And some people want to say, yes, we do.

有些人想說，是的，我們想。

Philosophers have been arguing about this for like as long as philosophy has existed.

從哲學誕生之日起，哲學家們就一直在爭論這個問題。

The question of does your experience match reality or are you really experiencing reality in its stark objective truth?

你的體驗是否與現實相符，或者你是否真正體驗到了現實的客觀真相？

And the answer is simply not exactly.

答案是不完全是。

Reality for us is what we can sense with our sensory surfaces and what we can make sense of with the signals in our brain.

對我們來說，現實就是我們的感官所能感受到的，以及我們大腦中的信號所能理解的。

The signals in our brain are as necessary for our experience of reality as the sensory signals that come from the world.

我們大腦中的信號與來自世界的感官信號一樣，都是我們體驗現實所必需的。

So I'm going to use a metaphor to describe how the brain works.

是以，我要用一個比喻來描述大腦是如何工作的。

It goes something like this.

事情是這樣的

Your brain, my brain, everybody's brain, is trapped in its own dark silent box called your skull.

你的大腦，我的大腦，每個人的大腦，都被困在一個黑暗無聲的盒子裡，這個盒子就是你的頭骨。

And the brain has no knowledge of what is going on around it in the world or in the skull.

大腦對周圍世界和頭骨中發生的事情一無所知。

And it's receiving sensory signals from the sensory surfaces of your body.

它正在接收來自身體感覺表面的感覺信號。

These signals are the outcomes of some changes in the world or in the body.

這些信號是世界或身體發生某些變化的結果。

But the brain doesn't know what the changes are.

但大腦並不知道這些變化是什麼。

It's receiving the outcomes.

是接受結果。

And that is what philosophers and scientists call the reverse inference problem.

這就是哲學家和科學家所說的反向推理問題。

You start with an outcome and you have to guess at the cause.

你從結果開始，然後猜測原因。

For example, if you hear a loud bang, it could be a car backfiring, a door slamming, it could be a gunshot.

例如，如果你聽到一聲巨響，可能是汽車倒車，可能是關門聲，也可能是槍聲。

Your brain doesn't know what the causes are.

你的大腦不知道原因是什麼。

It only knows the effect.

它只知道效果。

And so it has to guess.

是以，它必須猜測。

And the guess is important, right?

猜測很重要，對嗎？

Because you would do different things if it's a gunshot versus if it's a windy day that slammed a door.

因為如果是槍聲和大風天撞門聲，你會採取不同的行動。

And luckily, it has one other source of information.

幸運的是，它還有一個資訊來源。

And that is your past experience.

這就是你過去的經歷。

The really cool thing about this, if that wasn't cool enough, is that it's actually doing it predictively.

如果說這還不夠酷的話，那麼它真正酷的地方在於，它實際上是在進行預測。

Sometimes scientists talk about this as the brain running a model of the world.

有時，科學家會說這是大腦在運行一個世界模型。

But the brain is not running a model of the world.

但大腦運行的並不是世界模型。

The brain is running a model of its body.

大腦正在運行一個身體模型。

And it's doing it in this really interesting way.

而且它的方式非常有趣。

In psychology, a group of instances which are similar is called a category.

在心理學中，一組相似的實例被稱為一個類別。

In essence, what your brain is doing when it's making a prediction, it's creating a category of instances from the past which are similar in some way to the present in order to predict what's going to happen next, what the brain has to do next, and what your experience will be next.

從本質上講，你的大腦在做預測時，是在創造一類過去的事例，這些事例在某種程度上與現在的事例相似，從而預測接下來會發生什麼，大腦接下來要做什麼，你接下來的體驗會是什麼。

And so when a human brain is creating a category, you have to ask, what features of similarity is it using?

是以，當人腦創建一個類別時，你必須問，它使用了哪些相似性特徵？

Is it these sensory and motor features?

是這些感覺和運動特徵嗎？

An apple is round, an apple is hard and crunchy, or is it these abstract features, abstract multimodal summaries of patterns of features?

蘋果是圓的，蘋果又硬又脆，還是這些抽象的特徵，抽象的多模態特徵模式總結？

I could take a bunch of apples and I could say, well, these are good for baking and these are not good for baking.

我可以拿一堆蘋果說，這些適合烘焙，這些不適合烘焙。

And these patterns, this summary, only exists in your brain.

而這些模式、總結只存在於你的大腦中。

Because our brains are structured to construct categories based on the function of things rather than what they look like or taste like or smell like, humans can create something called social reality, which is where we collectively impose a function on objects that the objects don't have by virtue of their physical nature.

由於我們的大腦結構是根據事物的功能而不是它們的外觀、味道或氣味來構建類別的，所以人類可以創造出一種叫做社會現實的東西，即我們集體地將物體的功能強加給它們，而這些功能是物體的物理本質所不具備的。

So a really good example of this is money, little pieces of paper.

錢、小紙片就是一個很好的例子。

We all agree that these little pieces of paper have a function of value.

我們都同意，這些小紙片具有價值功能。

And it turns out that many things that we think of as being part of reality are actually like this.

事實證明，許多我們認為是現實一部分的事物其實都是這樣。

We can draw lines in the sand and create the borders of countries, which creates categories of people called immigrants and citizens.

我們可以在沙地上劃線，建立國家邊界，這就形成了被稱為移民和公民的人群類別。

We can create governments because we all agree that certain actions, like making little tick marks, has a meaning to elect someone into a position that has certain powers.

我們之所以能夠創建政府，是因為我們都同意，某些行為，比如打小鉤子，對於選舉某人擔任擁有某些權力的職位具有意義。

It's a form of social reality.

這是一種社會現實。

In our lab, we work on the hypothesis that many psychological categories are forms of social reality.

我們實驗室的工作假設是，許多心理類別都是社會現實的形式。

We impose a meaning on a scowling face that it did not evolve to have, but because we all agree that it has that meaning or that function in a particular culture, then it does.

我們強加給一張皺眉頭的臉的意義，並不是它進化而來的，但因為我們都認為它在特定文化中具有這種意義或功能，所以它就具有了這種意義或功能。

To say that your brain resides in a dark, silent box doesn't mean that you are trapped in that box.

說你的大腦住在一個黑暗、寂靜的盒子裡，並不意味著你被困在那個盒子裡。

Your brain has this wonderful capacity to take bits and pieces of past experience and create something completely new that you've never experienced before.

你的大腦有一種奇妙的能力，能從過去的經驗中汲取點滴，創造出你從未體驗過的全新事物。

We call it imagination.

我們稱之為想象力。

That's a double-edged sword, right?

這是一把雙刃劍，對嗎？

Because our brains are so good at imagining and creating predictions that are not yoked to our immediate surroundings, sometimes we have a lot of trouble staying in the present.

因為我們的大腦非常善於想象和創造與周圍環境無關的預測，所以有時我們很難停留在當下。

You have to practice your ability to control how much you want to be constrained by what's going on outside that box and how much you want to be free of it.

你必須鍛鍊自己的能力，控制自己在多大程度上願意受制於框框之外的事物，在多大程度上願意擺脫框框的束縛。