Department of English, University of North Texas Denton, TX, USA.
Front Physiol. 2011 Oct 4;2:68. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2011.00068. eCollection 2011.
American psychologist and philosopher William James devoted the entirety of his career to exploring the nature of volition, as expressed by such phenomena as will, attention, and belief. As part of that endeavor, James's unorthodox scientific pursuits, from his experiments with nitrous oxide and hallucinogenic drugs to his investigation of spiritualist mediums, represent his attempt to address the "hard problems" of consciousness for which his training in brain physiology and experimental psychology could not entirely account. As a student, James's reading in chemistry and physics had sparked his interest in the concepts of energy and force, terms that he later deployed in his writing about consciousness and in his arguments against philosophical monism and scientific materialism, as he developed his "radically empiricist" ideas privileging discontinuity and plurality. Despite James's long campaign against scientific materialism, he was, however, convinced of the existence of a naturalistic explanation for the more "wayward and fitful" aspects of mind, including transcendent experiences associated with hysteria, genius, and religious ecstasy. In this paper, I examine aspects of James's thought that are still important for contemporary debates in psychology and neuroscience: his "transmission theory" of consciousness, his ideas on the "knowing of things together," and, finally, the related concept of "the compounding of consciousness," which postulates the theoretical possibility for individual entities within a conscious system of thought to "know" the thoughts of others within the system. Taken together, these ideas suggest that James, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his forays into metaphysics, was working toward a naturalistic understanding of consciousness, what I will term a "distributive model," based on his understanding of consciousness as an "awareness" that interacts dynamically within, and in relation to, its environment.
美国心理学家和哲学家威廉·詹姆斯（William James）毕生致力于探索意志、注意和信仰等现象所表达的意志本质。在这项努力中，詹姆斯非正统的科学研究，从他对一氧化二氮和迷幻药物的实验到他对灵媒的调查，代表了他试图解决意识的“难题”，他在大脑生理学和实验心理学方面的训练并不能完全解释这些问题。作为一名学生，詹姆斯在化学和物理学方面的阅读激发了他对能量和力量概念的兴趣，后来他在关于意识的写作中以及在反对哲学一元论和科学唯物主义的论点中运用了这些概念，因为他发展了他的“激进经验主义”思想，强调不连续性和多样性。尽管詹姆斯长期反对科学唯物主义，但他仍然相信有一种自然主义的解释，可以解释思维中更“任性和多变”的方面，包括与歇斯底里、天才和宗教狂喜相关的超验体验。在本文中，我将探讨詹姆斯的思想中仍然对当代心理学和神经科学争论具有重要意义的方面：他的意识“传输理论”、他关于“共同认识事物”的思想，以及最后，相关的“意识复合”概念，该概念假设在意识系统中，个体实体有理论上的可能性“认识”系统内其他实体的思想。总的来说，这些思想表明，尽管詹姆斯涉足形而上学，但他还是在朝着一种对意识的自然主义理解努力，我将其称为“分布式模型”，基于他对意识的理解，即意识是一种在其环境中动态交互的“意识”。
