..续本文上一页科学家中，詹姆斯(William James)对于反省作为基本的研究心的方法大胆进行了强调，哲学家方面胡塞尔(Edmund Husserl)通过“包围”被观察物的意识的方法作出了意识现象学的有益尝试。但二十世纪的哲学家对基于对精神现象的直接观察而建立一门科学的可能性还是持极度怀疑的态度，更不说说其有效性了。
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.
比如维特根斯坦(Ludwig Wittgenstein)把精神方面的词汇分为两类，客观概念(world-directed)和主观概念(mind-directed)，对于后者，他怀疑“私人语言”能否在意识的内部体验方面传递有意义的信息。从他的认识的正确的角度看，的确任何理论都需要在借助合适的仪器的情况下，在不同的主观个体间可以再重现。但进一步说，想要对任何复杂的理论进行验证，测试者一定需要经过专业的训练才能操作仪器、解读所得到的数据。在现代科学研究中，从大街上随便叫一个人，很难成为验证和否定一个发现的“第三者”。
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.
从毕达哥拉斯(Pythagoras)时代起，科学研究上必不可少的一个元素是数学，自科学革命后数学就更成为一个令人瞩目的角色。1623年伽利略写下这段注明的话“哲学写在一本大书—宇宙之中，大本书随时打开供我们阅读，不过，要想读懂这本书，必须先要弄懂这本书写就所用的语言和文字，这种语言就是数学以及它的三角、圆和其他几何形状，没有它们，人们不可能懂得书中的一字一句，没有它们人们将在黑暗迷宫中迷失”。
高级数学的推演先是在一个数学家头脑中形成，然后传递到其他的数学家，把方程式写在黑板上有时候不一定是表明一个人在头脑中懂得并证明了定理，一个没有数学教育的人也可以写下来，但被一个合格的数学家提问的时候，就未必讲得明白他所写的是什么。数学家之间的交流会使用一种非数学家不懂得的语言，其他的学科也是类似。所以理论上来说，研究精神方面的人没有经过训练也是不能有效沟通他们自己的感受。可惜的是，不论哲学家和认知科学家在这方面训练上都是缺乏的。
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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