发布时间 : 星期日 文章2017年第三届“LSCAT杯”江苏省笔译大赛 竞赛试题英译汉稿更新完毕开始阅读5f846f6502d8ce2f0066f5335a8102d276a26125
Ever since Darwin came up with the theory of natural selection, there has been question — in some quarters, a worry — about whether human beings remain in any meaningful sense unique creatures. When it comes to things like cognition and language, we operate at far higher levels than other animals do. But are these merely differences of degree, as Darwin’s theory suggests, rather than of kind? Should the human faculties that once led us to see ourselves as ontologically special — our capacity for moral conduct, our ability to make choices on the basis of reasons — be understood instead as marking the far end of a continuous spectrum of animal all of which can be explained in light of DNA and the evolutionary history that shaped it?
自从达尔文提出自然选择学说，有些人就一直疑惑，甚至烦恼人类是否从任何层面来说都是一种与众不同的动物。我们在认知和语言等方面比其他动物拥有更高的水平，但就像达尔文理论里所说的，这些仅仅是程度上的差异而非种类的差异吗？有些能力让我们曾经认为人类在本质上是特别的，比如符合道德的行为能力和基于理性的选择能力，但这些人类能力难道就能因此被理解成动物连续行为的终端标志吗？这些动物行为的不同实际上可以从DNA差异和历史进化的观点来解释。
For a great many scientists and science-minded thinkers, the answer is an unequivocal yes. A human being is just a very clever animal. If we do something that seems at first to defy biological principles (say, heroic self-sacrifice), it’s only a matter of time before some theory of sexual selection or population genetics will explain it. Everything we do is an expression of our animal character. Any other view of human nature is an exercise in magical thinking or sentimentalism.
对于许多科学家和拥有理性思维的人来说，答案是肯定的。人类只是一种非常聪明的动物。如果我们最初做的事违背生物界规律（像英雄主义的自我牺牲），那用性选择理论或人口遗传学理论来解释该现象只是时间问题。我们每个行为都能体现我们的动物性，其他有关人性的观点都是想象思维或理性思维的结果。
Not so, the philosopher Roger Scruton says. In his finely written, compactly argued book On Human Nature (Princeton University), he sets out to defend human uniqueness — without denying that “human beings are animals, governed by the laws of biology.” His contention is that human beings are animals but also “persons,” by which he means “free, self-conscious, rational agents, obedient to reason and bound by the moral law.” Personhood, in this view, is not some extra thing to be placed supernaturally atop our organism selves. But neither is it something reducible to our biology. Rather, Scruton argues, our animal nature and our personhood are two distinct, contrasting aspects of us. One or the other comes into focus depending on what sort of questions we ask about ourselves. Science has much to say about one aspect, but not about the other.
哲学家罗杰·斯克鲁顿认为事实并非如此，在他精心创作和详细论述的《论人性》一书中，他着手驳斥人类的独特性，但并未否认人类是一种受生物界规律制约的动物。他认为人类既有兽性，也有人性。这里的人是指拥有自由行动，强烈意识和理性思维，但同时也受理性和道德律法制约的个体。从这方面来说，人格并非是安置于我们身体之上的某种超自然的额外之物，但是也不能被归纳到生物界。斯克鲁顿认为，人类的动物本性和人性是截然不同的、彼此对立的两个属性。哪一属性更凸显取决于我们问自己哪一类问题。其中一个属性可以有很多科学依据，但另一属性却不然。
Scruton offers an analogy. Consider a painting — let’s say, the Mona Lisa. It is a physical object composed entirely of physical things: lines and fields of paint applied to a canvas. If you look at the painting, you see those physical things. But you also see something else: an image of a woman with an enigmatic expression on her face. This image is not an extra thing added to the lines and fields of paint. At the same time, it is something “over and above” the paint: a likeness of Lisa Gherardini. While not every arrangement of paint gives rise to such images, those of a certain complexity do. Scruton is not suggesting that in those cases, some numinous entity — the image — is created; he is suggesting that a different way of seeing the lines and fields is available to us, a way of seeing that exposes us to a world beyond the one expressible by any purely physical description of paint.
斯克鲁顿做了一个类比。我们一起来想想蒙娜丽莎这幅画。这是一幅完全由物质要素组成的画作，在油画布上画线条和涂油漆。仔细研究这幅画，你会发现这些物质要素，你也会有其他发现，如一位面带微笑的女人形象。这个形象并非是加在线条和涂料之上的额外之物，但同时它又像是超越画作自身之物，就像丽莎·格拉迪尼。然而并非每幅画中的物质要素搭配在一起都能产生这样的形象，只有那些具有一定复杂性的方可产生这样的效果。斯克鲁顿并不赞同这种想法，当神秘的形象被创造出来时，他建议我们用另一种方法来看待这些线条和区域，这个方法就是使我们自己处于一个无法用任何简单的绘画元素来描述的世界。 Similarly, Scruton contends, personhood is an “emergent” property of a biological organism. The critical shift occurs when the organism is complex enough to become self-conscious, when it is capable of conceiving itself as an “I,” and of grasping that other like-minded organisms also conceive of themselves this way. This is the human equivalent of the moment when the image of Lisa Gherardini arises from Leonardo’s paint: A new way of understanding ourselves and others like us comes into view. We become “persons,” whose actions make sense in terms of things like reasons and obligations and free choice — a different order of explanation than biologists have recourse to （求助于，）when talking about instinctive animal behavior. Science can offer powerful accounts of the relations between organisms — between an “it” and an “it” — but it cannot capture the understanding of us as we understand each other: as between a “you” and an “I.” For Scruton, this marks a radical separation of us from the rest of the natural world.
同样地，斯克鲁顿主张人性是生物有机体发展过程中自然产生的特性。当有机体结构复杂到能够产生自我意识，或者当它能够将自身当为“人”来思考问题，或能够意识到其他有思想的生物体也能独立思考。这时就像人们从列奥纳多的画作中联想到丽莎·格拉迪尼形象的瞬间一样，一种能够理解我们人类自身和理解与我们相似的其他生物体的新方法就出现了。当讨论动物的本能行为时，与生物学家们之前提出的观点不同，这个方法解释了我们之所以能成为人，是因为我们的行为充满理智和负有责任的，并且我们拥有自由选择权。科学可以清晰地描述不同生物之间的关系，如一种生物与另一种生物（非人类）间的关系，但
我们无法做到像理解人类一样来理解这些生物。斯克鲁顿认为，这是我们人类区别于自然界其他生物一个根本标志。