拉岡講座 203

The Rate in the Maze

迷宮之鼠

How can being know? It’s amusing to see how this question is supposedly answered.
Since the limit, as I have posited it, is constituted by the fact that there are beings who
speak, people wonder what the knowledge of those who do not speak could be. They
wonder about it. They don’t know why they wonder about it. But they wonder about it
all the same. So they build a little maze (labyrinth) for rats.

主體如何知道？明白這個問題被認為如何回答，頗耐人尋味。如我所假設的，有
人言說，有人對於不言不語的人知道些什麼感到好奇，這個事實組成回答時的
限制。他們好奇。他們不知道他們為何好奇。但是他們依舊好奇。所以他們建造一
座老鼠的小迷宮。

They hope thereby to be on the right rack by which to determine what knowledge is.
They believe a rat is going to show the capacity it has to learn. To learn to do what?
What interests it, of course? And what do they assume interests it?

他們因此希望走上正確的路途，來決定知識是什麼。他們相信老鼠將會顯示它必
須學習的能力。學習做什麼？什麼引起它的興趣，當然？他們認為是什麼引起他
們的興趣？

They do not take the rat as a being, but rather as a body, which means that they view it
as a unit, a rat-unit. Now what thus sustains the rat’s being? They don’t wonder about
that at all. Or rather, they identify its being with its body.

他們並沒有將老鼠當存在主體，而是當一個身體，這表示他們看待它當一個單
位，一個老鼠的單位。現在的問題因此是：維持老鼠主體存在的是什麼？對於這
一點他們絲毫不好奇。換句話說，他們將老鼠的身體辨認為是它的主體存在。

People have always imagined that being had to contain a sort of fullness that is
characteristic of it. Being is a body. That is where people began in first approaching
being, and they laboriously concocted a whole hierarchy of beings. Ultimately, they
began with the notion that each one should know what keeps it in being—that had to
be its good, in other words, what gives it pleasure.

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人們總是想像存在主體包括一種圓滿當其特徵。存在主體是身體。那就是人們首
先接近存在主體開始的地方。然後他們辛勤地建造整個存在主體的階層。最後，
他們開始這個觀念：每個存在主體應該知道維持主體存在的是什麼，那必然是
它的優點所在，換言之，它獲得快樂的所在。

What change thus came about in discourse in order for people to suddenly question
that being regarding the means it might have to go beyond itself, that is, to learn more
than it needs to know in its being to survive as a body?

因此，在真理論述中發生了怎樣的改變？人們突然質疑那個存在主體，有什麼
方法超越身體本身？換言之，假如存在主體只是作為身體存活，它有什麼方法
知道非生存所需的東西。

The maze leads not only to nourishment but to a button or flap that the supposed
subject of this being must figure out how to use to obtain nourishment. Or it has to
recognize a feature, a lit or colored feature, to which the being is capable of reacting.

迷宮不僅引導到營養食物所在，而且引導到按鈕或門扉，這個所謂的存在主體
必須理解如何使用，才能得到營養食物。或者說，它必須認出一個特徵，一個光
亮或彩色的特徵，存在主體才能夠知所反應。

What is important is that the question of knowledge is transformed here into that of
learning. If, after a series of trials and errors—“ trials and errors” was left in English
( in the translation ) considering the people who carved out this approach to
knowledge—the rate diminishes sufficiently, they note that the rat-unit is capable of
learning something.

重要的是，知識的問題被轉變成為學習的知識。假如經過一連串嘗試及犯錯後
（我沿用嘗試及犯錯英文原譯，是對於創造這種求知方法的前輩表示敬意），
認出及反應的時間大量縮短，他們就會注意到，老鼠作為單位是能夠學習一些
東西。

The question that is only secondarily raised—the one that interests me—is whether
the rat-unit can learn how to learn. Therein lies the true mainspring of the experiment.
Once it has taken one of these tests, will a rat, faced with another test of the same
kind, learn more quickly? That can be easily attested to by a decrease in the number
of trials necessary for it to know how it must behave in such a montage—let us call
the maze, taken in conjunction with the flaps and buttons that function here, a “

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montage.”

我感到興趣的是第二個被提出的問題：是否老鼠作為一個單位能學習如何學習？
試驗的真正的主要泉源就在此。老鼠一但參加這些迷宮的測驗之後，它再面臨相
同迷宮的另一個測驗，他能學習得更快嗎？這個問題能夠很容易被證實，只要
減少嘗試及犯錯的次數，這樣老鼠就知道它在我們姑且稱之為迷宮中的迷離世
界中必須如何行為。這個大千世界有門扉及按鈕充當功用。

The question has been so rarely raised, though it has been raised, that people haven’t
even dreamt of investigating the differential effect of having the themes one proposes
to the rat—by which it demonstrates its ability to learn—come from the same source
or from two different sources, and of having the experimenter who teaches the rat to
learn be the same or different.

這個問題雖然曾被提出，但甚為罕見，所以人們甚至不曾夢想到要去探討我們
所提議的老鼠的迷宮主題有何其他不同的影響。老鼠憑藉這些影響證明它有學習
的能力，那麼這些影響來自相同來源或來自不同來源，教導老鼠學習的試驗者
應該相同或不同，會有何不同的影響。

Now, the experimenter is the one who knows something in this business, and it is with
what he knows that he invents this montage consisting of the maze, buttons, and flaps.
If he were not someone whose relation to knowledge is grounded in a relation to
Ilanguage, in the inhabiting of Ilanguage or the cohabitation with Ilanguage, there
would be no montage.

現在，試驗者就是在這一行業知道些什麼的人，以他所知道的，他發明這個由
迷宮、按鈕、門扉組成的迷離世界。假若他跟知識的關係不是建立在跟「真語言」有
關的基礎上，在「真語言」的棲居，或「真語言」的共同棲居所，那麼他不會想出
這個迷宮的迷離世界。

The only thing the rat-unit learns in this case is to give a sign, a sign of its presence as
unit. The flap is recognized only by a sign and pressing its paw on this sign is a sign.
It is always by making a sign that the unit accedes to that on the basis of which one
concludes that there is learning.

在此情況，老鼠作為單位學習到唯一事情是提供符號，它存在作為單位的符號。
門扉只是作為一個符號被認識，老鼠的爪壓在按鈕上也是一個符號。老鼠作為單
位總是以創造一個符號，來表示認同學習的測驗。根據這個測驗，我們得到結論，

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老鼠正在學習。

But this relation to signs is external. Nothing confirms that the rat grasps the
mechanism to which pressing the button leads. That’s why the only thing that counts
is to know if the experimenter notes that the rat has not only figured it out, but learned
how a mechanism is to be grasped, in other words, learned what must be grasped. If
we take the status of unconscious knowledge into account, we must examine the maze
experiment in terms of how the rat-unit responds to what has been thought up by the
experimenter not on the basis of nothing, but on the basis of Ilanguage.

但是跟符號的這個關係是外在的。並沒有證實老鼠瞭解到，壓按鈕導致怎樣的機
械學。這就是為什麼唯一重要的事情是要知道，試驗者是否注意到：老鼠不但理
解這個試驗，而且學會如何了解機械學，換言之，學會它必須要了解些什麼。假
如我們考慮到無意識知識的立場，我們必須檢查迷宮的試驗，了解老鼠作為單
位如何反應，因為試驗者所構想出來的迷宮，不是憑空捏造，而是根據「真語
言」。

One doesn’t invent just any old labyrinthine composition, and whether it comes from
the same experimenter or two different experimenters is worth investigating. But
nothing that I have been able to gather to date from this literature indicates that any
such question has been raised.

任何古老迷宮的構造都不會僅是憑空發明。它來自相同的試驗者或兩個不同的試
驗者，也值得再探討。但是，依據我迄今所收集的文獻資料，卻沒有顯示這樣的
問題曾被提出過。

This example thus leaves the questions regarding the status of knowledge and the
status of learning completely intact and distinct. The status of knowledge raises
another question, namely, how it is taught.

有關知識的立場及學習的立場的問題，從這個例子看出被保持到相當完整而清
楚。知識的立場還引起另一個問題，換言之，知識如何被教導。

雄伯譯
32hsiung@pchome.com.tw