How to avoid foolish opinions 中英文對照.doc

如何避免愚蠢的見解伯特蘭羅素1 To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error. 要避免人們常常產(chǎn)生的各種愚蠢的觀點(diǎn)，并不需要過人的天賦。立幾條簡單的規(guī)則就可以使得你避免荒唐的錯(cuò)誤，雖然不能避免一切錯(cuò)誤。2 If the mater is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you dont is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat balck beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them. 如果事情可以通過觀察來解決的， 那你就親自觀察好了。亞里斯多德認(rèn)為女人的牙齒比男人少，其實(shí)很簡單，只需請亞里斯多德夫人張一張口來讓他數(shù)一數(shù)，他本是可以不犯這一錯(cuò)誤的。他沒有那么做，因?yàn)樗J(rèn)為他知道。自以為懂而實(shí)際并不懂是一種致命的錯(cuò)誤，我們都易犯這種錯(cuò)誤。我自己相信，刺猬吃黑甲蟲，因?yàn)槿藗兏嬖V我，它們是這樣的。但如果我要寫一本論述刺猬習(xí)性的書的話，那么在我未親眼看到一個(gè)刺猬享受這種倒胃口的食品之前，我是不會(huì)動(dòng)筆的。然而，亞里斯多德卻不夠謹(jǐn)慎。古代和中世紀(jì)的作家談起獨(dú)角獸和火蛇來如數(shù)家珍， 但他們中沒有一個(gè)人認(rèn)為，因?yàn)樽陨韽奈匆娺^這些東西的任一種，而有必要避免對它們作武斷的闡述。3 Many matters, however are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matter, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. 但是，許多事情是不那么容易用經(jīng)驗(yàn)來檢驗(yàn)的。如果像大多數(shù)人那樣，在此類事情上執(zhí)迷不誤，那么有許多方法可以使你自己認(rèn)識(shí)到自己的偏見。如果某一種與你相左的見解使你生氣，那么這就是一種跡象，說明你潛意識(shí)地感到，你沒法給自己的想法以充分的理由。倘若有人堅(jiān)稱，2加2等于5，冰島是在赤道上，你只會(huì)感到同情而不是憤怒，除非你對算術(shù)或地理知之甚少，以致他的觀點(diǎn)動(dòng)搖了你的立場。最激烈的爭淪是對那些雙方都沒有充分證據(jù)的事物的爭論。迫害事件僅發(fā)生于神學(xué)領(lǐng)域，而不見于算術(shù)領(lǐng)域，因?yàn)樵谒阈g(shù)中有知識(shí)，而在神學(xué)中僅有觀點(diǎn)。因此當(dāng)你發(fā)現(xiàn)你自己對不同的意見氣惱時(shí)，你一定要警惕；通過檢驗(yàn)?zāi)慊驅(qū)l(fā)現(xiàn)，你的信念并無足夠的依據(jù)。4 A good way of riding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to be come aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country-in France, Germany, italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution. 使你自己擺脫某些教條主義的一種好方法是去了解與你不同的社會(huì)集團(tuán)所持的意見。我年輕時(shí)常居住在國外，在法國、德國、意大利和美國。我發(fā)現(xiàn)這對于消彌特定的偏見很有幫助。如果你無法遠(yuǎn)行，那就找一些與你意見相左的人，讀一讀不屬于你們黨派的報(bào)紙。如果這些人和報(bào)紙看上去瘋狂、荒謬和惡劣，那么請?zhí)嵝涯阕约?，在他們看來，你可能也是如此? For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time or space. Mahatma Gandhi deplores railways and steamboats and machinery; he would like to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting any one who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might say in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent. 對于那些想象力豐富的人來說，假設(shè)與觀點(diǎn)不同的人進(jìn)行辯論，不失為一種好方法。較之與對手進(jìn)行面對面的談話，這種方式有一個(gè)好處，可以說是唯一的好處：它不會(huì)受到時(shí)間和空間的限制。有時(shí)，由于這種假想的對話，結(jié)果，我真的改變了我的想法。 而有時(shí)雖然未能真的改變看法，我也常發(fā)現(xiàn)自己因?yàn)檎J(rèn)識(shí)到假想對手可能有道理而變得不那么武斷或自以為是了。6 Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and mean of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all other. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the rally important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. It is more difficult to deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot argue out the matter with some nonhuman mind. The only way I know of dealing with this genera