世界的意义

Are we cut off from the outer world, trapped alone in our personal experience?

我们是否与外部世界隔绝，独自被困在我们的个人经验中？

In 1979 the psychologist J.J. Gibson wrote a famous book with a different view—and it can change the way we see the world.

1979年，心理学家J.J. Gibson写了一本著名的书，提出了不同的观点--它可以改变我们看待世界的方式。

Let’s first look at a traditional viewpoint, which Gibson rejected:

让我们先看看吉布森拒绝的一种传统观点。

1. Indirect perception

1.间接感知

The inner picture

内部图片

It is tempting to think that we see the world like a camera: A picture is projected on the back of our eyes. And this is of course just a cheap flat copy of the rich outer world.

我们很容易认为，我们看世界就像一台照相机。在我们的眼睛后面投射出一张照片。而这当然只是丰富的外部世界的廉价平面拷贝。

Our brain then has to analyse this inner picture and guess what the world “outside” is actually like.

然后我们的大脑必须分析这个内在的画面，并猜测 "外面 "的世界究竟是什么样子。

So our mind only receives a poor static picture from the eyes and then thinks about what is going on in the world.

所以我们的头脑只从眼睛里接收到一个可怜的静态画面，然后思考世界上发生了什么。

Or to put it in technical terms: We receive some stimulus from the outside world, and then our brain responds and tries to find out what it means.

或者用技术术语来形容它。我们收到来自外部世界的一些刺激，然后我们的大脑做出反应，试图找出它的含义。

This stimulus-response model separates our inner subjective world from an outer objective world. We can never know for sure what is going on objectively. There is no meaning in the world, it is only in our head.

这种刺激-反应模型将我们内在的主观世界与外在的客观世界分开。我们永远无法确定客观上发生了什么。世界上没有任何意义，它只存在于我们的头脑中。

This traditional take on perception—which goes all the way back to René Descartes—claims that we can not see the world directly.

这种对感知的传统看法--可以一直追溯到勒内-笛卡尔--声称我们不能直接看到世界。

Gibson thought that this was all wrong.

吉布森认为这一切都错了。

2. Direct ecological perception

2.直接生态感知

The visual system

视觉系统

First of all, he said, we don’t just sit still like a camera, passively waiting for things to happen. Instead, we move about and actively look around.

首先，他说，我们不只是像摄像机一样坐着不动，被动地等待事情发生。相反，我们要四处走动，积极环顾四周。

We also don’t see exclusively with our eyes. Did you ever wonder why a recorded video often looks so shaky compared to our own...