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It's very often that in the conversations about free will, you find people who believe in free will contrasted with determinists, who just think the laws of physics are gonna tell us what happens in the world.
在关于自由意志的对话中，你经常会发现相信自由意志的人与决定论者形成了鲜明的对比，后者会认为物理定律解释了这世间的一切。
'Determinism' is a statement about how the laws of physics work.
“决定论”是关于物理定律的运作原理的声明。
It goes back to Pierre-Simon Laplace explicating the implications of classical mechanics, a la Isaac Newton.
它的提出可以追溯到皮埃尔-西蒙·拉普拉斯，他解释了经典力学的含义，就像艾萨克·牛顿。
He says, "If you knew the position and velocity of everything in the world, the equations of classical physics deterministically predict what will happen next."
他说：“如果你知道世间万物的位置和速度，经典物理的方程式就能决定性地预测接下来会发生什么。”
There's no randomness: you know exactly what's gonna happen in the future.
没有随机性：你会确切地知道未来会发生什么。
To me, this is one of the biggest mistakes we could make.
我觉得这是我们可能犯的最大错误之一。
Not that you should be determinist or not, but that there is some relationship between determinism versus non-determinism, and free will versus non-free will.
并不是说你应该是决定论者或非决定论者，而是决定论和非决定论、自由意志和非自由意志之间存在某种关系。
Those are two separate questions.
这是两个不同的问题。
'Libertarian free will' is truly an ability to make choices and do things in the world that cannot even, in principle, in any way, be explained by stuff obeying the laws of physics.
‘自由主义的自由意志’是指能够做出选择和做事的能力，这些选择和事情原则上甚至无法用遵守物理定律的东西来解释。
Immanuel Kant and other people put it in these terms: They said, "There's no way of thinking of a human being as somehow a collection of physical things obeying the laws of physics."
伊曼纽尔·康德和其他人用这些术语来描述它：他们说，“我们不可能把一个人看成是服从物理定律的物理事物的集合。”
There is something that is inescapably human that cannot be reduced to an understanding of ourselves as just mindless pieces conglomerated together to make something with a mind.
有些东西必然是人类的，我们不能简单地把自己当成是一些无脑碎片凝聚在一起，创造出有思想的个体。
Now I would say, no modern scientist believes in that- to say no is an exaggeration.
我觉得没有一个现代科学家相信这种说法--要说没有也有点夸张了。
There's probably some who do, but the overwhelming majority of scientists take seriously the idea that we know what we are physically.
可能有一些人相信，但绝大多数科学家认为我们知道自己的物理构造。
We are collections of atoms, molecules, etc. - that, in principle, obey the laws of physics.
我们是原子、分子等的集合体--这些物质在原则上是遵守物理定律的。
And where you get into a little bit of tension with the underlying laws of physics is you say, "Okay, I'm describing myself.
当你对基本的物理定律感到有点紧张的时候，你会说，“好的，我描述一下自己。
You know, I have some knowledge, but I also have some preferences.
你知道，我有一些知识，但我也有一些喜好。
I have some desires, I have some values.
我有一些欲望，我有一些价值观。
I have some feelings, I have some emotions.
我有一些感觉，我有一些情绪。
And you're telling me that I'm also a collection of neurons.
你是在告诉我，我也是一个神经元的集合。
And then you're telling me that those neurons are made of atoms and particles and they obey the laws of physics.
然后你告诉我，这些神经元是由原子和粒子组成的，它们也遵守物理定律。
And once I get to the level of neurons, much less the level of atoms and molecules, there's no feelings there."
在神经元的层面，就已经没有感觉了，更不用说原子和分子层面。
And so this is where we enter into the idea of 'compatibilist free will.'
于是，这就要提到‘兼容主义者自由意志’这个概念了。
Compatibilism says that we can still talk about human beings as agents making choices, while also agreeing that we don't violate the laws of physics.
兼容主义认为，我们仍然可以把人描述为做出选择的代理人，同时也同意我们不违反物理定律。
And to say, "Well, how are those two things compatible?"
然后说，“好吧，这两件事怎么能兼容呢？”
That's a perfectly fair question, and the answer is 'emergence.'
这是一个非常合理的问题，答案是‘涌现’。
The answer is layers of reality.
答案是层层现实。
The answer is there are different ways of talking about the world that are compatible with each other, but very, very different.
答案是，我们可以用不同的方式来谈论世界，它们彼此兼容，但非常、非常不同。
When I open the closet door in the morning and say, "Should I wear the blue shirt or the red shirt?"
当我早上打开衣橱门，问：“我应该穿蓝色衬衫还是红色衬衫？”
It doesn't help me to say, "Well, I'm gonna do whatever my atoms want me to do."
如果你告诉我：“我的原子想让选哪件我就选哪件”，这无济于事。
My atoms have no wants.
我的原子没有想法。
There is something that I have that is a want, and the fact that I'm made of atoms doesn't make that go away.
我有一种东西叫做欲望，而我是由原子组成的事实并不能让欲望消失。
The compatibilist position is not one that denies determinism or indeterminism-it doesn't care.
兼容主义者的立场并不是否认决定论或非决定论--它并不在乎。
What it's saying is that you can both be a law-abiding thing in the Universe, a physical system subject to the laws of nature, and it makes sense to talk about you as an agent making choices because you're talking about a different level of description- a higher-level, emerging kind of phenomenon.
兼容主义者想说的是，你既可以是宇宙中守法的东西，也可以是服从自然法则的物理系统，把你说成是一个做出选择的代理人是有道理的，因为这是另一种层次的描述--一种更高的层次，这是个新兴现象。
I think that the best objection to my own view about free will, the compatibilist view, the emergent view, is that it's a little loosey-goosey in some sense, right?
我认为，对我关于自由意志、兼容论者、紧急情况的观点的最佳反驳是，在某种意义上，它有点随意，对吧？
I'm saying I can talk about human beings, a level of human beings, or I could talk about atoms and so forth.
我是说我可以谈论人类，一个层次的人类，或者我可以谈论原子等等。
Well, where do I draw the line?
那么，我的底线在哪里呢？
The non-compatibilist could say, "Well, what if someday I'm able to read your microexpressions on your face and exactly and reliably predict what you will do next? Would you still have free will?"
非兼容主义者可能会说，“那么，如果有一天我能读懂你脸上的微表情，并准确可靠地预测你下一步要做什么呢？你还会有自由意志吗？”
And my answer is: "Maybe not."
我的回答是：“也许不会。”
My answer is: "I can imagine in principle, getting so good at predicting how human beings actually behave on the basis of truly accessible information, that the concept of free will no longer becomes helpful or necessary."
我的回答是：“原则上，我可以想象，在真正获取到信息的基础上，我变得如此擅长预测人类的实际行为，那自由意志就没用也没必要了。”
That's just an improvement in our scientific understanding.
它只是我们对科学认识的一种改进。
Do I think that actually will ever happen? No, for lots of good reasons.
我认为这真的会发生吗？不会，有很多好理由。
Human beings are incredibly complex.
人类是难以置信的复杂生物。
There's chaotic dynamics, there's quantum fluctuations.
还有混乱的动力学，有量子涨落。
There's a whole bunch of reasons why we should expect to never give up on the picture of human beings as agents making decisions.
我们有一大堆理由可以解释，为什么我们永远不会放弃人类是决策代理人的描述。
A lot of people who are anti-free will the way they phrase it is: "I will believe that there's free will if there's a way that I could have acted differently."
许多反对自由的人会这样说：“如果我本能采取不同的行动，那我就相信自由意志的存在。”
And what they have in mind is they are collections of particles or, you know, whatever physical system, that is obeying the laws of physics- and, in fact, they could not have acted differently 'cause the laws of physics are the laws of physics.
他们心里想的是，他们是会遵守物理定律的粒子集合，或者任何物理系统--事实上，他们不可能采取不同的行动，因为物理定律就是物理定律。
But the reality is, given the actual information you know about yourself, you could have acted differently because the information you have about yourself is wildly incomplete.
但现实是，考虑到你对自己的实际了解，你本可以采取不同的行动，因为你对自己的了解是不完整的。
It's compatible with all sorts of different microscopic arrangements of what's going on in your brain and your body.
它与你大脑和身体中发生的各种不同的微观排列相兼容。
That incomplete information is why we're not perfect reasoners about the future.
这种不完整的信息让我们无法完美地推理未来。
We have an ability to reason counterfactually: to think not about just what will happen, but of various things that could happen, and then pick the one that we think is a good one.
我们有一种反事实推理的能力：不仅思考将要发生的事情，而且还思考可能发生的各种事情，然后选择我们认为是好的事情。
And since we don't know the positions and velocities of every molecule in the Universe, we can't say what would happen just given the laws of physics.
由于我们不知道宇宙中每个分子的位置和速度，我们不能仅仅根据物理定律来推测会发生什么。
What we have to say is, "Given the choices I make, what is the future that I'm going to help bring about?"
我们要说的是，“考虑到我所做的选择，我能帮助创造什么样的未来？”
So like it or not, the world that we really know and live in is one where our choices matter.
所以，不管你喜不喜欢，我们的选择在这个我们了解和生活的世界上很重要。
That's where meaning comes from, from recognizing that in the real world of the knowledge that we have and our computational boundedness, we have some responsibility for bringing about what is going to happen next.
这就是意义的来源，因为我们认识到，在我们拥有知识和计算能力的现实世界中，我们对未来要发生的事情负有一定的责任。
