CONSCIOUSNESS. The term “consciousness” has been used with a variety of meanings. The two more technical applications are as follows: (1) A person is conscious as long as his mental processes are going on, and he is unconscious when these feelings, ideas, thoughts, desires, and the like are suspended. In this sense, consciousness has the same meaning as experience and awareness. (2) Consciousness also denotes a person’s awareness of his mental processes. By introspection, he can have some knowledge of what he is sensing and thinking and feeling. This article will concentrate on the first meaning.

意识。“意识”这个术语有各种含义。以下有两个更为技术性的应用：（1）一个人只要他的心理过程在持续，他就是有意识的，而当感觉、主意、思想、欲望、希望处于暂停状态时，他就是没有意识的。在这个意义上，意识就具有了像经历和认知相同的含义。（2）意识也表示一个人对其心理过程的意识。通过自省，他可对他感知、思考和感觉的事物进行了解。本文将专注于第一种含义。

There are degrees in being conscious in the sense of being aware of what is going on in the world. At one extreme is the condition of a person in a coma, when there seems to be a total absence of experience. At least, there is a total absence of anything that can be recalled later. At the other extreme is the keen alertness of a man who expects danger. Between the states of coma and of maximum alertness are other stages. A person who is asleep is not necessarily unconscious, because he can be aware of dreams and in some degree of factors such as cold and noise.

在有意识中认识到世界上正在发生事情的意义是分程度的。一种极端的情况是人处于一种昏迷状态，就是当一个人完全失去了体验时。至少是事后完全忘却了可能回忆起来的事情。另一种极端情况是，一个人预料危险的敏锐警觉性。在处于昏迷与高度警觉状态之间是有其它的阶段。一个睡着的人不一定是无意识的，因为他可能意识到梦境，以及一定程度的，诸如寒冷和噪音这样的一些因素。

It is important to point out that consciousness as defined here refers to something that is going on in a person and not to something that exists in itself. Like “happiness,” “graciousness,” or “thoroughness,” consciousness properly refers to some quality of the human being taken in the abstract. However, there is a tendency in human thinking to treat abstractions as if they had actual existence—for example, to speak of “mind” as if it were something located in the head. Since a man may be conscious, it is easy to fall into the assumption that something like a consciousness exist. This tendency has been strengthened by another circumstance. There has been much psychological interest in the description of the individual’s experiences when he is conscious, of his feelings, perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. But to arrest such experiences in mid-career, to hold them static for detailed description, incurs the danger of misapprehending these cross-sectional snapshots and treating them as stable and enduring things.

重要的是要指出，这里定义的意识是指人所发生的某些事情，而不是意识本身存在的东西。像“幸福”，“和蔼”或“周到”，严格地说意识是指人类抽象的某些品质。然而，在人类的思维中有一种处理抽象事物的趋势，就像抽象事物真的存在一样。例如，说起“心思”就像它存在于头脑中一样。既然人是有意识的，那么很容易陷入像意识存在这样的一些假设中。这种趋势通过另外的环境得以加强。当人类意识到他的感情、认知、情绪以及思维时，在描述个人的体验中便引发了许多心理学的兴趣。但要在职业生涯的中期捕获这种经验，保持住它们的静态来加以详细的描述，就会带来误解这些横截面快照，就有将它们视为稳定而持久事物的危险。

Study of Consciousness. It should be pointed out that to deal with how one is conscious, and what one is conscious of, is no less the proper subject matter of natural science than dealing with natural objects. The world of physics is, after all, a standardized and systematized set of constructs derived from comparisons of the original conscious observation of reliable reporters. Such observations are, in the truest sense, phenomena. The afterimage of a bright light that continues to be observed where one knows no real physical light to be, is nevertheless there—as a datum, a phenomenon. And psychologists continue to take a legitimate interest in this phenomenological approach, a witness much of the subject matter of the Gestalt school of psychology.

对意识的研究。应当指出的是，研究人如何产生意识，以及人意识到的是什么，与研究自然对象相比同样是适当的自然科学主题。毕竟，物理学世界是一个标准化和系统化构建的集合，它源自可靠的报告者们对原始意识观察的比较。这样的观察，在最真实的意义上讲都是现象。尽管如此，在人们不了解真正的物理光存在的地方，仍然可以观察到作为一种假定、一种现象的明亮余光。而心理学家对这种现象学的取向，一种见证了大量格式塔心理学学派的主题继续保持了合理的兴趣。

Although studying what we are conscious of from moment to moment had been the center of interest in man and his mental processes for centuries, it had also been recognized in some quarters that much of what goes on in our own minds goes on without our knowing it.

几个世纪以来，尽管我们时时刻刻对有意识的研究一直是人类及其精神过程关注的中心，但在某些领域也得承认，我们对我们头脑中发生的许多事情并不了解。

How can one describe, compare, and formally break down his experiences? To ask, “What is it like to be conscious?” is to word an impossible question. As is true in blindness, unless one has had the experience firsthand, no verbal statements can acquaint him with it. One can, however, recall and compare the different things of which he has been conscious and the different ways in which he has been conscious of them. Psychologist, called structuralists, have applied themselves to this analytic work by introspecting. Awareness of present things break down, if we are analytic enough, into information derived through the senses—visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, static, and organic. Experiences from any of the senses vary further as to their intensity, extensity, duration, quality, and clearness. Not only may one be aware of things present in these ways, but he may be aware of things absent, through mental images.

人们如何描述、比较并在理论上分解他的经历呢？若问“究竟有意识是什么？”，这是个无法用文字描述的问题。就像天生的失明那样，任何的口头描述都不能使他了解所描述的对象，除非他曾经有过直接的体验。然而，人可能回忆和比较他曾意识到的不同事物，以及他所意识到的它们的不同方式。那些被称为结构主义的心理学家通过自省将他们自身投入到这种分析的工作之中。如果我们分析的充分，就会将当下事物分解成来源于这些感官的信息---视觉的、听觉的、嗅觉的、味觉的、触觉的、动觉的、静态的以及有机体的感觉。任何这些感觉的体验会因它们的强度、广度、持续时间、特性及清晰度而进一步变化。以这些方式，人不仅可以意识到事物的现状，而且他也可以通过精神的想象，意识到不存在的事物。

What one is conscious of, the so-called contents of consciousness, includes all these variable experiencing. These are combined and rearranged in countless ways, ranging from chance conglomerations of drowsiness or reverie to neat sequences of logical thinking. However, the combining and rearranging are not themselves ordinarily experienced, but only their results.

那么，人意识到的，包括所有这些可变体验的所谓意识的内容究竟是什么呢？这些是以无数种方式组合并重新排列的，从偶然的困倦或遐想到整齐的逻辑思维序列。然而，组合与重新排列本身并不是通常的经历，只是它们的结果。

Biological Aspects.  Modern thinkers have been much concerned with the functioning of the human being in nature, and as the evolutionary viewpoint became ascendant, the query arose: What is the place of consciousness in the evolving natural world? It must be of survival value. The notion of organismic adjustment to environment, coming to the fore with Darwinism in the mid-19^th century, furnished the key: when, in the business of living, an organism meets with a difficulty that it fails to escape or solve at once by automatic reflex-instinctive reactions, it becomes more conscious and more alive and sensitive to the possibilities of the situation. When a difficulty is encountered one “wakes up” or “sits up and takes notice,” and thus the range of possibilities for effective reaction is increased. And the various processes of consciousness—such as sensation, perception, conception, and imagination—get their biological significance in terms of their adjustment value.

生物学方面。现代的思想者非常关注人类在自然中的功能，随着进化论观点的兴起，问题来了：在进化的世界中，意识处于什么地位？它必须具有生存的价值。伴随着19世纪达尔主义的出现，有机体适应环境的概念提供了钥匙：在生存方面，当一个有机体遇到困难，而它又无法立刻通过自动的本能反射反应来逃避或解决时，就会变得有意识，更活跃，而且对环境的可能性变得更敏感。当遇到困难时，人们会“警觉起来”或“开始注意起来”，因此便增强了有效反应可能性的范围。然后，意识的各种过程---诸如感觉、感知、概念和想象力---根据它们的调整值，了解它们的生物学意义。

Just wherein the evolution of animal forms consciousness first appeared is a speculative question that can never be answered definitively by direct evidence. However, it has intrigued a number of thinkers, from those who have held that all forms below man have no consciousness and are only elaborate automatic mechanisms, to those who support the view that unicellular organisms have a psychic life. In the ascending order of evolving animal organisms, the modes of behavior observed have led comparative psychologists to speak of two diverging main lines of psychic development. One is in the direction of ever more elaborate mechanical, instinctive adjustments to living conditions, seen in ants, bees, and wasps; the other is toward ever more modifiability, plasticity, and capacity for learning, as exemplified by man. It is supposed that the latter main branch involves more and more conscious experience. These matters are certainly speculative, and they remind a scientist of another fruitless question: Just when in the development of the individual organism does any faintest glimmering of consciousness enter—at conception, at birth, or when?

    在此动物的进化首次产生的意识只是一个推测性问题，因此永远无法用直接的证据来回答它。然而，它使许多思考者着迷，他们认为人类以下的所有形式都没有意识，只是复杂的自动机制，那些支持这一观点的人们认为单细胞机制有一种超自然的生命。在进化的动物机制的升序中，观察到的行为模式导致了比较心理学家认为，有两条发散的精神发展主线。一条是对生存条件更加精致、本能地适应生存环境的方向，如看到的蚂蚁、蜜蜂和黄蜂那样；另一条是向更多的可变性、可塑性和学习能力发展，人类就是这样。据推测，后者的主要分支涉及了越来越多有意识的经验。这些事态当然都是推测性的，而且让科学家们想到了另一个无结果的问题：在个体有机体的发展中那些最微弱的意识微光是何时进入的---在怀孕时，是出生时，或者是别什么时候？

More related to ascertainable facts is this query: How is a man’s being aware, his consciousness, related to his other physiological processes? This question is also difficult to answer. Evidence from embryology, comparative anatomy, and pathology points clearly to some correlation of consciousness with neural functions, particularly of the cerebrum. Complexity of development, as well as healthy integrity of his cerebral structure, seems to go with the ability of a person to report that he is conscious. Injure the head and cerebrum, and the victim loses all consciousness, or is conscious of only some particular kinds of things. Suggestions and feelings are derived from both the external and the internal sense organs.

与可确定的事实更加有关的是这个问题：人是如何意识到存在的，他的意识，与他的其它的生理学过程有关吗？要回答这个问题也是很难的。来自胚胎学、比较解剖学以及病理学的证据显然指向了意识与神经功能，尤其是与大脑的某些相互关系。发展的复杂性，以及其大脑结构健康的完整性，似乎与人描述其意识的能力有关。一旦头部和大脑损伤，受害者会丧失所有的意识，或者只能意识到某些特定的东西。暗示和感觉既来自外部的感觉器官，也来自内部的感觉器官。

Dreams. There has always been high interest in unusual kinds of conscious experience. The most common form is the dream. The stuff of which dreams are made has some four sources: (1) present sensations occasioned by actual physical stimulations, such as hunger, exposure of the sleeper’s feet to cold, sound, or light; (2) fragmentary recalls from experiences in hours preceding the sleep, as of dinner-table conversation or bad news received; (3) persistent lines of motivated interest, as the orphan’s dream of going home; and (4) deeper motives that are suppressed as untenable as long as one is awake, but slip into one’s dream consciousness sometimes in disguised forms. The latter furnish some of the material with which the psychoanalyst deals as he seeks to revive and reconstruct experiences in his patient’s past. The experiences are assumed to leave their traces, though they are beyond voluntary recall.

做梦。一直以来，人们对不同寻常的那类有意识的体验有着浓厚的兴趣。最为常见的形式就是做梦。构成梦想的东西有以下四个来源：（1）由实际的物理刺激引起的当前感觉，诸如饥饿感，睡眠者的脚暴露在寒冷、声响或光源中；（2）睡前几个小时的零碎回忆，如餐桌边的谈话或收到的坏消息；（3）反复出现的动机兴趣线索，如孤儿回家的梦想；以及（4）只要人醒着，被压抑的深度动机便站不信脚，但有时会以伪装的形式滑入你梦的意识中。后者为精神分析师试图恢复和重建其病人过去的经历提供了所处理的材料。假设那些经历留下了它们的痕迹，尽管它们并非是自愿回忆的。

Freud’s View of the Unconscious. In disentangling the complex motivations of men—unraveling the peculiarities of their everyday behavior as well as finding the reasons for their neuroses—Sigmund Freud found it useful to assume THREE levels of awareness: the conscious, the fore-conscious or preconscious, and the unconscious. Immediately below the level of full consciousness lie the preconscious ideas that one is not aware of at the moment but can recall to mind more or less readily. Then there are ideas or motives that quit resist any recall under ordinary circumstances and that—to continue Freud’s spatial analogy—lie in the great unconscious. The inaccessibility to the individual’s recall of these ideas is due to their strong incompatibility with his conscious thoughts and ideals. It is as if a powerful censor—owing its nature to the individual’s established thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots—were acting to suppress and repress them, and so to protect the individual personality from the disruptive effects of realizing them.

弗洛伊德的无意识观点。在解开人类复杂的动机中---揭示他们日常工作行为的独特性，以及找出他们神经症状的原因---西格蒙德·弗洛伊德发现，假定意识有三个层次是很有用的，有意识，在意识之前或前意识，以及无意识。紧接着低于完全意识的层次是前意识的想法，以至于人们在此刻并未意识到它，但或多或少能较容易地回忆起来。然而，在一般情况下，有些想法或动机是无法回忆的，并且延续弗洛伊德的空间类比---存在于巨大的无意识中。个体对这些想法回忆的难以接近是由于它们与他有意识的思维和理想的极不相容。就像一位有影响力的审查者---由于其性质是个体已建立的你应该与你不应该---正在抑制和压抑它们，因此为了保护个体人格免受实现它们所造成的破坏性影响。

Peculiarities in Experience.  There are many cases of peculiarities in conscious experiences. Examples are: the crystal gazer’s recall of thing he was not aware of having seen before; the mathematician’s or the poet’s sudden awareness of an answer to a problem he thought he had put quite out of mind; and the faithful following of an instruction given to a hypnotized subject, but performed some time after the trance is lifted and without any recognition on the performer’s part that it was an instruction. Such operations, being outside the person’s consciousness, are often called subconscious operations. The great danger is the ready assumption that a “subconscious mind” exists—a daemonlike agency to which all sorts of mysterious powers is popularly attributed. It makes for clearer thinking to insist on using this word (as in the case of “conscious”) in its attributive rather than in any substantive sense.

经历的独特性。在有意识的经历中有许多独特性的案例。例如：凝视水晶球的人回忆起的并非是他意识到了先前看到的东西；数学家或诗人忽然间意识到一个他认为他已完全忘却的问题；使实验对象忠实地遵循一个指令，但在恍惚解除的一段时间后实验对象并未意识到这是一个指令。这种处于人的意识之外的操作通常被称为潜意识操作。最大的危险是想当然地假设存在一种“潜意识意向”---一种各种神秘力量普遍归于此的魔化般的机构。坚持在其定语中（像在“有意识的”情况中一样）而不是在任何实质性意义上使用该词，可以使思维更加清晰。

An interesting variation from the workaday consciousness is the mystical experience. Even in deliberative rational thinking, much progress is made not by step-by-step ratiocination but by sudden insights, for which prior thinking only prepares the groundwork. The preliminary diagnosis of a physician and the tentative opinion of a judge, like the inspirations of the scientific research worker or of the author or composer, are only more dramatic than the hunches and insights with which every man is guided in is decisions. Sometimes they come in dreams, and even in waking life they occasionally come as if from without, as “inspirations.” Closely allied is the more emotional experience of ecstasy, sought in one form or another by such means as painful self-flagellation, fasting, alcoholic intoxication, mescal or other drugs, or great fatigue. These “Dionysian” experiences have been deliberately sought through all times by peoples in all parts of the world.

来自日常意识的一个有趣变化是那种神秘的体验。即使在审慎的理性思考中，许多进步也不是通过逐步的推理取得的，而是通过忽然的领悟，而先前的思考只是准备了基础工作。医生的初步诊断和法官的初步意见，就像科学研究者、作家或作曲家的灵感一样，只不过相比引导每个人做决定的预感和洞察力更具有戏剧性罢了。有时它们会在梦中出现，甚至偶尔出现在清醒的状态下，好像来自外界的“灵感”一样。紧密的联系是更加情绪化的狂喜体验，通过这种或那种方式寻求像痛苦的自我鞭挞、禁食、酗酒、龙舌兰酒或药物，或极度疲劳。这些“狂欢的”体验一直都是被世界各地的人们刻意寻求的目标。

There has been a resurgence of interest in the effects of drugs on consciousness. The so-called “consciousness-expanding”—or more critically named “consciousness-distorting”—drugs have been made the center of certain cults. Proponents of using drugs such as LSD have claimed bizarre results in the consciousness of the participants. But such reports are highly subjective; when critically analyzed, they are found to imply little more than increased hallucinatory vividness and excess of feeling rather than originality of thought content. Hallucinatory experiences at times have been followed by prolonged mental illness, attempt at suicide, or attacks on others. See also HALLUCINOGEN.

在药物对意识的影响中，人们又重新燃起了兴趣。所谓的“意识扩展”---又或更严格地称为“扭曲的意识”---药物已成为某些邪教的中心。使用像LSD（一种麻醉药）药物的支持者声称在参与者的意识中有奇异的结果。但这样的报告是极为主观的；当经过严格分析后，发现它们只是暗示增加了幻觉的生动性和过度的感觉，而不是思想内容的独创性。有时幻觉的体验会伴随着长期的精神病症，自杀的企图，或者攻击他人。也可参阅幻觉词条。

Disorders of Consciousness. Some drug-induced states fall in the category of abnormal forms of consciousness. These are not classified and studied on their own accounts but as symptoms to be understood as parts of whole personality syndromes. Disorders in perceiving and thinking among psychiatric cases include: hallucinations; disorientation or defective perception of place and time; memory failures of many sorts; delusions or paranoidal ideas, especially centering about one’s own importance; incoherence in train of ideas; pell-mell flight of ideas; obsessions and compulsions in which the patient cannot escape nagging ideas or seems driven to certain routine actions; phobias in which he is the victim of irrational dreads; anesthesias, or losses of sensibility; and amnesias, or losses of memory. A few of the disorders of emotion include euphoria or exaltation, depression, irascibility, and anxiety and unnamed dreads.

意识的紊乱。一些药物引发的状态属于意识的异常范畴。这些症状并未根据它们的陈述加以分类和研究，而是将症状理解为整体人格症状的一部分。在精神病的病例中的感知和思维紊乱包括：幻觉；对地点和时间感知的迷失或缺陷；各种各样的记忆丧失；妄想或偏执狂的想法，尤其是以人自己的重要性为中心；思路不连贯；胡思乱想；强迫症和冲动的患者无法摆脱唠叨的意念，或者似乎被常规行为所驱使；处于恐惧症的人是非理性恐惧的受害者；麻醉，或丧失敏感性；还有健忘症，或丧失记忆；一些情绪紊乱包括狂喜，或者兴奋、抑郁、易怒，以及焦虑和莫名的恐惧。

JOHN F. DASHIELL, University of North Carolina

约翰·F. 达希尔，北卡罗莱纳大学

           2022年12月23日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第7卷，第610页至612页）