TED演讲:你怎么知道自己是存在的(1)

 　　How do you know you're real? 你如何意识到自己的真实存在？

　　It's an obvious question until you try to answer it, but let's take it seriously. 这是个显而易见的问题，但回答起来不容易，让我们严肃地讨论一下。

　　How do you really know you exist? 你如何才能真正意识到自己的存在？

　　In his "Meditations¹ on First Philosophy," Rene Descartes tried to answer that very question,  勒内·笛卡尔在他的《第一哲学沉思集》中，试图回答这个问题，

　　demolishing² all his preconceived notions and opinions to begin again from the foundations. 他推翻了所有先入为主的概念，从根源上重新思考。

　　All his knowledge had come from his sensory³ perceptions of the world. 他所有的知识都来源于他的感官对这个世界的洞察。

　　Same as you, right? 你也是这样，对吗？

　　You know you're watching this video with your eyes, hearing it with your ears. 你知道自己在用眼睛看这个视频，用你的耳朵听它的声音。

　　Your senses show you the world as it is. 你的感官告诉你这个世界是什么样的。

　　They aren't deceiving you, but sometimes they do. 感觉器官并不会欺骗你，但有时候也会欺骗。

　　You might mistake a person far away for someone else, or you're sure you're about to catch a flyball, and it hits the ground in front of you. 从远处看，你或许会把一个人当作另外一个人，或者你确定可以抓住飞来的棒球，可是它却掉在地上。

　　But come on, right here and now, you know what's right in front of you is real. 但是不管怎样，此时此刻，你知道面前的一切都是真实的。

　　Your eyes, your hands, your body: that's you. 你的眼睛、你的手、你的身体，组成了你。

　　Only crazy people would deny that, and you know you're not crazy. 只有疯子才会否认这个事实，你知道自己不是疯子。

　　Anyone who'd doubt that must be dreaming. 对这一点持怀疑态度的人一定是在做梦。

　　Oh no, what if you're dreaming? Dreams feel real. 噢对了，如果你真的是在做梦呢？梦给人真实的感觉。

　　You can believe you're swimming, flying or fighting off monsters with your bare hands, when your real body is lying in bed. 你觉得自己在游泳、在飞翔、在赤手空拳地和怪物搏斗，可你的身体依然躺在床上。

　　No, no, no. When you're awake, you know you're awake. 不不不，你在醒过来之后知道自己是清醒的。

　　Ah! But when you aren't, you don't know you aren't, so you can't prove you aren't dreaming. 可是，当你睡着的时候，你并不知道自己是睡着的，所以你并不能证明你现在不是在做梦。

1 meditations   

默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想

参考例句：

• Each sentence seems a quarry of rich meditations. 每一句话似乎都给人以许多冥思默想。
• I'm sorry to interrupt your meditations. 我很抱歉，打断你思考问题了。

2 demolishing   

v.摧毁( demolish的现在分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings. 这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。 来自《用法词典》
• Conventional demolishing work would have caused considerable interruptions in traffic. 如果采用一般的拆除方法就要引起交通的严重中断。 来自辞典例句

3 sensory   

adj.知觉的，感觉的，知觉器官的

参考例句：

• Human powers of sensory discrimination are limited.人类感官分辨能力有限。
• The sensory system may undergo long-term adaptation in alien environments.感觉系统对陌生的环境可能经过长时期才能适应。