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Unit 1
According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without “Ena”, or selfhood and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the “self” / “other” distinction that’s axiomatic（无需证明的） in Western philosophy is much blurrier（模糊） in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan（肯尼亚） born philosopher John Mbiti（约翰·姆比蒂） put it in African Religious and Philosophy (1975): “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.”
【根据起源于古代非洲的Ubuntu哲学，新生儿不是一个人。 人们生来就没有“Ena”或自我，而是必须通过随着时间的推移的互动和经历来获得它。 因此，西方哲学中“自我”/“他人”的区别是公理化的，但在 Ubuntu 思想中则更加模糊。 正如出生于肯尼亚的哲学家约翰·姆比蒂（John Mbiti）在《非洲宗教与哲学》（African Religious and Philosophy，1975）中所说：“我思故我在”】
We know from everyday experience that a person is partly forged in the crucible of community. （在社会的严酷考验中锻造出来的） Relationships inform self-understanding. Who I am depends one many “others”: my family, my friends, my culture, my colleagues? The self I take grocery shopping say, differs in her actions and behaviors from the self that talks to my PhD supervisor. Even my most private and personal reflections are entangled with（纠缠于） the perspectives and voices of different people, be it those who agree with me, those who criticize, or those who praise me.
【我们知道每天的经历是再社会的严酷考验中锻炼出来的，人际关系可以在自我理解中体现出来，“我是谁”这个问题取决于其他人，我的家人，我的朋友，我的文化，我的同事。比如说我在杂货店购物的时候的自我，在行动和行为上与我的博士生导师的交谈的自我是不相同的。即使是我个人的反思也和因为面对不同的人而交叉在一起，无论是哪些同意我的人，批评我的人还是那些赞扬我的人。】
Yet the notion of a fluctuating and ambiguous self can be disconcerting. We can chalk up（记下） this discomfort, in large part, to Rene Descartes（勒内·笛卡尔）. The 17th-century French philosopher believed that a human being was essentially self-contained and self-sufficient; an inherently rational, mind-bound subject, who ought to encounter the world outside her head with skepticism. While Descartes（笛卡尔） did not single-handedly create the modern mind, he went a long way towards defining its contours（轮廓）.
【然而，波动和模糊的自我的概念可能会令人不安。 我们可以将这种不适在很大程度上归因于勒内·笛卡尔。 这位 17 世纪的法国哲学家认为，人类本质上是自给自足的。 一个本质上理性、受思想束缚的主体，应该以怀疑的态度面对头脑之外的世界。 虽然笛卡尔并没有一手创造了现代思维，但他在定义现代思维的轮廓方面走了很长的路。】
Descartes（笛卡尔） had set himself a very particular puzzle to solve. He wanted to find a stable point of view from which to look on the world without relying on God-decreed wisdoms（上帝赋予的智慧）; a place from which he could discern（辨别） the permanent structures beneath（下面） the changeable phenomena of nature. But Descartes believed that there was a trade-off（权衡） between certainty and a kind of social, worldly richness. The only thing you can be certain of is your own cogito（认为） – the fact that you are thinking. Other people and other things are inherently fickle and erratic（本质上是善变和不稳定的）. So they must have nothing to do with the basic constitution of the knowing self（自我认识）, which is a necessarily detached, coherent and contemplative whole.（超然的、连贯的、沉思的整体）
【笛卡尔给自己设定了一个需要解决的非常特殊的难题。 他想找到一种稳定的观点来看待世界，而不依赖于上帝赋予的智慧； 在这里，他可以辨别自然变化现象下的永久结构。 但笛卡尔相信，确定性与社会的、世俗的丰富性之间存在着权衡。 你唯一可以确定的是你自己的我思——你正在思考的事实。 其他人和其他事物本质上都是善变和飘忽不定的。 因此，它们必定与认识自我的基本构成无关，而认识自我是一个必然是超然的、连贯的和沉思的整体。】
Few respected philosophers and psychologists（哲学家和心理学家）would be identified as strict Cartesian dualists（严格的笛卡尔二元论者）, in the sense of believing that mind and matter are completely separate. But the Cartesian cogito（笛卡尔的思想） is still everywhere you look. The experimental design of memory testing, for example, tends to proceed from the assumption that it is possible to draw a sharp distinction（做出精细的区分） between the self and the world. If the memory simply lives inside the skull（头骨）, the it is perfectly acceptable to remove a person from her everyday environment and relationships, and to test her recall using flashcards or screens in the artificial and relationships, and to test her recall using flashcard or screens in the artificial confines of a lab, A person is considered a standalone entity, irrespective（不顾一切）of her surroundings, inscribed（铭刻）in the brain as a series of cognitive processes（认知过程）. Memory must be simply something you have, not something you do within a certain context.
【很少有受人尊敬的哲学家和心理学家会被认为是严格的笛卡尔二元论者，因为他们相信精神和物质是完全分开的。 但笛卡尔的我思仍然无处不在。 例如，记忆测试的实验设计往往基于这样的假设：可以在自我和世界之间做出清晰的区分。 如果记忆只是存在于头骨内，那么将一个人从她的日常环境和人际关系中移开，并在人工和人际关系中使用抽认卡或屏幕来测试她的回忆，并在人工和人际关系中使用抽认卡或屏幕来测试她的回忆是完全可以接受的。 在实验室的人工限制下，一个人被认为是一个独立的实体，无论其周围环境如何，作为一系列认知过程铭刻在大脑中。 记忆必须只是你拥有的东西，而不是你在特定环境下所做的东西。】
Social psychology purports to examine the relationship between cognition and society. But even then, the investigation often presumes that a collective of Cartesian (笛卡尔) subjects are the real focus of the enquiry（询问）, not the selves that co-evolve with others over time. In the 1960s, the American psychologists John Darley （约翰·达利） and Bibb Latane （比伯·拉塔内）became interested in the murder of Kitty Genovese （基蒂·吉诺维斯）, a young white woman who had been stabbed and assaulted（被刺和殴打）on her way home one night in New York. Multiple people had witnessed the crime but none stepped in to prevent it. Darley and Latane （达利和拉塔内） designed a series of experiments which they simulated a crisis, such as an epileptic fit（癫痫发作）, or smoke billowing（浓烟滚滚）in from the next room, to observe what people did. They were the first to identify the so-called “by stander effect” in which people seem to respond more slowly to someone in distress if others are around.
【社会心理学旨在研究认知与社会之间的关系。 但即便如此，调查也常常假设笛卡尔主体的集体是询问的真正焦点，而不是随着时间的推移与他人共同进化的自我。 20 世纪 60 年代，美国心理学家约翰·达利 (John Darley) 和比伯·拉塔内 (Bibb Latane) 对基蒂·吉诺维斯 (Kitty Genovese) 谋杀案产生了兴趣。基蒂·吉诺维斯是一位年轻的白人妇女，一天晚上在纽约回家的路上遭到刺伤和袭击。 许多人目睹了这起犯罪事件，但没有人介入阻止。 达利和拉塔内设计了一系列实验，模拟危机，例如癫痫发作或隔壁房间滚滚浓烟，以观察人们的行为。 他们是第一个发现所谓“旁观者效应”的人，即如果周围有其他人，人们对陷入困境的人的反应似乎会更慢。】
Darley and Latane（达利和拉塔内）suggested that this might come from a "diffusion of responsibility”, in which the obligation to react is diluted across a bigger group of people. But as the American psychologist Frances Cherry （弗朗西斯·切里）argued in The Stubborn Particulars of Social Psychology: Essays on the Research Process (1995), this numerical approach wipes away vital contextual information that might help to understand people’s real motives. Genovese’s murder had to be seen against a backdrop in which violence against women was not taken seriously, Cherry said, and in which people were reluctant to step into what might have been a domestic dispute. Moreover, the murder of a poor black woman would have attracted far less subsequent media interest. But Darley and Latane’s（拉塔内） focus makes structural factors much harder to see.
【达利和拉塔内认为，这可能来自于“责任的分散”，即做出反应的义务在更大的人群中被稀释。但正如美国心理学家弗朗西斯·切里（Frances Cherry）在《社会心理学的顽固细节：关于社会心理学的论文》中所指出的那样 研究过程（1995）中，这种数字方法抹去了可能有助于理解人们真实动机的重要背景信息。切里说，吉诺维斯的谋杀案必须在对妇女的暴力行为没有得到认真对待的背景下看待，而且人们在这种背景下 不愿介入可能是家庭纠纷的事情。此外，谋杀一名贫穷的黑人妇女不会引起随后媒体的关注。但达利和拉塔内的关注使结构性因素更难看到。】
Is there a way of reconciling these two accounts of the self – the relational, world-embracing version, and the autonomous, inward one? The 20th-century Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin（米哈伊尔·巴赫金）believed that the answer lay in dialogue. We need others in order to evaluate our own existence and construct a coherent self-image. Think of that luminous moment when a poet captures something you’d felt but had never articulated（清晰的表达）; or when you’d struggled to summaries your thoughts, but they crystallized（结晶的）in conversation with a friend. Bakhtin（巴赫金）believed that it was only through an encounter with another person that you could come to appreciate your own unique perspective and see yourself as a whole entity. By “looking through the screen of the other’s soul”, he wrote, “I vivify my exterior（丰富我的外表）.” Selfhood and knowledge are evolving and dynamic; the self is never finished - it is an open book.
【有没有一种方法可以调和这两种自我描述——关系性的、包容世界的版本和自主的、内在的版本？ 20世纪俄罗斯哲学家米哈伊尔·巴赫金认为答案在于对话。 我们需要他人来评价我们自己的存在并构建一个连贯的自我形象。 想象一下当一位诗人捕捉到你所感受到但从未表达过的东西时的那一刻； 或者当你努力总结自己的想法，但它们在与朋友的交谈中具体化时。 巴赫金认为，只有通过与另一个人的相遇，你才能欣赏自己独特的视角，并将自己视为一个整体。 他写道，通过“透过他人灵魂的屏障”，“我让自己的外表变得生动起来。” 自我和知识是不断发展和动态的； 自我永远不会完成——它是一本打开的书。】
So, reality is not simply out there, waiting to be uncovered. “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction’ Bakhtin（巴赫金） wrote, in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics（《陀思妥耶夫斯克诗学问题》）(1929). Nothing simply is itself, outside the matrix of relationships in which it appears. Instead, being is an act or event that must happen in the space between the self and the world.
【因此，现实并不只是在那里等待被发现。 巴赫金在《陀思妥耶夫斯克诗学问题》（1929）中写道：“真理不是天生的，也不是在个人头脑中发现的，它是在人们集体寻找真理的对话互动过程中诞生的。” 在它出现的关系矩阵之外，没有什么是简单的。 相反，存在是必须在自我与世界之间的空间中发生的行为或事件。】
Accepting that others are vital to our self-perception is a corrective to the limitations of the Cartesian （笛卡尔） view. Consider two different models of child psychology Jean Piaget's（让·皮亚杰）theory of cognitive development conceives of individual growth in a Cartesian fashion, as the reorganization of mental processes. The developing child is depicted as a lone learner - an inventive scientist, struggling independently to make sense of the world. By contrast, “dialogical” theories, brought to life in experiments such as Lisa Freund's “doll house study” from 1990, emphasize interactions between the child and the adult who can provide “scaffolding” for how she understands the world.
【承认他人对我们的自我认知至关重要，这可以纠正笛卡尔观点的局限性。 考虑一下儿童心理学的两种不同模型 让·皮亚杰（Jean Piaget）的认知发展理论以笛卡尔的方式将个体成长视为心理过程的重组。 正在发育的孩子被描绘成一个孤独的学习者——一个富有创造力的科学家，独立地努力理解世界。 相比之下，“对话”理论在 Lisa Freund 1990 年的“玩具屋研究”等实验中得到体现，强调儿童和成人之间的互动，成人可以为她如何理解世界提供“脚手架”。】
A grimmer example might be solitary（单独）confinement in prisons. The punishment was originally designed to encourage introspection: to turn the prisoner's thoughts inward, to prompt her to reflect on her crimes, and to eventually help her return to society as a morally cleansed citizen. A perfect policy for the reform of Cartesian individuals. But, in fact, studies of such prisoners suggest that their sense of self dissolves if they are punished this way for long enough. Prisoners tend to suffer profound physical and psychological difficulties, such as confusion, anxiety insomnia（失眠）, feelings of inadequacy, and a distorted sense of time. Deprived of contact and interaction - the external perspective needed to consummate and sustain a coherent self-image - a person risks disappearing into non-existence.
【一个更严峻的例子可能是监狱中的单独监禁。 这种惩罚的初衷是为了鼓励犯人反省：让犯人的思想向内转，促使其反思自己的罪行，最终帮助她以一个道德洁净的公民的身份回归社会。 笛卡尔个体改革的完美政策。 但事实上，对这些囚犯的研究表明，如果他们受到这种惩罚足够长的时间，他们的自我意识就会消失。 囚犯往往会遭受严重的身心困难，例如精神错乱、焦虑失眠、能力不足感和时间观念扭曲等。 如果剥夺了接触和互动（完善和维持连贯的自我形象所需的外部视角），一个人就有可能消失得不存在。】
（读）The emerging fields of embodied and enactive cognition（认知）have started to take dialogic models of the self-more seriously. But for the most part, scientific psychology is only too willing to adopt individualistic Cartesian assumptions that cut away the webbing that ties the self to others. There is a Zulu phrase, “umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu”, which means “a person is a person through other persons”. This is a richer and better account, I think, than “I think, therefore I am”.
【具身认知和主动认知的新兴领域已经开始更加认真地对待自我的对话模型。 但在大多数情况下，科学心理学非常愿意采用个人主义的笛卡尔假设，从而切断将自我与他人联系起来的网带。 有一个祖鲁语短语“umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu”，意思是“一个人通过其他人成为一个人”。 我认为，这是比“我思故我在”更丰富、更好的说法。】
思考题：
1. “I think, therefore l am" by Ren Descartes and "l am because you are" of Ubuntu philosophy are different views on selfhood. According to the essay "Descartes Was Wrong: A Person ls a Person Through Other Persons", summarize the different views and make your comments on either of them.
【任·笛卡尔的“我思故我在”和Ubuntu哲学中的“我是因为你是”是不同的自我观。根据《笛卡尔错了：一个人通过其他人成为一个人》一文，总结了不同的自我观的意见并对其中任何一个发表您的评论。】
Descartes’s famous statement encapsulates a foundational perspective on selfhood in western philosophy. I’m more tend to stand by Descartes’s attitude on selfhood instead of Ubuntu philosophy, that is because Ubuntu one is limited by time and region in Africa. In that time people cannot survive without society to hunt food together or build some solid architecture to protect from weather or wildlife. But now young people more tend to live alone and think all day about how to make money, in this time we are greedier to money, and money can make you survive in this giant city. So, I prefer to believe “I think, therefore I am”
【笛卡尔的著名言论概括了西方哲学中关于自我的基本观点。 我更倾向于笛卡尔的自我态度，而不是Ubuntu哲学，因为Ubuntu在非洲受到时间和地域的限制。 那时，如果没有社会共同狩猎食物或建造一些坚固的建筑来抵御天气或野生动物的侵害，人们就无法生存。 但现在的年轻人更多倾向于一个人生活，整天想着如何赚钱，这个时候我们对金钱更加贪婪，金钱可以让你在这个大城市生存。 所以，我更愿意相信“我思故我在”】
2.How do other people affect your self-perception?
【其他人如何影响你的自我认知？】
Others can criticize me, whether it is good or bad, and I selectively learn from these criticisms to improve my abilities in many aspects and better adapt to this society.
【其他人可以对我进行批评，无论是好的方面还是坏的方面，我选择性的对这些批评进行学习，从而提高自己多方面的能力，更好的适应这个社会。】
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