来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2021年7月7日
本文适合英语二考生
In essence, consciousness is any kind of subjective experience. Being in pain; smelling onions frying; feeling humiliated; recognising a friend in the crowd – all of these are examples of conscious experiences. In a field fraught with disagreements, this is something that most, but not all, researchers agree on. Go any deeper, though, and the rifts open up.
本质上，意识是任何形式的主观体验。疼痛；洋葱的油炸味；感到屈辱；在人群中认出一位朋友——所有这些都是意识体验的例子。在这个充满分歧的领域，这是大多数（但不是所有）研究人员都同意的观点。不过，再深入一点，研究人员就有分歧了。
The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes famously divided the universe into “matter stuff”, such as rocks and physical bodies, and “mind stuff”. In the 20th century, philosopher David Chalmers built on Descartes’s separation, known as “dualism”, and the work of later thinkers, to distinguish between “easy problems of consciousness” and “the hard problem”.
17世纪法国哲学家笛卡尔将宇宙分为“物质”(如岩石和身体)和“精神”。在20世纪，哲学家大卫·查默斯在笛卡尔的“二元论”和后来思想家的工作基础上，区分了“意识的容易问题”和“困难问题”。
The easy stuff consists of explaining the brain processes associated with consciousness, such as the integration of sensory information, learning, thinking and being awake or asleep. Though we are making steady progress, these problems have yet to be cracked: they are easy only in the sense that the known strategies of cognitive and neuroscientific research should eventually provide full explanations.
“意识的容易问题”包括解释与意识相关的大脑过程，如感觉信息的整合、学习、思考和清醒或睡眠。尽管我们取得了稳步的进展，但这些问题仍有待解决：它们之所以容易，只是因为认知和神经科学研究的已知策略最终应该能提供完整的解释。
The hard problem is to explain why and how we have subjective experiences at all. “Consciousness poses the most baffling problem in the science of the mind,” Chalmers said. The puzzle is how a 1.3 kilogram organ with the consistency of tofu can generate the feeling of being.
困难的问题是解释我们为什么以及如何有主观体验。“意识是心智科学中最令人困惑的问题，”查默斯说。谜团是，一个1.3公斤重像豆腐一样的器官如何能让人产生存在的感觉。
Some believe the hard problem can never be solved – it is beyond the capabilities of human cognition. Others think that, with a better understanding of the brain, it will simply go away. Anil Seth at the University of Sussex sees a third way. He thinks that tackling the easier stuff will allow researchers to address the hard problem indirectly.
有些人认为这个难题永远无法解决——它超出了人类认知的能力。另一些人则认为，随着对大脑的更好理解，这个难题就会消失。萨塞克斯大学的阿尼尔•赛斯看到了第三种方法。他认为，解决更简单的问题将使研究人员间接地解决困难的问题。