什麼是政治迷思？論迷思的認知機制

The Mechanism of Believing: What is Political Myth?

笛卡兒(Descartes)的「心物二元論」一直是「理性人」的一種根本假設，但全然理性的人並不會出現在現實的政治中。本文與近年來流行 於政治科學界的理性選擇理論不同，想強調「非理性」在一般政治生活中的作用，出發點就是對於「政治迷思」定義的討論。事實上，常有人從「潛意識」的角度去理解「迷思」。然而，由於過去無法解決「潛意識」的生理機制，對政治迷思的研究以「詮釋」、「描述」的方式進行，缺乏科學客觀性的說服力。目前，由於心理學與神經生理學的進步，有更多客觀證據能夠證明人在缺乏自覺狀態下的認知運作，「潛意識」不再是無法窺探的黑盒子，也使我們更能說明人為什麼會相信一些聽起來不可信的故事。本文正是由「政治迷思」看似鬆散不嚴謹的定義開始，借助於其他學科的研究成果，探索迷思的本質，希望從心理認知與神經生理學的角度，說明迷思的發生機制。

The dualism of Descartes is a basic presumption of the "rational man", however, in the reality we can not find such a completely rational man. The underlying article has a different view in contrast to the recently prevalent rational choice theories. Instead, it puts the emphasis on the "irrationality" in political life. For the discussion of irrationality this article will inquire the phenomena of political myth. In fact, many scholars connected myth with "unconscious". But since the physiological mechanism of unconscious was previously a "black box", the investigations into political myth usually employed hermeneutical and descriptive methods, and were not persuasive with scientific objectivity. Now, with the great advances of psychology and neurophysiology, we have more evidences which can prove that complex cognition behaviors without self-awareness are possible. "Unconscious" could no longer be the black box which we can not see through, and this helps us to explain why people believe something that seems "incredible". The underlying article would begin with the discussion on the traditionally inaccurate definitions of political myth. Then, with the ideas of the psychological "adaptive unconscious" of Timothy Wilson and of the neurophysiological gradient theory of Elkhonon Goldberg, this article would explore the nature of myth in order to define "political myth" from a genetic viewpoint.