Xin Yan / Xinyan Zhang

每本书都能有自己的一个名字，这实在是一件有趣且意味深长的事情。 这本书的名字，《存在或上帝 —— 对西方意识形态的建设性批判》，虽然长了点，但同样不失其有趣与意味深长。 书名中所谓的“西方意识形态”，指的是起源于西方世界，贯穿于西方历史，激发并引导了神学、哲学、数学、逻辑、艺术、科学、心理、经济、社会、环境、政治和军事等不同方面的理论和实践活动在西方的出现和发展，并造就了西方人生活现状的那些最根本的理想或信念。 “对西方意识形态的批判”意味着，在本书作者看来，那些最根本的理想或信念并不完美，并不自洽，而且，不仅有必要也同样有可能变得更完美。 “对西方意识形态的建设性批判”则意味着，本书的重点并不是“批判”而是“建设”。这种建设性批判，主要涉及到两个极为重要的理想或信念的不自洽和不完美，其中一个是“存在”，另一个便是“上帝”。 至于书名中的“存在或上帝”，说的不仅是“存在”和“上帝” 的不自洽、不完美，说的不仅是使这两个概念更完美的必要性与可能性，说的不仅是使它们同一或统一的可能性与必要性，同时亦向读者提示了贯彻本书始终的那个基本方法或那条基本思路：在一切之间，有一切之存在。 无论是远在过去还是时至今日，对于许多西方人来说，“存在”与“上帝”这两个概念，既是一切问题之问题，又是一切答案之答案，不仅涉及到他们的过去，更涉及到了他们的未来。换句话说，“存在”与“上帝”所涉及到的绝非仅仅只是人们所面对的那个世界，同样涉及到那个世界所面对的人本身，绝非仅仅只涉及到那个世界所承负着的“非我”，同样涉及到人们所承负着的那个“自我”，涉及到，我们每个人用“非我”为自己的“自我”所做的每一件事情，涉及到了“自我”与“非我”的关系，特别是自由与必然之间的关系。 由此可见，这问题和答案绝非仅仅只是向西方人提出，亦绝非只应由西方人给出。对每个和所有人来说，这都同样有可能成为一个问题，我们又都以某种方式在给出一份自己的答案。甚至可以说，任何一种人生，人生中的任何一件大事或小事，所留下的，无一不是这个问题，亦无一不是对这个问题的回答。 作为对这个问题的提出和对那个答案的探索，本书的第一章讨论了“存在”，最后一篇附录的文章讨论了“上帝”，而在它们之间的八个章节和所有附录的文章中，通过对宇宙、生命、生物、心灵、自我、人和社会的本体论理解，讨论的则是“自由” ，特别是“自由”与“平等”之间的相互依存，因为只有通过自由与平等的相互依存，“存在”与“上帝”方才能得以完美自洽，方才能回归于彼此。 通过这些讨论，本书顺便还介绍了两种尚且不为大多数西方人所知所行的自由，源于平等的自由和超越平等的自由。 因为存在或上帝既成就又超越了我们已有的一切知识，无论这知识是语言、哲学、逻辑、数学还是科学，所以，本书在内容和方法上同样既尊重它们又不为之所限。这种对现存全部知识既尊重又不为之所限的态度和做法，固然是对形而上传统的继承，固然在自由主义中有其思想根源，亦可以说是本书作者对爱因斯坦所说“想象比知识更重要”那句话的理解、证明、实践和发扬光大。 既尊重又要超越一切知识，对任何人来说都不是一件容易做到的事情，但也同样不是一件不可能的事情。本书将一步一步地向读者解释并证明这一道理，证明这不仅符合存在或上帝的本性，也正是存在或上帝一直以来的所作所为。 也许，无论是过去还是未来，无论是在西方还是在东方，只有当理解这本性和那所作所为之后，一个人才有可能最终走出自己，才有可能成就自己的真实与自由，人类才有可能最终走出柏拉图所说的那个洞穴，才有可能既生活在存在的真实无妄之中，也生活在上帝的自由自在之中。

Against ideas of dualism, logocentrism, anthropocentrism, animism, panpsychism, biocentrism, neurocentrism, foundationalism, computationalism, especially substantialism, reductionism and even physicalism, the author argues that life may be the only non-reductive concept, even the only ontological concept, with which we may explain our consciousness, intelligence and language. Life, as defined in this article, explains but not only human brains, and even not only biological organisms. Still, the mind, also as defined in this article, is the only one it explains. No mind may exist if not be a life or lives, and no life may exist if not be a mind or a part of it. If it is the mind that needs to be explained, it must finally and fundamentally be explained as a life or lives. If the question is about the origin of the mind, a life or lives must be the ultimate answer. In other words, life is the only attribute of mind, and mind also the only attribute of life, and therefore, consciousness, intelligence and language must be the properties of all the living systems, including non-biological living systems. A model of mind is hypothesized based on the analysis of two kinds of lives and their relationship with matter and energy. It may be deduced from this model: 1. All the memories of a living brain are its intelligence. 2. Both consciousness and nonconscious are only meaningless languages used in the communication among lives in an awakened brain. 3. Life is the only meaning of all those memories and languages. Ontologically, life may even be the only meaning of all matter and energy. (A version of this article was published by the Journal of NeuroPhilosophy on 26.10.2022)

Based on the ontological proposition, “life is the only attribute of mind, and mind also the only attribute of life”, a model of the human mind is hypothesized in this article. It may be deduced from the proposition and the model: 1. All the structures of a brain are the potentials of its intelligence. 2. Consciousness is only the language used in the communication of an awakened brain. 3. Qualia are the same mental language manipulated by different memories. 4. Life is the only meaning of all mental languages.

“Being” or “being and beings” might be the meta-notion when philosophy and science were still sharing the same mind or minds in ancient Greek and Europe. To find its meaning and to become a part of the meaning are however more and more vital nowadays, not for philosophy but for science, especially for physics and biology. The author proposes in this essay that this concept may mean to us nothing more or less than the unity or unification of Parmenides’ idea “being is one” and Heraclitus’ idea “all things are in flux and nothing may remain the same”. That is just as to say that a being and an entity may never be identified with the same boundary. In other words, nothing or none should ever be understood as a being. This understanding is conceptualized and linguisticalized by the author as the compound symbol “OC”. And the OC represents a synthetic and also analytical understanding of both our universe and us together. And its value and strength may be found more obvious in his concise discussion, in the last part of the essay, on the OC’s meanings to ontology, epistemology, axiology, logic, mathematics, physics, biology, cosmogony and more.

It seems to the author that, though it is possible to reach an explanation of consciousness, there is no direct way for us to go. In other words, the author believes that, only through a detour, through an understanding of everything outside mind, we may and can and will finally reach an understanding of those inside. The author tries in this article to discuss some details of such a detour, first from the understanding of Being and being, universe and life, organism and human, and finally to the understanding of the mind and the mystery of our consciousness. Here, to understand Being is the core activities of the whole detour, and there the being is understandably the source and the nature of life and consciousness.

The author argues that consciousness and its meaning may only be defined and explained within an ontological system. Such a system is proposed in this article, with matter, energy, and life as its components, and with all its components defined as changes. The systematic relations between matter and energy and the semantic relations among all its components together may define and explain what and how consciousness is, why there is consciousness, where and when it may occur, and what is its significance or meaning.

Author tried in this paper to deduce the principles of subjective world from some new concepts on objective world. I believe, through a full understanding of the objective world, we may easily approach to a general understanding of our subjective world – the human mind itself. One of the major obstacles to achieving this goal is that we still do not have a theoretical system that can describe both the worlds with the same concepts. In this paper I will put forward some of such concepts first and then try to deduce mind’s general organization and activities on the basis of those concepts.

In his paper, From Everything Outside Mind To Those Inside, submitted also to WCP 2008, the author put forward an idea that the existence of a human mind might generally be understood as either the interaction between circulating mental energies and living memories or results of the interaction. A further discussion on the details of this interaction is presented in this paper. The interaction may be divided into instinctive activities and intellective activities that may be further divided into basic activities such as memory’s forming and forgetting, and advanced activities such as simulating. Three different kinds of simulating activities are described and their general principles are discussed, which is called by the author as “Inforeactor”.