我们的道德观从何而来？

婴儿有道德感吗？

Do Babies Have A Moral Sense?

译者：水默默默  原文作者：Emrys Westacott

The most obvious source is the society we are born and raised in.

最明显的来源当属我们出生和成长的社会。

People are clearly heavily influenced by the opinions, actions, and conventions of everyone around them.  Another source is reason.  It is often through rational reflection that people come to criticize the moral character of their own culture, as when gay rights activists argue that discrimination against gays is unjust.  Another possibility is that some moral inclinations and intuitions are innate–that is we are born with them.

人们会受到周围每个人意见、行为和习惯的严重影响，这是毫无疑问的。道德观的另一个来源是理性，通常是通过对自身文化的道德性质进行理性思考所获得的。比如同性恋权利活动家认为歧视同性恋是不公正的的行为。

This will strike many people as preposterous.  According to a popular theory, the mind of the newborn child is a “blank slate.”  Everything is learned from experience.  This is the central tenet of empiricism, and it has been applied to moral beliefs just as much as to other areas of knowledge or opinion.

还有一种可能性，那就是某些道德倾向和直觉是天生的，也就是说我们生来就已经具有道德观。也许很多人会觉得这很荒谬。根据一个广为流传的理论，新生儿的大脑是一块“空白石板”，一切都是从经验中学到的。这是经验主义的核心思想，并一直被应用于解释道德信仰的形成，以及其他领域，比如知识或观点的形成。

But psychologists like Paul Bloom, author of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, argue that we may not be moral blank slates after all.  He doesn’t claim that we are born with any well-defined moral beliefs or values; that would be implausible given that a normal infant seems to be most of the time a little wailing bundle of self-interested concern for its own comfort.

但一些心理学家，比如《善恶之源》（The Origins of Good and Evil）一书的作者保罗·布卢姆（Paul Bloom）却认为，在道德上，我们可能并不是一片空白。他不是要声称人天生就具有完备的道德信仰或价值观，这显然是不可能的，因为一个正常的婴儿几乎大部分时间都在襁褓里啼哭，只关心自己是不是舒服。

Rather, he argues that “certain moral foundations are not acquired through learning.”

更确切地说，他认为“某些道德基础不是通过学习获得的”。

What does he have in mind?  And how does he know what babies are thinking?  After all, they can’t talk?

他是怎么想的？他怎么知道宝宝们在想什么？毕竟，婴儿是不会告诉我们的。

Psychologists trying to understand what is going on in the mind of babies have to be ingenious.

想要了解宝宝们的想法，心理学家必须做到心灵手巧。

One of their most important strategies is known as the “looking time method.” Researches measure how long a baby looks at various things or people or situations.  The assumption is that the baby will look longer at what it finds surprising, and will look away sooner from things it finds less interesting.  Another method is to have the baby watch something and then see if it expresses a preference or an aversion by the way it behaves.

他们采用的一种最重要的策略叫做“观看时间测量法”。研究人员会测量宝宝观看各种事物或人或情境的时间长短。他们假定宝宝遇到感兴趣的事物会观看较长时间，不感兴趣的东西则会很快转移视线。另一种方法是让宝宝看某样东西，然后看他是否通过行为来表达出自己的喜爱或厌恶。

Here’s an example of a simple experiment.   Babies are shown a round shape apparently struggling  to get up a hill.  A triangle comes and blocks its path, causing it to roll back down.  The disc tries again, and this time a square appears and seems to help push it to the top of the hill.  After seeing this, a child of just a few months will show a marked preference for the helper as opposed to the hinderer.  Offered a choice of the triangle or the square on a tray, the child will choose the square.

以下是一个简单的实验例子。研究人员给宝宝观看一组画面，画面中显示一个圆盘正在努力爬山，三角形走过来挡住了路，导致圆盘滚回了起点，它继续努力，这时正方形出现，把圆盘推到了山顶。看完之后，即使只有几个月大的宝宝也会明显表现出对救助者的偏爱，而对挡路者则截然不同，把三角形和正方形同时放到托盘里让他选择，他会选择正方形。

This preference for the helper is not a case of the baby making a moral choice; but according to Bloom it has some similarities to the moral judgment of an adult.  It mirrors the adult preference for helping over hindering.  And it is disinterested: that is, the baby doesn’t prefer the square because of some benefit the square offers.

这种对于救助者的偏爱并不能说明宝宝做出的是道德选择，但据布卢姆所说，它与成年人的道德判断有一些相似之处。这反映出成年人更喜欢帮助而不是阻碍。并且这种助人的行为是无私的：也就是说，婴儿偏爱正方形并不是因为它带来了什么好处。

No.  The baby seems to just prefer the “good guy” to the “bad guy.”  To see how the experiment looks, check out this webinar run by Paul Bloom on the subject matter of Just Babies.

只是相对于“坏人”来说，他似乎更喜欢“好人”。要了解实验的具体情况，请查看保罗·布卢姆主持的关于《善恶之源》一书的网络研讨会。

Empathy involves feeling within yourself what someone else is feeling.   So if you see someone hit their thumb with a hammer and you immediately wince yourself, that is an empathetic reaction.  Sympathy, or compassion, is different; it involves caring about someone, and feeling sorry for them if they are suffering.

移情指的是亲身感受别人的感受。所以，如果看到有人拿锤子砸到了拇指，你也马上跟着龇牙咧嘴，这就是一个移情反应。同情，则与移情不同; 它指的是关心某人，如果他们受苦，你也会感到伤心。

When very young children witness someone else in pain, they are most likely to try to comfort themselves, perhaps by sucking harder on their pacifier.  This suggests that they are responding empathetically but not sympathetically.  By the time they are toddlers (roughly one year old), however, they may well try to comfort the one who is suffering, at least if it is a person they are close to such as a parent or sibling.

当非常年幼的孩子看到别人痛苦时，他们非常有可能去试图安抚自己，也许会表现为更用力地吸吮奶嘴，这表明他们受到了移情作用的影响，但还不属于同情。不过，当他们学习走路（大约一岁）时，他们可能会开始尝试安慰受苦的人，至少对亲近的人是这样，比如父母或兄弟姐妹。

Another things that toddlers do which indicates that they are capable of sympathy or compassion is to help someone in need.  For instance, if an adult is carrying a box and make it clear that because of this he can’t open a cupboard, a one year old will spontaneously open the cupboard doors for him.  This kind of helpfulness is limited, though; toddlers will do it for someone they know, but are unlikely to help a complete stranger.

还有一种行为也能表明幼儿确实具有同情心理，就是他们会帮助有需要的人。例如，如果一个成年人正抱着箱子，并明确表示他因此不能打开橱柜，一岁的幼儿便会自发地为他打开柜门。但是，这种帮助的对象是有限的，幼儿只会帮助他们认识的人，而不太可能去帮助一个完全陌生的人。

Sharing is another trait that can be viewed as revealing a capacity for sympathy, especially if it is done without any apparent self-interest.  Before they are one year old most children don’t share.  They typically begin sharing between one and two, although only with family and friends.  With strangers they are almost entirely unsympathetic until they are at least two.  They will not, for instance, give candy to a stranger even when there is no cost to themselves.  During their third year, however, they typically will start to do so.

分享可以看做是显示同情能力的另一品质，特别是在没有任何明显自身利益的前提下。在一岁之前，大多数孩子都不懂得分享。他们通常会在一岁到两岁之间开始分享，但只限于家人和朋友之间。至少在两岁之前，他们对陌生人基本是没有同情心理的。例如，即使自己没有任何损失，他们也不会给陌生人糖果。不过到了三岁的时候，孩子们就会开始和陌生人分享了。

Surely one of the most familiar utterances coming out of the mouths of children is, “It’s not fair!”  And invariably, what it means is that the one making the complaint has not been treated equally.  According to Bloom, children have a strong bias in favor of equality, and it manifests itself before they can talk.  By sixteen months children will show a preference for a puppet that distributes goodies equally over one that distributes thing unequally.  And their notion of what people deserve is already quite sophisticated.  They will look longer at a scene in which characters who have done equal work are given unequal rewards.  This suggests that they find what they see surprising.

孩子们最爱说得话一定是“这不公平！”，这意味着他认为自己没有受到公平对待。据布卢姆所说，孩子们对于平等有着强烈的偏好，并且在他们学习说话之前这种偏好就已经有所表现。到十六个月的时候，孩子们会更喜欢将糖果平均分配的木偶，而不喜欢另一个分配不平均的木偶。而且他们对于每个人的应得也已经有了非常复杂的看法。如果在某个画面中，做同等工作的角色没有获得相同的奖励，他们就会花更长的时间观看这一幕，这表明他们对此感到惊讶。

Paul Bloom’s conclusion from experiments and observations such as those described here is that babies and toddlers exhibit a sort of “moral sense”  He takes this term form Adam Smith, the great Scottish economist and philosopher.  Smith was right, he claims to think that just as our five sense organs are naturally affected by colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, so our moral sense is naturally affected by certain things; and this primes us to classify these things as good or bad, right or wrong.

如文中所述，保罗·布卢姆从实验和观察中得出了结论，他认为婴儿和幼儿会表现出一定的“道德感”。“道德感”这个词借鉴自著名的苏格兰经济学家和哲学家亚当·斯密。 斯密是正确的，他认为，正如我们的五个感觉器官天生要受到颜色、声音、气味、味道和纹理的影响一样，我们的道德意识也自然会受到特定事物的影响，这为我们按照事物的是非对错分类提供了条件。

Even as very young children we have within us some of the building blocks of morality: empathy and compassion for someone who is suffering; a preference for kindness over cruelty; and a basic notion of fairness based on a preference for equal treatment.

即使是非常年幼的孩子，内心也具备一些基本的道德观念，包括对受苦之人的移情和同情，偏爱善良厌恶残暴，以及偏爱平等而产生的基本的公平观念。

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本译文仅用于学习和交流目的。非商业转载请注明译者、出处，并保留文章在译言的完整链接。商业合作请联系 [email protected]  参考原文地址：https://www.thoughtco.com/do-babies-have-a-moral-sense-4039543