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英语专业八级考试(TEM-8)的选材主要来自英美报刊杂志、广播电台或网站。其中一个包括：TED演讲，2018和2016年专八听力讲座(Mini-lecture)就来自TED演讲。建议大家平时多看多听TED演讲。

演讲者：Daniel Gregory

演讲题目：How do you know you're not dreaming?

You’re a butterfly, fluttering around pursuing a butterfly’s whims.

你是一只蝴蝶，四处悠游，依照蝴蝶的举止行事。

Then you wake up. But how do you know you’re not dreaming now? The answer might seem obvious, but it’s actually very difficult to explain how, definitively, you know you’re awake. So difficult, in fact, that it has puzzled philosophers since ancient times.

然后你就醒了。但你怎么知道你现在已经醒了？答案似乎一目了然，但其实，要解释你怎么确定自己已经醒来，是件非常困难的事。真的很困难，事实上从很久以前开始，这问题就一直困扰着哲学家。

In the butterfly scenario, the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi surfaced a mystifying possibility: if we can dream of being an entirely different creature, who's to say we're not actually a different creature dreaming of being human?

在〈庄周梦蝶〉的故事中，中国古代的哲学家庄子，就已提出一个奇妙的可能性：如果我们能梦到自己变成另一种生物，那又有谁能确定，我们不是梦到变成人类的某种生物？

Bizarre things happen in dreams: you fly, or conjure an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet out of thin air, or get chased by witches through the halls of your elementary school, which suddenly looks a lot like Paris. But the strange things that happen in dreams don’t seem strange at the time. So how do you know you’re not in a dream right now that will seem very strange after you wake up?

梦里总会发生怪事：你在飞，或是凭空变出甜点吃到饱，或是明明你正在小学礼堂中被巫婆们追赶，但场景却突然跳到巴黎。但这些在梦里发生的怪事，在做梦时却觉得理所当然，所以，你又怎么知道你现在不是在作梦呢？搞不好你醒来后，这一切都会变得很荒唐呢？

Well, it is possible to notice the strangeness of a dream while you’re dreaming. Lucid dreamers know they’re dreaming. By definition, if you were having a lucid dream, you would know it. But all that proves is that you’re not having a lucid dream— it doesn’t prove you’re awake.

我们的确有机会在做梦时意识到梦境的奇怪之处。做清醒梦的人能知道自己在作梦。根据定义，如果你的梦是清醒梦，你就会知道那是你的梦。但这定义只能证明你的梦不是清醒梦，却无法证明你确实清醒。

There has to be a surefire test— something that never— or only— happens when you’re awake, something that never— or only— happens in a dream. Wake up. No, that isn’t it— you can wake up in a dream. Pinch yourself. If it hurts, aren’t you really awake?

必须来个万无一失的测试才行：找出某件从来不会在你醒来后发生，或是只在醒来时发生的事。不然就是某件从来不会在梦中发生，或是只在梦中发生的事。醒来：不，这测试不了，因为你可以在梦中醒来。捏自己。如果觉得痛，不就代表你真的醒着吗？

Try to read or write something. Run around the room. Does your pace seem normal or suspiciously slow? Suspiciously fast? Can’t tell? Try to remember the last time you ran. Actually, that brings us to an even better test from the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes. He pointed out that in our memories, dreams are disconnected— the events of a dream don’t fit in to the chain of events in our waking lives.

试着读书写字。在居室内奔跑。你的跑速正常吗？慢的可疑吗？还是快的可疑？分不清楚吗？试着想想你上次跑步的情况。事实上，那种逻辑给了我们一个更好的测试，也就是法国哲学家笛卡儿在十七世纪提出的论点。他指出在我们的记忆中，梦境不连贯，梦中发生的事情不像日常事件那样有迹可循。

This seems rock solid, doesn't it? You couldn’t possibly have swum with dolphins in a nameless pink sea between Christmas and New Year’s Eve because you didn’t leave Kansas and you have the receipts to prove it.

这论点看起来无懈可击，对吧？你不可能真的在圣诞节到跨年期间，在不知名的粉红海洋中和海豚一起优游，因为你根本没离开过堪萨斯州，而且你还有收据可以证明。

Well, one of Descartes’ contemporaries, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, had something to say about that: what if Descartes was performing his test in a dream?

但和笛卡儿同年代的英国哲学家托马斯‧霍布斯也有话想说：万一笛卡儿是在梦中实验呢？

What if we ask an expert? A neuroscientist can measure the activity in different parts of your brain and tell you whether you’re awake or sleeping. But that just brings us back to the idea that any test you might use to prove you’re awake could take place in a dream. So far, no one has found a convincing response to this.

要是我们去问问专家呢？神经学家能测量大脑不同部位的活动，告诉我们，我们是否真的清醒。但这又把我们带回那个老问题：你能用来证明自己清醒的各种实验，在梦里也能实施。目前为止，还没有人找到一个足够让人信服的答案。

But let’s be real: there’s a whole lot more detail in our waking experience than in dreams. We go to sleep and wake up again day after day for many years, and each new day is full of countless people, places, things, experiences. Even our memories, which capture just a fraction of this experience, contain an almost incomprehensibly vast amount of detail:

但让我们实际一点：和梦相比，我们在清醒时经历更多细节。多年来，我们每天重复睡、醒的过程，每天都遇见、经历无数人与事。就算是记忆，也只能保存这些经验的一小部分，却已包含多到无法想像的细节：

we can recall a line from a favorite book decades later, remember the musty smell of its pages and the taste of the lemonade we drank while reading it, remember a dream we had about it and tell someone all this. Isn't it ridiculous to suggest a dream could ever simulate this richness?

数十年后，我们仍记得最爱的书中的一句话、记得书页散发的旧书气味、记得我们读那本书时喝的柠檬汁是甚么味道、记得我们做过关于那本书的梦，也记得我们把这些事情说给人听。要说梦也能模拟出这么丰富的细节，不是很荒谬吗？

Well, as the Persian philosopher al-Ghazali pointed out, in the same way we think we are now awake having woken from dreams, it is possible that we might wake from our current state into another state of even greater wakefulness. Which would mean we’re really in a kind of dream-state when we think we’re awake.

就像波斯哲学家穆罕默德·安萨里指出的，一如我们觉得自己从梦中醒来的逻辑，我们也很有可能从目前的状态中清醒，达到另一个更神智清醒的状态。以这种观点来看，我们其实都在梦中，但我们却认为自己相当清醒。

What philosophers really want to know is what justifies our belief that we’re awake. We all want to believe things because we have reasons for them, not just because they seem right. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is to show why we should believe something that seems completely obvious to us all.

哲学家真正想知道的是，我们如何证明自己处于清醒状态。我们都想因为有理由所以才相信某些事物，而不只因为它们看似非常合理。有时候，最大的挑战是说明我们为什么应该相信某件看起来理所当然的事。

Remark：一切权益归TED所有，更多TED相关信息可至官网www.ted.com查询！

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