..續本文上一頁科學家中，詹姆斯(William James)對于反省作爲基本的研究心的方法大膽進行了強調，哲學家方面胡塞爾(Edmund Husserl)通過“包圍”被觀察物的意識的方法作出了意識現象學的有益嘗試。但二十世紀的哲學家對基于對精神現象的直接觀察而建立一門科學的可能性還是持極度懷疑的態度，更不說說其有效性了。
Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, pided mental vocabulary into two classes: world-directed concepts and mind-directed concepts. Regarding the latter, he challenged the very possibility of a “private language” conveying meaningful information about internal experiences of being conscious.5 In support of this argument, it is true that science requires theories to be intersubjectively re-testable by replicating experiments with suitable instruments. But in addition, to test any sophisticated theory, the experimenters must have professional training in the use of those instruments and in interpreting the data produced. In modern scientifi c research, an untrained person called in from the street rarely qualifi es as a suitable “third person” who can either validate or invalidate a previous finding.
比如維特根斯坦(Ludwig Wittgenstein)把精神方面的詞彙分爲兩類，客觀概念(world-directed)和主觀概念(mind-directed)，對于後者，他懷疑“私人語言”能否在意識的內部體驗方面傳遞有意義的信息。從他的認識的正確的角度看，的確任何理論都需要在借助合適的儀器的情況下，在不同的主觀個體間可以再重現。但進一步說，想要對任何複雜的理論進行驗證，測試者一定需要經過專業的訓練才能操作儀器、解讀所得到的數據。在現代科學研究中，從大街上隨便叫一個人，很難成爲驗證和否定一個發現的“第叁者”。
A crucial element of scientific inquiry since the time of Pythagoras has been mathematics, which has taken on an especially prominent role since the scientific revolution. In 1623 Galileo famously wrote: “Philosophy is written in this grand book—the universe—which stands continuously open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one fi rst learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical fi gures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”6 And the practice of higher mathematics takes place within the mind of the mathematician and is then communicated to other mathematicians. Writing equations on a chalkboard is simply a kind of public behavior that may or may not result from the internal process of understanding proofs and devising theorems. A mathematically uneducated person may be taught how to write down the same equations, but when subjected to interrogation by a qualifi ed mathematician, will clearly not understand what he has written. Mathematicians do commonly converse among themselves in a kind of language that is unintelligible to nonmathematicians, and the same is true of experts in all fields of science. So there is no reason in principle that researchers could not receive professional training in observing mental phenomena and learn to communicate among themselves about their experiences. However, this is a major undertaking that neither philosophers nor cognitive scientists have yet tackled.
從畢達哥拉斯(Pythagoras)時代起，科學研究上必不可少的一個元素是數學，自科學革命後數學就更成爲一個令人矚目的角色。1623年伽利略寫下這段注明的話“哲學寫在一本大書—宇宙之中，大本書隨時打開供我們閱讀，不過，要想讀懂這本書，必須先要弄懂這本書寫就所用的語言和文字，這種語言就是數學以及它的叁角、圓和其他幾何形狀，沒有它們，人們不可能懂得書中的一字一句，沒有它們人們將在黑暗迷宮中迷失”。
高級數學的推演先是在一個數學家頭腦中形成，然後傳遞到其他的數學家，把方程式寫在黑板上有時候不一定是表明一個人在頭腦中懂得並證明了定理，一個沒有數學教育的人也可以寫下來，但被一個合格的數學家提問的時候，就未必講得明白他所寫的是什麼。數學家之間的交流會使用一種非數學家不懂得的語言，其他的學科也是類似。所以理論上來說，研究精神方面的人沒有經過訓練也是不能有效溝通他們自己的感受。可惜的是，不論哲學家和認知科學家在這方面訓練上都是缺乏的。
Sigmund Freud raised a formidable practical concern about the prospects for making unbiased observations of one”s own mind: there are conscious and unconscious impulses in the mind that may sometimes conceal thoughts, memories, emotions, and desires we would prefer not to acknowledge, and we may imagine such mental processes even though they are not present.7 Albert Einstein is credited with the statement, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity…
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