..續本文上一頁的引導，如同其已經被科學唯物主義者所適用的那樣，那麼我們將幾乎完全集中于意識的物理聯系，而排斥對心理現象的觀察。顯然地，主流哲學、心理學以及神經系統科學已經信奉了後一種選擇。這種方法有利有弊；我認爲通過將微妙的內省融入對心智的科學研究，該方法可以被更好地補充、而非替代。

　　Developing a Telescope for the Mind

　　開發一臺心智的望遠鏡

　　Philosophers have been debating the merits, limitations, and defects of introspection for centuries, but they do not seem to have refined our capacity for observing mental phenomena. We are as far as we ever were from developing a telescope for the mind. A thesis can in principle be proved or strongly argued, whereas a stance—such as a particular approach to scientific inquiry—can be adopted only by a sort of “Gestalt-switch.” And this is what I am proposing: a Gestalt-switch away from the common tendency to empirically and theoretically marginalize introspection to accepting the formidable challenge of enhancing introspection in ways that are unprecedented in the history of modern science. This implies a return to empiricism: taking the methods for making penetrating observations of all kinds of natural phenomena to be of the highest value, instead of assuming that the materialist ideology in its present formulation already provides a key to unlocking all the remaining mysteries of nature.

　　哲學家們已經就內省的價值、有限性以及缺陷辯論了幾個世紀，但他們似乎沒有改善我們觀察心理現象的能力。我們距離開發一臺心智的望遠鏡還很遠。一般而言，一個論點能被證明或強有力地質疑，而一個立場——比如科學探究的一種特殊方法——只能被某種“格塔式轉換”所接納。這是我所提倡的：以在現代科學史中前所未有的方式，避開經驗上和理論上排斥內省的普遍趨勢、接受強化內省的巨大挑戰的“格塔式轉換”。這意味著經驗主義的回歸：獲取了將對各種自然現象的敏銳觀察形成最高價值的方法，以代替假設唯物主義意識形態以其現存的表述提供了開啓自然界依然未解之謎的鑰匙。

　　Scientific empiricists since Francis Bacon have generally confi ned their stance to observations of objective physical phenomena, whereas contemplative empiricists claim to have developed their faculty of mental perception to observe the space of the mind. To someone who has not utilized or refined this faculty, which the ancient Greeks called noeˉtos , contemplatives” experiential reports may sound like nothing more than speculation. The semiprivate language of highly trained contemplatives, like that of professional mathematicians, therefore becomes either unintelligible to or misinterpreted by laypeople.

　　自弗朗西斯Ÿ培根以來的科學經驗主義者逐漸限製了觀察客觀物理現象的立場，而靜觀經驗主義者宣稱已經開發了觀察心智宇宙的心理覺知的能力。對于那些沒有使用或改善這種能力——古希臘稱之爲理念(noe-tos)——的人們而言，靜觀者的經驗報告可能聽上去像推測。因此，受過高度訓練的靜觀者的半私密語言——如同專業數學家語言一樣，對局外人而言是難以理解、或被誤解的。

　　Over the past three millennia, contemplative traditions of varying degrees of sophistication have developed in the East and West, and one point on which they all seem to agree is the need to refine one”s attention skills in order to make reliable observations of mental phenomena. Specifi cally, the deeply habituated tendencies of mental agitation and dullness need to be overcome through the development of attentional stability and vividness. These skills may be strengthened in a separate set of mental exercises11 or in the very process of learning how to observe the mind. Both approaches have been explored in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions of India, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Himalayan plateau. In the spirit of healthy, open-minded, scientific skepticism, the alleged discoveries of contemplatives in these traditions should be treated with the same attitude with which scientists respond to any other claim of discovery: see if you can replicate their findings in your own laboratory.

　　在過去的叁千年中，不同複雜程度的靜觀傳統在東西方發展，他們似乎都贊同的一點是，爲了形成可靠的對心理現象的觀察，需要改善一個人的注意力。具體地說，心理散亂與昏沈的深刻習以爲常的傾向需要通過注意力恒定與清晰的改進來克服。這些技能在一系列獨立的心理練習或學習如何觀察心智的特定過程中可能得以加強。這兩種方法已經在遍布于印度、東南亞、東亞和喜馬拉雅山脈的印度教、佛教與道教傳統中開發探索。在健全的、開明的、科學懷疑論的宗旨中，這些傳統中的靜觀者所謂的發現應該與科學家對待其它任何宣稱的發現持同樣態度對待：看看你是否能在自己的實驗室重現他們的發現。

　　For a minute fraction of the expense of building, maintaining, and operating the Hubble Space Telescope, contemplative observatories could be created for empirical research into the trainability of attention and the possibility of observing the space…

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