that he thinks you can not seriously question although as I say many subsequent writers unlocked before him have seriously questioned her when one looks at Hume from the standpoint of our time I think one is very struck by the sort of modernity from our point of view of very much of it I mean he was centrally concerned with this problem of the self well some of the best philosophy that's been done in Britain in recent years has been about problems of the self scientists in the 20th century have been deeply puzzled especially uh in their thinking about quantum physics about the presence or absence of causal connection

焦虑，在整个历史上抱有大体相同的理想，哪怕在早得多的社会里，在希腊人和罗马人当中，等等这不只是个假定吧？我是说，他试图用大量事实例证来证明这一点。他确实试图用事实例证来加以证明，但我想在某种程度上，这终究还是他认为你不能认真加以质疑的东西——尽管像我说的，后来许多作家，还有在他之前的洛克，都认真质疑过。当我们从今天的角度去看休谟时，我想很令人震动的一点，是他的许多东西在我们看来是何等现代。我是说，他关注的核心之一是自我的问题——而近年来英国最出色的一些哲学工作恰恰就是关于自我的问题。二十世纪的科学家们，尤其在他们对量子物理学的思考中对因果联系的有无深感困惑。而就在昨天，可以这么说

便签笔记

27:17

and only yesterday so to speak the logical positivists or at least the chief representative of logical positivism in the English-speaking World AJ air we're constantly talking about how much they owed to Hume and how almost everything they'd air is constantly saying that almost everything he has to say has previously been said by Hume one comes up against this modernity to us again and again and one of the 20th century problems of philosophy that he is credited with having formulated for the first time is the famous problem of induction isn't it that is to say that the The Logical basis on which scientific theories were traditionally said to rest can you tell us a little about that well it's very closely related to what I said previously about reality go back to my baby that's dropping this ball out of that well I suppose it does this on Monday and it does it on Tuesday and it doesn't on Wednesday and it doesn't on Thursday every time it drops the ball the ball bounces then certainly him

逻辑实证主义者，或者至少是英语世界中逻辑实证主义的主要代表艾耶尔，一直在谈他们受惠于休谟有多深。艾耶尔总是说，他要说的几乎每一件事，休谟早就已经说过了。我们一次又一次地遇到这种对我们而言的现代性。而二十世纪哲学的一个问题，人们认为是他第一次明确提出来的，就是著名的归纳问题，对吧？也就是说，科学理论传统上被认为所依赖的那个逻辑基础。您能给我们稍微讲讲吗？嗯，这和我先前讲实在性时说的话关系非常密切。回到我那个婴儿，他在把球扔下去。假设他在星期一这么做，星期二也这么做，星期三、星期四还这么做，每次他把球扔下去球都会弹起来。那么休谟肯定会说，他就会形成这样一个信念：只要他把球扔下去，球就会弹起来；他会期待球

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28:21

would say it comes to believe that whenever it drops the ball the ball will bounce it comes to expect the ball to bounce whenever it drops it but suppose we ask why since all that has happened is the same thing is has occurred on many occasions but we all know quite well that things can occur on many occasions and then on some occasion they don't occur anymore there's a change in the way things happen you've been accustomed to relying on these regularities but the regularity breaks down now all the humor is saying is we can never be quite sure that this won't happen in respect to any regularity whatsoever there's no way of arguing from the premises that things have happened in a certain way on very many occasions in the past to the conclusion that they're bound to happen in exactly the same way in the future and of course the point here is that every scientific law is an unrestrictedly general statement which is said to rest on a number of particular observations or experiments or instances and The Logical link can't

在他一扔的时候就弹起来。但假设我们要问：为什么？因为所发生的一切不过是同一件事在许多场合出现过，可我们都很清楚，有些事情在许多场合发生过，然后到了某个场合就不再发生了，事情发生的方式变了。你一直习惯于依赖这些规律性，可规律性却失效了。休谟所说的无非是：对于任何一种规律性，我们都永远不能十分确定这种事不会发生。没有办法从'过去在极多场合事情以某种方式发生过'这个前提，推出'它们将来必定以完全相同的方式发生'这个结论。当然，这里的关键在于，每一条科学定律都是一个不受限制的全称陈述，而它被认为是建立在若干特定的观察、实验或事例之上的，可那个逻辑上的链接建立不起来。关于这一点，在哲学史

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29:33

be made there's a marvelous example of this in act in in the history of philosophy itself in logic books in some logic books in the Middle Ages one sentence that was used as an example was all swans are white and of course for literally thousands of years every Swan that any Western man had ever seen was white and there must have been millions of instances of white swans and not a single counter-example but in the 18th century when Western man discovered your country Australia for the first time Europeans saw black swans and it's a marvelous illustration of the fact that however many thousands or millions of times a particular thing has been observed and found to be so and so it does not follow from that that the next one will be and therefore this is the logically important point no finite number of specific observations can never logically entail an unrestrictedly general or Universal conclusion but all scientific laws are of that character and therefore they are not logically entailed by the observations that are

本身当中就有一个绝妙的例子。在中世纪的一些逻辑书里，有一个常被拿来当例句的句子是'所有的天鹅都是白的'。当然，在字面意义上的几千年里，任何一个西方人所见过的每一只天鹅都是白的，白天鹅的事例必定有几百万之多，而且没有一个反例。可是到了十八世纪，当西方人第一次发现了你的祖国澳大利亚时，欧洲人看到了黑天鹅。这绝妙地说明了一个事实：无论一件特定的事情被观察到多少千次、多少百万次并且发现总是如此，都不能由此推出下一次也会如此。因此，这就是逻辑上要紧的一点：任何有限数目的具体观察，在逻辑上都不可能蕴含一个不受限制的全称结论。可所有的科学定律都具有那种性质，因此它们并不能由据说是其基础的那些观察在逻辑上推出。这是个极具爆炸性的洞见，对吧？我是说，它

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30:41

supposed to be their bases and this is an explosive Insight isn't it I mean it seemed to people to knock away the foundations of science as they understood it yes I think it's more and more widely agreed by scientists themselves and that's scientific propositions are in some measure hypothetical and many very firmly based ones have been overthrowed in the past people used to say that Einstein didn't overthrow Newton he simply produced a more general theory of which Newton's theory is part but that's not really true there are some things that Newton said and that have now been shown to be false and Newton was for a long time the Supreme example of a a kind of certain demonstrative sign Bertrand Russell in his famous book a history of Western philosophy after he's said something about hume's doctrines on these various fundamental things that we've considered the cause and effect relationship the nature of the self the inductive basis for scientific laws Russell then goes on to say that in many of these respects we

在人们看来是把他们所理解的科学的根基给抽掉了。是的，我想现在越来越多的科学家自己也同意科学命题在某种程度上是假说性的，过去也有许多根基极其牢固的命题被推翻过人们过去常说，爱因斯坦并没有推翻牛顿，他只是提出了一个更普遍的理论，牛顿的理论是其中的一部分。但这其实并不确切，牛顿说过的有些东西如今已被证明是错的。而牛顿曾经在很长时间里被当作某种确定的、可论证的科学的最高典范。伯特兰·罗素在他那本著名的《西方哲学史》里，讲完休谟关于我们所讨论的这些根本问题的学说之后——因果关系、自我的本性、科学定律的归纳基础——罗素接着说，在许多方面我们至今仍未超越休谟，说他

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10善良的大卫：人格与文风

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still haven't got Beyond him that he pointed out very fundamental problems that no one has yet solved this is true of course secretly through the Plato pointed out very fundamental questions that nobody has yet solved it's unfortunately it's much easier in in philosophy to ask questions and to raise difficulties them to produce Solutions but I think one crucial thing about Hume is the questions he asked and I think this is also true of Plato were very fundamental ones so that we can say that if a person doesn't take hume's question seriously he can't really be counted as a philosopher yes these are absolutely fundamental to what philosophy is aren't they yes they are fundamentalists they're not the only issues which are fundamental but they are fundamental issues sort of a man was he I get the impression when I read his work and I've been rereading it for this discussion just recently I get the impression of a kind of massive Humane in this which is enormously attractive yes I you know his

提出了一些至今无人解决的极根本的问题。这当然是真的，柏拉图也一样提出了一些至今无人解答的极根本的问题。遗憾的是，在哲学中提出问题、指出困难，要比拿出解答容易得多。但我想休谟身上有一点是关键的，就是他所提的那些问题，我认为这一点对柏拉图同样成立——它们都是极根本的问题。所以我们可以说，一个人如果不认真对待休谟的问题就算不上是个哲学家。是的，这些问题对于哲学之为哲学是绝对根本的，不是吗？是的，它们是根本性的。它们不是唯一根本的问题，但确实是根本问题他是个什么样的人呢？读他的著作时——为了这次讨论我最近又重读了一遍——我得到的印象是一种厚重的人道情怀，极有吸引力。是的，你知道，他的朋友亚当·斯密说过，在这些方面，他已经接近

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32:52

friend Adam Smith said he came as near to Perfection these sort of respects as any human being possibly could and biographers explored his life in great detail I don't think any of them have found a single example of a mean or a malicious action he's occasionally a bit timid well not unnaturally he had views about religion which was scarcely popular in the society in which he was living he's occasionally a little bit vain but this is a form I of seeing if it is that which I can easily forgive but he doesn't ever act meanly or maliciously and I'm quite sure that if there was a sort of celestial philosopher's party a dinner party it's David shimod want to sit next to yeah I I think in many ways Plato was the greater philosopher but it's David Schumer I would want to sit next to and I think almost everybody else would he had this warm Humanity he was without pretensions it was a man of very considerable personal courage he was dying of cancer in his last years he still received his friends as usual

了一个人所能达到的完美程度。传记作者们非常细致地考察过他的一生我想他们没有一个人找到过哪怕一个卑劣或恶意行为的例子。他偶尔有点胆怯——这也不奇怪，他在宗教上的看法在他所生活的社会里很不受欢迎他偶尔有那么一点虚荣，但那不过是一种自我表现罢了，我很容易原谅。可他从来不做卑劣或恶意的事。我很确定，如果有一场天上的哲学家聚会、一场晚宴，我想坐在旁边的就是大卫·休谟。是的，我认为在许多方面柏拉图是更伟大的哲学家，但我想坐在旁边的还是大卫·休谟我想几乎所有人都会这么选。他有那种温暖的人性，毫无矫饰，而且是个相当有个人勇气的人他最后几年身患癌症、即将死去，却仍像往常一样接待朋友。他知道，或者说相信自己知道，他

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33:57

he knew or believed he knew that he was certainly not Immortal but this didn't disturb him in the leads it very much Disturbed possible when boss will interviewed him towards the end but he managed to retain that sort of equanimity and moderation which was his own ideal yeah and his style has had great influence hasn't it I mean I mentioned earlier in this discussion to 20th century British philosophers both of them famous AJ air and Burton Russell who have been consciously influenced by the Hume way of doing things and there'd been many others yes well he did place this great episode on Clarity and indeed on Elegance I recently heard Clarity and elegance referred to as old-fashioned virtues which nobody now attempts but certainly aired Russell attempted them and certainly Hume attempted them and he set a certain pattern of British philosophizing in which one tries to be clear one tries to be critical one tries not to make large assumptions one tries to look all the while at what one's doing in a critical spirit and one tries

肯定不会不朽，可这丝毫没有扰乱他的心境。这倒是让鲍斯威尔很不安——鲍斯威尔在他临终前采访过他——但他始终保持着那种平静与节制，那正是他自己的理想。是的，他的文风也影响深远，对吧我是说，我在这次讨论的前面提到过两位二十世纪的英国哲学家，两位都很有名——艾耶尔和伯特兰·罗素——他们都自觉地受到休谟那种做哲学方式的影响，而且还有许多其他人。是的，他确实非常看重清晰，甚至看重优雅。我最近听人说，清晰和优雅是没人再去追求的老派美德。可艾耶尔和罗素确实追求过它们，休谟当然也追求过。他为英国式的哲学思考立下了某种范式：力求清楚，力求批判，力求不做过大的假定，力求始终以批判的精神审视自己在做什么，并且力求把它同世界上实际发生的事情联系起来

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11合理信念的标准与科学中的想象力

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to tie it up to what actually happens in the world hume's approach does raise one important difficulty doesn't it you refer to the fact that he stresses that most of the things that we take for granted we don't actually know and can't prove can never prove that being so how are we to distinguish between the sort of view that it's reasonable to hold and the sort of view that it's unreasonable to hold what then becomes the Criterion of a reasonable man's belief this is a very difficult question at times him seems to be saying nothing more than that well in general it's much more sensible to rely on constant conjunctions and on mere chance he gives rules for judging of course and the fact at other times he seems to suggest there's really no answer to this question but that is something that I think would satisfy nobody and one might say that is the principal problem that Hume said I refer to it in a way a little while ago uh we agree let us say that scientific laws are not demonstrable in the strict

休谟的进路确实引出了一个重要难题，对吧？您提到他强调，我们视为理所当然的大多数事情，其实我们并不知道，也无法证明，永远无法证明。既然如此，我们该怎样区分哪种看法是持有起来合理的，哪种看法是不合理的？那么，一个理性之人的信念，其标准又是什么？这是个很难的问题。休谟有时候似乎只是在说，总的来说依靠恒常联结要比依靠纯粹的偶然明智得多。当然他也给出了一些判断的规则而在另一些时候，他似乎又暗示这个问题其实没有答案。可我想那是谁也不会满意的。有人会说，那正是休谟留下的主要难题。刚才我在某种意义上已经提到过它了：就算我们同意，科学定律在严格意义上是无法证明的，那为什么在生活的实际事务中，依靠它们仍然远远好过

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36:19

sense why however is it still far better to depend on these in our practical Affairs of life than in some silly idea that someone thinks up in a bestseller see I think that what Hume had to say about all this is very germane to the ideas about science that most people have today in the 20th century my impression is that most people including most well-educated people have the idea of science that it consists of a body of known demonstrated proved certainties and that the growth of science consists in adding new certainties to the body of already existing ones anybody who has that view of human knowledge or that view of silence really has a very fundamental lesson to learn from Hume don't they I mean Hume retains his full power to disconcert today doesn't he yes Hume is an extremely disconcerting thinker I think it's still true in respect to science that science does make sense there's all sorts of things we know about the world we didn't know before for scientists got going but certainly when a lot of people for

依靠某个人在畅销书里胡乱想出来的什么蠢主意呢我认为休谟关于这一切所说的话，跟今天大多数人对科学的看法非常相关。在二十世纪，我的印象是大多数人，包括大多数受过良好教育的人，都持有这样一种科学观：科学是由一堆已知的、已经论证过、已被证明的确定性构成的，而科学的增长就在于把新的确定性加到已有的那些之上。任何持这种知识观、或者持这种科学观的人，其实都要从休谟那里学到非常根本的一课，不是吗？我的意思是，休谟在今天依然保有他那种令人不安的全部力量，不是吗？是的，休谟是一位极其令人不安的思想家。我认为就科学而言，有一点仍然成立：科学确实是有意义的，关于世界我们知道了各种各样的事情，这些是科学家开始工作之前我们不知道的。但确实有很多人认为科学是一种完全没有想象力容身之处的东西，他们以为，他们

便签笔记

37:29

example think of science as something where there's no room for the imagination at all they imagine you they believe that you have all sorts of need for the imagination if you're writing a novel or writing a play but when you're doing a science it's just a question of going into a laboratory and seeing what happens now this is nonsense any kind of scientific work above the the most trivial is an enormous feat of the imagination if you take contemporary cosmology for example it's well this is admittedly a a very extreme example but it's an extraordinary imaginative feed and the same is true of things like DNA genetics any of the great discoveries require not merely careful work in Laboratories though this is essential and careful thinking at all levels but also a capacity to make imaginative leaps and it's interesting that in Hume the idea of the imagination constantly re-emerges as a beings of central importance the imagination he thinks is essential to all our thinking about the world even in what we call our

相信，如果你在写小说或写剧本，你就需要各种各样的想象力，但当你做科学时，就只是走进实验室看看发生了什么。这是胡说八道。任何超出最琐碎层次的科学工作，都是一项巨大的想象力壮举。比如说你看当代宇宙学，这固然是一个非常极端的例子，但它是一项非凡的想象力成就。DNA、遗传学之类的东西也是一样，任何伟大的发现都不仅需要实验室里的细致工作——尽管这是必不可少的——以及各个层面的缜密思考，还需要一种做出想象力飞跃的能力。有意思的是，在休谟那里，想象力这个概念不断地作为核心重要性的东西重新浮现。他认为，想象力对我们关于世界的一切思考都是必不可少的，甚至在我们所谓的对事实的知觉中，想象力也始终在起作用。想象力的这种中心地位，正是

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12对爱因斯坦与康德的影响

38:32

perception of facts there is always an element of the imagination at work and the centrality of the imagination is one of the things I find Most Fascinating in David Hume it's directly to me into what you've just said that the greatest of all 20th century scientists Einstein once said he said in 1928 I remember he made the remark that he would never have dared to overthrow the science of Newton had he not read Hume well I'd like to I'd like to finish our discussion really by asking you to say a little more about the influence of Hume or major thinkers subsequent to him he did you've already referred to his influence on calm to I think most philosophers would regard as the greatest of all philosophers since Hume what was his influence on can't but I think that can't unlike the British critics of Hume really did see what Jim was about he's sorry had to do philosophy in a quite different kind of way and if he was going as he wanted to do to answer him and particularly to get rid of what he took to be the skeptical

我在大卫·休谟身上觉得最迷人的东西之一。这直接引到你刚才说的那一点：二十世纪最伟大的科学家爱因斯坦曾经说过——我记得是在1928年，他说过这么一句话——如果他没有读过休谟，他绝不敢推翻牛顿的科学。好，我想，我想用这样一个问题来结束我们的讨论：请你再多谈谈休谟对他之后那些重要思想家的影响。你已经提到了他对康德的影响。我想大多数哲学家都会认为康德是休谟之后最伟大的哲学家。他对康德的影响是什么？我认为康德不同于休谟的那些英国批评者，他真正看清了休谟在做什么。抱歉，他不得不以一种相当不同的方式来做哲学。而且如果他要像他所希望的那样回应休谟，特别是要清除他认为休谟思想中那些怀疑主义的成分，他就必须说，我们对世界的知觉其实

便签笔记

39:37

elements in Hume he had to say that really our perception of the world is of a quite different kind from the sort of thing that human his predecessors had taken it to be we don't assume always presumes have isolated perceptions simply following one another we from the beginning aware of things as being causally collected coarsely linked with one another one gets encounter a great emphasis on the creative power of the mind as well the suggestion of this order is in part imposed by the mind and that leads in a direction that you wouldn't have liked it leads in the direction of subsequent German idealism in the direction of writers like Hegel but can't see didn't he that if you started with empiricist assumptions Hume then posed problems that on empiricist assumptions you couldn't answer that was his people and Khan's solution was to reject the assumptions and and start holding you approach he does see I think the essential thing that if you begin from the position that what we're aware of are isolated events whether in our

跟休谟及其前辈们所设想的那种东西完全不同。我们并不像休谟总是假定的那样，拥有一个个孤立的、彼此接续的知觉。我们从一开始就意识到事物是因果地联结在一起的。人们在康德那里还会看到对心灵创造力的极大强调，以及这种秩序在某种程度上是由心灵所强加的这一想法。而这会导向一个你不会喜欢的方向，它导向后来的德国唯心论，导向像黑格尔这样的作者。但康德看到了，不是吗：如果你从经验主义的前提出发，休谟就提出了一些在经验主义前提下你无法回答的问题。那就是他的同胞，而康德的解决办法是拒绝这些假设，重新开始，采取一种全新的思路。他确实看到了，我认为，最关键的一点是：如果你的出发点是——我们所意识到的只是一些孤立的事件，无论是在我们

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40:49

own mind where their perceptions are on the surface of our skin or in the world you cannot create out of them simply as your soul material the kind of ordered World which in fact we experience in our daily life well to continue the discussion Beyond this point would take us into a discussion of Khan so I think we'll stop there thank you very much indeed Professor Passmore good thank you

自己心中，还是作为皮肤表面的感觉，抑或是在外部世界中——那么你就不可能仅仅用这些作为素材，构建出我们日常生活中实际所经验到的那种有秩序的世界。好了，要把这个讨论再往下进行，就会带我们进入对康德的讨论了，所以我想我们就到此为止吧。非常感谢您，帕斯莫尔教授。好的，谢谢。

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视频总结 · 一句话概括与核心要点

一句话概括

这期 1987 年 BBC 访谈中，Bryan Magee 与澳大利亚国立大学的 John Passmore 教授围绕休谟哲学的核心——因果论、自我同一性、意义理论、"休谟之叉"、归纳问题及其人性观——展开讨论，并说明他从哲学转向历史、经济学写作并非"放弃哲学"，而是其广义"道德科学"计划的自然延续。

核心要点

因果关系无法被观察，只是"恒常联结"养成的习惯：Passmore 用"橡皮球"例子说明——孩子无论把球看多久，都无法在经验之前推出它会弹起；成人之所以说"投球导致弹起"，只是因为多次看到"投—弹"相继发生。休谟指出，成人比孩子多看了一百次，却没有看到任何新的东西：既无神秘的"力量"，也无"必然联系"这一实体。必然性观念的唯一来源是恒常联结对心灵的作用，即形成期待的习惯。
对"自然齐一性"和概率论的反驳属于循环论证：有人说"自然是齐一的，所以球会继续弹"，但这恰恰等于"同因必生同果"，正是待证之事，是丐题；若退而说"球弹起更有可能"，休谟认为一切概率判断本身就建立在过去联结的经验之上，同样无法脱困。Magee 补充：昼夜恒常相继却互不为因，说明"恒常相继"也不足以定义因果。Passmore 承认这一问题至今没有公认解答。
自我同一性问题让休谟自己也不满意：向内省察只见个别的思想、感受、记忆，看不到"拥有"它们的自我。休谟对外物同一性的解释是"闭眼再睁眼，知觉极为相似，于是我们混淆为同一"；但这个说法用于自我时失效——"混淆"预设了一个始终在场的"我们"。这动摇了他"只谈人心与知觉便不会陷入难解困境"的初始假定。
意义理论：词必须对应源于经验的观念：休谟区分"思考"（运用有清晰经验来源的观念）与"空谈"（使用无经验基础的混乱概念）。Passmore 推断，若休谟看到当代政治话语中"社会正义""问责"之类词汇，或大量沦为"坏哲学"的文学批评，会追问其具体所指为何。
"休谟之叉"是清理思想垃圾的标准：面对任何一套论述，只问两个问题——它涉及事实（是否基于观察经验）？还是观念间关系（如数学、逻辑）？若两者皆否，"付之一炬，其中只有诡辩和幻觉"。Passmore 认为休谟在哲学史上的重要功能之一就是清除幻觉，尤其是"我们能证明日常所信之事"这一幻觉。
怀疑的是理性能力而非世界本身——"温和怀疑论"：休谟并不怀疑外物独立存在、他人存在等常识（否则"得是个疯子"），他的人性理论恰恰以自我意识与对他人的经验为基础。他只是表明严格证明在数学之外的人生中作用极小；温和怀疑论的实际价值在于防止人们落入无经验根基的宏大意识形态。
转向历史与经济学是计划的延续而非背离：18 世纪"哲学"含义极广（剑桥后来仍把物理学叫"自然哲学"，经济学、政治学属"道德哲学"）。《人性论》副标题"把实验推理方法引入道德学科"中，"道德学科"涵盖政治、心理学、伦理等一切关乎人的领域。休谟视《人性论》为"必要的预备工作"，认为其中已包含所需的全部"逻辑"；既然无人认真批评而他自信正确，终身只谈方法论而不做实际研究就如同社会科学家一辈子只写方法论一样荒谬。
人性恒常且以激情为核心，与洛克对立：洛克为反对原罪说而主张人心如白纸、可被教育任意塑造，此路线延续到法国启蒙乃至现代马克思主义（社会决定人）。休谟认为这是"荒谬的看法"：恐惧、情感等天生固有，贯穿各时代各社会，只是形式与强弱有别。证据部分来自他对古典（尤其拉丁作家，常引西塞罗）的深厚阅读——两千年前的人类行为细节与 18 世纪英国几无二致。
首次系统提出归纳问题，动摇科学确定性观念：任何多次发生的规律都可能中断，无法从"过去一直如此"推出"将来必然如此"。科学定律是无限制的全称命题，却仅基于有限观察。Magee 举"所有天鹅都是白的"——中世纪逻辑教材的范例，被欧洲人发现澳大利亚黑天鹅所推翻。Passmore 补充：牛顿曾是"确定性科学"的典范，但爱因斯坦并非只是把牛顿包含为特例，牛顿的某些命题已被证伪。

结论与值得注意的细节

休谟提出的问题被认为是定义哲学本身的根本问题——Passmore 说"不认真对待休谟问题的人不能算哲学家"，并与柏拉图并列；罗素在《西方哲学史》中也承认在这些问题上"我们仍未超越休谟"。
休谟留下的最大未解难题：既然一切都不可证明，凭什么区分"合理的信念"与"不合理的信念"？他有时给出"依赖恒常联结优于凭偶然"及一些判断规则，有时又暗示无解，Passmore 认为这"无法令任何人满意"。
想象力在休谟思想中反复出现并居于中心：即使是对事实的知觉也含想象成分；Passmore 借此批评"科学无需想象、只是进实验室看结果"的流行观念，指出当代宇宙学、DNA 遗传学都是巨大的想象飞跃。爱因斯坦 1928 年曾说，若非读过休谟，他不敢推翻牛顿科学。
对康德的影响：康德真正看懂了休谟——若从"孤立知觉相继"这一经验主义前提出发，不可能构建出我们实际经历的有序世界；他因此拒绝该前提，主张从一开始就把事物感知为因果相连，并强调心灵的创造性秩序，这条路通向德国唯心主义和黑格尔——休谟本人不会喜欢的方向。
人物侧写：亚当·斯密称他"接近人所能达到的完美"；传记作者未发现一例卑鄙或恶意行为，仅有轻微的胆怯（因宗教观点不受时代欢迎）和虚荣。晚年患癌仍照常会友，坦然面对死亡，令来访的鲍斯威尔颇为不安。Passmore 认为柏拉图或许更伟大，但"天上的哲学家晚宴"上他愿坐在休谟身旁。
风格遗产：清晰、优雅、批判、不作宏大假设、紧扣现实——罗素与艾耶尔（自称几乎所有观点休谟都已说过）自觉继承了这一英国哲学传统。
生平补充：《人性论》"从印刷机上一出生就死了"；后改写为两部《探究》仍反响平平；《大不列颠史》百年间为标准著作；曾任驻巴黎使馆秘书及伦敦副国务大臣；几乎与卢梭成为朋友；秘密撰写的《自然宗教对话录》于 1776 年逝世后三年（1779）出版，被一些人视为其最佳作品。

核心句型 · 9

1. in his own phrase, it …

“In his own phrase it fell deadborn from the Press”

引用当事人自己的说法时用的插入语，比 he said 更书面。仿写：In her own words, the project was a disaster.

2. it didn't matter how long … , it could never have …

“It didn't matter how long the child had looked at that ball … it could never have inferred that …”

强调无论条件如何都不可能的句式，用 could never have + 过去分词表示对过去的虚拟。适合表达论证中的“原则上不可能”。

3. all that has really happened is that …

“All that has really happened is that on a number of occasions the adult has seen a ball drop”

把复杂现象还原为最朴素事实的口吻，all that … is that 结构起“无非是”的缩减作用，是分析哲学常用表达。

4. it won't do to say that …

“It won't do to say that ah well yes but we know that event a is the cause of event B”

地道口语化的驳论开头，意为“这样说站不住脚”。后面接对方可能的回应，再予以反驳。

5. X is Y, and Y is exactly the thing which has to be demonstrated

“That's only to say that the same cause produces the same effect always and that's exactly the thing which has to be demonstrated”

揭露循环论证的标准表达：先复述对方论点，再指出它恰好是待证之物。用于批判性写作。

6. it would have been absurd / idiotic for him to …

“It would have been absurd for him to go on working at these”

对过去行为做反事实评价：it would have been + adj. + for sb. to do。可换 sensible / pointless 等形容词。

7. however many times … , it does not follow from that that …

“However many thousands or millions of times a particular thing has been observed … it does not follow from that the next one will be”

让步 + 否定推论，it does not follow that 是逻辑写作中表示“不能由此推出”的固定说法。

8. if there was a sort of …, it's X I would want to …

“If there was a sort of celestial philosopher's party a dinner party it's David Hume I would want to sit next to”

用虚拟情境加强调句（it's X that/I …）表达偏好，轻松而有画面感，适合演讲或评论收尾。

9. what he was contending was that none of this could be …

“What he was contending was that none of this could be proved”

what 引导的主语从句用于精确界定某人主张的范围，常用于澄清“他并非否认X，而是主张Y”。

生词精讲 · 110 · 按出现顺序

Revelation /ˌrevəˈleɪʃən/ n. 0:00

顿悟；启示

met with little attention phr. 0:00

几乎无人关注（meet with 遭遇某种反应）

deadborn /ˈdedbɔːrn/ adj. 0:00

死产的；此处喻著作一出版即无人问津

scarcely /ˈskersli/ adv. 0:00

几乎不；勉强

monetary /ˈmɑːnɪteri/ adj. 1:03

货币的

a man of Affairs phr. 1:03

实干家，参与公共事务的人

brought off phr. v. 1:03

成功完成（困难的事）

ironical /aɪˈrɑːnɪkəl/ adj. 1:03

具有讽刺意味的

come to light phr. 2:09

曝光；为人所知

flowering /ˈflaʊərɪŋ/ n. 2:09

（文化、思想的）繁荣、鼎盛

foremost /ˈfɔːrmoʊst/ adj. 2:09

最杰出的；首要的

contemplated /ˈkɑːntəmpleɪtɪd/ v. 2:09

考虑，打算

exposition /ˌekspəˈzɪʃən/ n. 3:19

阐述，说明

causality /kɔːˈzæləti/ n. 3:19

因果性

State of Affairs phr. 3:19

事态，局面

Cornerstone /ˈkɔːrnərstoʊn/ n. 3:19

基石

nub /nʌb/ n. 3:19

要点，核心

inferred /ɪnˈfɜːrd/ v. 4:31

推断

prior to phr. 4:31

在……之前

necessary connection phr. 4:31

必然联系（休谟术语）

constant conjunction phr. 4:31

恒常联结（休谟术语）

entity /ˈentəti/ n. 5:44

实体

peculiar /pɪˈkjuːljər/ adj. 5:44

特有的；奇特的

works upon phr. v. 5:44

作用于，影响

conception /kənˈsepʃən/ n. 6:50

概念，构想

it won't do to say phr. 6:50

这样说行不通

invariably /ɪnˈveriəbli/ adv. 6:50

始终不变地

indispensable /ˌɪndɪˈspensəbəl/ adj. 6:50

不可或缺的

validated /ˈvælɪdeɪtɪd/ v. 6:50

证实，确认有效

put his finger on phr. 8:02

准确指出（问题）

uniform /ˈjuːnɪfɔːrm/ adj. 8:02

齐一的，一致的

begging the question phr. 8:02

窃取论题，循环论证（逻辑谬误）

disconcerting /ˌdɪskənˈsɜːrtɪŋ/ adj. 9:07

令人不安的

Doctrine /ˈdɑːktrɪn/ n. 9:07

学说，教义

compels /kəmˈpelz/ v. 9:07

迫使

personal identity phr. 9:07

人格同一性

perception /pərˈsepʃən/ n. 10:14

知觉

crude /kruːd/ adj. 10:14

粗略的，粗糙的

succession /səkˈseʃən/ n. 10:14

接续，连续

cleared away phr. v. 11:20

清除，消除

experimental method phr. 11:20

实验方法

preaching at phr. v. 12:27

向……说教

lay down laws phr. 12:27

立规矩，发号施令

implied /ɪmˈplaɪd/ adj. 12:27

隐含的

derived from phr. 13:36

来源于

keen on phr. 13:36

热衷于，执着于

unreflectively /ˌʌnrɪˈflektɪvli/ adv. 13:36

不加反思地

accountability /əˌkaʊntəˈbɪləti/ n. 13:36

问责，责任

passes for phr. v. 14:42

被当作，冒充

subsequently /ˈsʌbsɪkwəntli/ adv. 14:42

随后

matters of fact phr. 14:42

事实问题（与观念关系相对）

sophistry /ˈsɑːfɪstri/ n. 15:44

诡辩

skeptical /ˈskeptɪkəl/ adj. 15:44

怀疑的

mitigated /ˈmɪtɪɡeɪtɪd/ adj. 16:55

温和的，缓和的

ideologies /ˌaɪdiˈɑːlədʒiz/ n. 16:55

意识形态

elaborate /ɪˈlæbərət/ adj. 16:55

精细复杂的

representations /ˌreprɪzenˈteɪʃənz/ n. 16:55

表象

contending /kənˈtendɪŋ/ v. 18:02

主张，论辩

take it for granted phr. 18:02

视为理所当然

demonstrative /dɪˈmɑːnstrətɪv/ adj. 19:04

可论证的；证明性的

preliminary /prɪˈlɪmɪneri/ n. 19:04

前提准备，预备步骤

soundly based phr. 19:04

基础牢固的

abstractions /æbˈstrækʃənz/ n. 20:07

抽象概念

alien to phr. 20:07

与……格格不入的，陌生的

absurd /əbˈsɜːrd/ adj. 21:10

荒谬的

perfectly proper phr. 22:13

完全正当的

idiotic /ˌɪdiˈɑːtɪk/ adj. 22:13

愚蠢的

methodology /ˌmeθəˈdɑːlədʒi/ n. 22:13

方法论

of the greatest consequence phr. 23:13

最重要的，最有分量的

intent on phr. 23:13

一心想要

original sin phr. 23:13

原罪

affections /əˈfekʃənz/ n. 24:12

（古义）情感，感情倾向

innate /ɪˈneɪt/ adj. 24:12

天生的

passions /ˈpæʃənz/ n. 24:12

激情（18世纪哲学术语，泛指情感）

widely read phr. 25:19

博览群书的

anxieties /æŋˈzaɪətiz/ n. 26:19

焦虑

standpoint /ˈstændpɔɪnt/ n. 26:19

立场，角度

modernity /məˈdɜːrnəti/ n. 26:19

现代性

logical positivists phr. 27:17

逻辑实证主义者

induction /ɪnˈdʌkʃən/ n. 27:17

归纳（法）

regularities /ˌreɡjəˈlærətiz/ n. 28:21

规律性

premises /ˈpremɪsɪz/ n. 28:21

前提

bound to phr. 28:21

必定会

unrestrictedly /ˌʌnrɪˈstrɪktɪdli/ adv. 28:21

不受限制地

counter-example /ˈkaʊntər ɪɡˌzæmpəl/ n. 29:33

反例

entail /ɪnˈteɪl/ v. 29:33

（逻辑上）蕴含，必然推出

knock away phr. v. 30:41

击垮，抽掉

hypothetical /ˌhaɪpəˈθetɪkəl/ adj. 30:41

假说性的

overthrow /ˌoʊvərˈθroʊ/ v. 30:41

推翻

Humane /hjuːˈmeɪn/ adj. 31:49

人道的，仁慈的

malicious /məˈlɪʃəs/ adj. 32:52

恶意的

timid /ˈtɪmɪd/ adj. 32:52

胆怯的

vain /veɪn/ adj. 32:52

虚荣的

celestial /səˈlestʃəl/ adj. 32:52

天上的

without pretensions phr. 32:52

毫无矫饰的

Immortal /ɪˈmɔːrtəl/ adj. 33:57

不朽的

equanimity /ˌekwəˈnɪməti/ n. 33:57

镇定，平静

Criterion /kraɪˈtɪriən/ n. 35:08

标准，准则

mere chance phr. 35:08

纯粹偶然

germane to /dʒərˈmeɪn/ adj. 36:19

与……密切相关的

disconcert /ˌdɪskənˈsɜːrt/ v. 36:19

使不安，使困窘

feat /fiːt/ n. 37:29

壮举

cosmology /kɑːzˈmɑːlədʒi/ n. 37:29

宇宙学

imaginative leaps phr. 37:29

想象力的飞跃

re-emerges /ˌriːɪˈmɜːrdʒɪz/ v. 37:29

重新浮现

dared to phr. 38:32

敢于

presumes /prɪˈzuːmz/ v. 39:37

假定

imposed by phr. 39:37

由……施加

idealism /aɪˈdiːəlɪzəm/ n. 39:37

唯心论（哲学）

empiricist /ɪmˈpɪrɪsɪst/ adj. 39:37

经验主义的

理解自测 · 11 题 · 是真懂了，还是以为自己懂

1. 休谟的《人性论》出版后遭遇如何？他随后做了什么补救？

《人性论》几乎无人关注，更少有人理解，休谟自嘲它“一出版就夭折了”。三十多岁时他把它改写成两本更通俗的小书——《人类理解研究》和《道德原则研究》，但反响同样冷淡。此后他在四十多岁转而写《英国史》，此书成为百年权威，以至于图书馆常把他归类为“历史学家”。这些事实出自开场介绍章节，也为后文“他是否真的离开了哲学”这一问题埋下伏笔。

2. 帕斯莫尔用橡皮球和小孩的例子想说明什么？

他想说明休谟关于因果的核心论点：因果关系不是被观察到的东西。小孩无论怎么端详橡皮球，都无法在经验之前推断它会弹起；而成年人之所以说“扔球导致弹起”“球有弹起的力量”，只是因为多次见过“扔下—弹起”这一恒常联结。成年人并没有看到任何小孩没看到的东西——没有神秘力量，也没有“必然联系”这个实体，只是经验养成了期待的习惯。这段位于第二章“橡皮球实验”。

3. 什么是“休谟之叉”？按主持人的转述，通不过这两问的著作该如何处理？

休谟之叉是休谟对一切命题的二分：要么关乎事实问题，此时必须以观察和经验为根据；要么关乎观念之间的关系，如数学和逻辑。面对任何一套观念时都要问这两个问题。如果两个问题的答案都是否定的，休谟说就该把这些著作“付之一炬”，因为它们只能包含诡辩和幻觉。主持人在“实验方法与意义理论”一节引用了《人类理解研究》结尾这段名言。

4. 主持人为什么用“昼夜相继”来反驳“B总是跟着A所以A是B的原因”？

这是为了说明恒常相继并不等于因果。白天总是跟着黑夜，黑夜也总是跟着白天，两者相继的规律性丝毫不亚于扔球与弹起，但没人会说黑夜是白天的原因。所以，即便我们承认“B不变地跟在A之后”，也不能因此说我们观察到了因果联系。这一例子把帕斯莫尔的具体案例推向一般形式：因果概念既无法被观察验证，也无法被逻辑验证，是我们经验的核心却无根可依。

5. 为什么休谟对自己关于“自我”的论述不满意？帕斯莫尔指出了什么困难？

休谟对因果的论述是满意的，因为他成功说明了人性中的某种机制迫使我们相信必然联系。但在自我问题上，他的解释是：心灵把一连串极其相似的知觉混淆为一个持续的同一体。帕斯莫尔指出，这一解释用于他人的同一性尚可，用于我们自己却陷入困境——“被搞糊涂”本身就预设了始终有一个“我们”在那里被糊涂，而这恰恰是束理论所要否认的东西。休谟起初假定只谈心灵和知觉就不会陷入无法澄清的困惑，这个困难打破了这一假定。

6. 帕斯莫尔如何论证休谟“转向历史”并非离开哲学？

他给出两层理由。第一，18世纪“哲学”的含义远比今天宽泛：物理学叫“自然哲学”，经济学、政治学属于“道德哲学”，休谟用的正是这个宽泛意义。第二，休谟自己说《人性论》只是研究道德与政治这些真正重要主题的必要“前奏”，是一种社会科学方法论。既然方法论已写完、无人反驳且他确信正确，那么接着去写政治论文、经济学、古代人口、《英国史》和文学批评，正是规划的实施。一位社会科学家一辈子只谈方法论而不做研究才是荒唐的。

7. 休谟的怀疑主义针对什么？主持人与帕斯莫尔在这一点上达成了怎样的共识？

两人都认为休谟怀疑的不是世界，而是人类理性的证明能力。主持人说，他毫不怀疑休谟真心相信存在独立的、在时空中因果关联的物质世界，我们通过感官获得其准确表象；休谟只是主张这一切无法被证明，只能在生活中视为当然。帕斯莫尔补充，这对休谟的人性理论至关重要——它建立在对自身和对他人的经验之上，因此预设了他人独立存在；要在严肃意义上怀疑这些，得是个疯子。休谟要表明的只是：我们能证明的东西远比以为的少。

8. 归纳问题是什么？黑天鹅例子从逻辑上说明了哪一点？

归纳问题是：从“过去在许多场合事情以某种方式发生”出发，没有任何有效推理能得出“将来必定如此”的结论；我们只是习惯于依赖规律性，而规律性可能失效。黑天鹅例子说明：几千年来西方人见过的每一只天鹅都是白的，数百万事例无一反例，但发现澳大利亚后欧洲人看到了黑天鹅。逻辑要点是，任何有限数目的观察都不能蕴含一个不受限制的全称结论，而所有科学定律恰恰是这类全称陈述，因此它们并不能由其“基础”观察逻辑地推出。这一点在“归纳问题与黑天鹅”一章。

9. 休谟与洛克在人性问题上的分歧是什么？休谟为自己的立场提供了哪些依据？

洛克为反对原罪说而主张心灵初生如白纸，一切由经验和教育塑造，这一路线延伸到法国启蒙和现代马克思主义，认为社会造就人。休谟则认为这荒谬：愤怒、恐惧等激情是天生且贯穿人类历史的，不同社会只改变其形式和强弱，激情居于恒久人性的核心。他的依据一是深厚的古典学养，尤其是西塞罗，他发现两千年前的人类行为在细节上与18世纪英国相同；二是《宗教的自然史》等著作中的大量事实例证。帕斯莫尔同时承认，这在休谟那里也带有不容置疑的预设成分。

10. 如果有人反驳说“科学已经证明了那么多确定的真理，休谟的怀疑早已过时”，两位讲者会怎样回应？

他们会先承认科学确实有意义、我们知道了许多以前不知道的事，但否认科学是“已证明确定性的累积”。帕斯莫尔举例：牛顿曾是确定科学的最高典范，可爱因斯坦并非只是把牛顿纳入更普遍的理论，牛顿的某些命题已被证明为假；科学家自己也越来越承认科学命题是假说性的。主持人则指出，抱有“科学即已证明的确定性”这种观念的人恰恰最需要从休谟学一课，休谟至今保有令人不安的力量。他们还会补充：科学不是走进实验室看结果，而是巨大的想象力壮举，这与休谟对想象力的强调一致。

11. 结尾提到康德的解决方案会通向“休谟不会喜欢的方向”。请说明这个推理链，并评估帕斯莫尔对休谟困境的诊断是否也适用于今天的机器学习。

推理链是：休谟从经验主义前提出发——我们拥有的只是一个个孤立接续的知觉——于是因果、外部世界、自我都无法被奠基。康德看出这些问题在该前提下无解，便拒绝前提，主张我们从一开始就把事物感知为因果关联的，秩序部分由心灵施加。可一旦承认秩序来自心灵，就打开了通向德国唯心论、黑格尔的道路，这是经验论者不愿看到的。帕斯莫尔的诊断——“仅以孤立事件为素材拼不出有序世界”——迁移到机器学习也大体成立：模型从大量相继数据中学到的只是恒常联结，休谟式的归纳问题以“分布外泛化”“相关不等于因果”的形式重现，而这正是因果推断研究试图在数据之外引入结构假设的原因。

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