多濾：道格拉斯·亞當斯與知覺理論

Mostly Filtered: Douglas Adams and Theories of Perception

自柏拉圖的「洞穴寓言」以來，哲學家便推測人類所感知的並非「如其所是」的現實，而是某種經過中介或再現的版本。學界曾使用多種隱喻來表達這種被認為是經過媒介的知覺。本研究探討二十世紀興起的一種重要隱喻──「過濾」（filtration）隱喻，並以小說家亞當斯（Douglas Adams）對該隱喻的運用為基點，探察二十世紀以來各種與知覺中介相關的隱喻。研究發現，亞當斯對「過濾知覺」的概念與康德（Immanuel Kant）、伊克斯屈爾（Jakob von Uexküll）及道金斯（Richard Dawkins）等人的理論相呼應，這些學者強調知覺的先天限制；同時也與「新視界」（New Look）學派的觀點相關，該學派則強調學習如何影響知覺。此外，亞當斯亦探討了「無過濾知覺」的可能性，此概念亦見於康德、巴克（Clive Barker）及卡斯特魯普（Bernardo Kastrup）等人的作品中。最後，本文分析語言作為一種過濾機制，如何影響我們對世界的知覺。亞當斯對新詞與語法創新的傾向，暗示了語言對知覺的形塑作用。為探討語言作為中介的角色，本文借鑒沃夫（Benjamin Lee Whorf）提出的「投射」、「解剖」與「著色」隱喻，以及伯克（Kenneth Burke）提出的「詞彙過濾器」（terministic screen）隱喻，進一步分析語言如何影響人類的知覺與世界觀。

Since at least Plato’s“Allegory of the Cave,”philosophers have speculated that we do not perceive reality“as it is”but rather some kind of representation or mediated version of reality. Various metaphors have been used to express the supposedly mediated nature of perception. This article explores one notable metaphor that came into use during the twentieth century: the metaphor of filtration. Taking novelist Douglas Adams’s use of the filter metaphor as inspiration, the article engages with a range of mediational metaphors which have been employed over the course of the twentieth century and beyond. Adams’s notion of filtered perception is found to have resonances with the theories of Immanuel Kant, Jakob von Uexküll, and Richard Dawkins, who focused on the innate limits to perception; and with the“New Look”theorists, who emphasized how learning influences perception. Adams also considers the possibility of unfiltered perception, a possibility hinted at by other writers as well (Kant, Clive Barker, and Bernardo Kastrup). Finally, the article considers language itself as a filter mediating our perception of the world. Adams’s tendency toward neologisms and neogrammaticisms is an implicit acknowledgment of the idea that language makes a difference to how we perceive the world. To explore language as mediator, the article draws on Benjamin Lee Whorf’s metaphors of projecting, dissecting, and coloring and Kenneth Burke’s metaphor of the terministic screen.