Ongaro Giulio, Ward Dave
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE UK.
Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD UK.
Biol Philos. 2017;32(4):507-533. doi: 10.1007/s10539-017-9572-4. Epub 2017 Apr 12.
Placebos are commonly defined as ineffective treatments. They are treatments that lack a known mechanism linking their properties to the properties of the condition on which treatment aims to intervene. Given this, the fact that placebos can have substantial therapeutic effects looks puzzling. The puzzle, we argue, arises from the relationship placebos present between culturally meaningful entities (such as treatments or therapies), our intentional relationship to the environment (such as implicit or explicit beliefs about a treatment's healing powers) and bodily effects (placebo responses). How can a mere attitude toward a treatment result in appropriate bodily changes? We argue that an 'enactive' conception of cognition accommodates and renders intelligible the phenomenon of placebo effects. Enactivism depicts an organism's adaptive bodily processes, its intentional directedness, and the meaningful properties of its environment as co-emergent aspects of a single dynamic system. In doing so it provides an account of the interrelations between mind, body and world that demystifies placebo effects.
安慰剂通常被定义为无效治疗。它们是缺乏一种已知机制将其特性与治疗旨在干预的病症特性联系起来的治疗方法。鉴于此，安慰剂能产生显著治疗效果这一事实看起来令人困惑。我们认为，这个谜题源于安慰剂在文化上有意义的实体（如治疗方法或疗法）、我们与环境的意向性关系（如对一种治疗的治愈能力的隐性或显性信念）和身体效应（安慰剂反应）之间呈现的关系。对一种治疗的仅仅一种态度怎么会导致适当的身体变化呢？我们认为，一种“生成性”的认知概念能够容纳并使安慰剂效应现象变得可理解。生成论将生物体的适应性身体过程、其意向指向性以及其环境的有意义特性描述为一个单一动态系统的共同涌现方面。这样做，它提供了一种对心、身和世界之间相互关系的解释，从而使安慰剂效应不再神秘。
