Pain and Physical Suffering

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2003-07-29 10:31pm

Ive always wondered if you could just receive the nerve sensations and perceive it as 'good'. I wonder if thats how bdsm would work. .

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 10:33pm

SirNitram wrote:That's a cockamamy theory with no real backing behind it. I'm sure
neurologists have more behind their theories than this rambling.

There's plenty of backing. But you're just flaming not debating why the
theory is bad so there isn't much to respond to.

A baby understands pain is pain, no conditioning. Your theory falls.

Babies don't understand pain at all because understanding is more then
response. And nowhere did I mention any conditioning. I'm not talking
about cultural or psychological perceptions of pain, I'm talking about
neurological responses, very basic evolved responses like those that take
place in the brain stem, which just so happens to respond to pain before
your brain itself has time to register the pain. When you stick your hand on
a hot burner, your brain stem begins to pull your hand back before your
actual brain processes that there is pain.

Sadly completely unsupported.

Entirely supported, thanks. The concept that pain itself is perceived as bad
before the reaction implies cognition, but pain is a signal not cognition. For
instance, when you're high on opiates, you still feel pain, but its not bad.
Your brain is just ignoring it, but you still feel it. The pain doesn't go
anywhere, your RESPONSES change, tho. It's no longer bad, because
you're not responding to it in an attempt to rid yourself of it.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-07-29 10:38pm

kojikun wrote:
LOL I don't think anyones died because of a papercut

If it gets infected you certainly could, basic sanitation prevents that but that's a very modern concept compared to the evolution of the human species.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 10:38pm

Mad wrote:As for being immoral... would you want to be horribly tortured for no
reason other than to cause you pain, even if there's no lasting damage? If
you answered "no," especially loudly and with the addition of other words to
make the answer more emphatic, then that, quite simply, is why it's
immoral.

Kind of like the box from Dune where you stick your hand in it and you feel
the most intense pain ever but its not damaging. I could honestly say I
would do that just to test my will. And a good many mothers volunteer to go
through intense pain (and for some reason enjoy the whole experience??)

Enforcer Talen wrote:Ive always wondered if you could just receive the nerve sensations and
perceive it as 'good'. I wonder if thats how bdsm would work. .

It could be. A good deal of it also has to be the brains own attempt to dull
the pain, that being endorphines. People who are into masochism might
have a higher perception of endorphine or lowered perception of pain, with
the same physical responses. :

: I know I get a bit of pleasure from
certain masochistic things.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 10:39pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:If it gets infected you certainly could, basic sanitation prevents that but that's a very modern concept compared to the evolution of the human species.

I wasn't being literal when I put that as a question to the importance of pain.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2003-07-29 11:10pm

kojikun wrote:Kind of like the box from Dune where you stick your hand in it and you feel
the most intense pain ever but its not damaging. I could honestly say I
would do that just to test my will.

Well, I'm talking about someone else causing you pain that you can't stop. Not testing your will, but just causing pain for the sake of causing pain well beyond however long you think you'd might be able to last using that box.

And a good many mothers volunteer to go
through intense pain (and for some reason enjoy the whole experience??)

There's reason for that, and a reward. Many people will endure pain if it is necessary and it serves a purpose. Those, however, aren't the kind of situations being discussed, I take it.

We're talking about causing pain for no reason other than to cause pain. That's much different from childbirth, pulling a tooth, or any other pain that serves a purpose.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 11:18pm

well, i WAS talking about the morality of causing pain in general, not
damage to ones body. but now the discussions turned into a more
fundemental question: what is bad about pain, and what is pain.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2003-07-29 11:24pm

I take it you want to discuss it without circular logic ("pain is bad 'cause it hurts!") or defining it in terms of itself ("pain is painful") or even both ("pain is subjective discomfort, which is pain").

That'll be difficult to do, as it's something very basic that everyone knows intuitively. What's the difference between pleasure and pain? What's the difference between red and blue? The only difference, on the surface, is that we instinctively like pleasure while we instinctively dislike pain, while colors don't quite evoke the same level of response.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 11:32pm

Mad wrote:I take it you want to discuss it without circular logic ("pain is bad 'cause it
hurts!") or defining it in terms of itself ("pain is painful") or even both ("pain
is subjective discomfort, which is pain").

Exactly.

That'll be difficult to do, as it's something very basic that everyone
knows intuitively.

Thats why, I think, its something we SHOULD discuss. Its one of those
things thats fundemental to our knowledge of the mind. It's one of those
things that puzzle experts in things like AI, similar to getting a robot to think
not just compute. Its so basic, yet so complex.

What's the difference between pleasure and pain? What's the
difference between red and blue? The only difference, on the surface, is
that we instinctively like pleasure while we instinctively dislike pain, while
colors don't quite evoke the same level of response.

The question, tho, is WHY do we dislike it? Thats circular. "Pain is bad cause
we dislike it. We dislike it cause its bad."

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-07-29 11:45pm

We dislike pain because our brains are programmed to avoid damage to our forms.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-29 11:52pm

SirNitram wrote:

We dislike pain because our brains are programmed to avoid damage to our forms.

Thank you captain obvious.

that was a brilliantly construction lack of connecting information. The question is how do we go from 'brain wanting to avoid damage' to 'dislike'.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-07-30 12:01am

kojikun wrote:
SirNitram wrote:

We dislike pain because our brains are programmed to avoid damage to our forms.
Thank you captain obvious. that was a brilliantly construction lack of connecting information. The question is how do we go from 'brain wanting to avoid damage' to 'dislike'.

Easy. Everyone whose brain was wired to enjoy getting their arms ripped off left the gene pool very quickly.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-30 12:01am

incase anyone is wondering why i bring up the topic of pain and the badness
of pain, i have a rather annoying and painful toothache, and i cant for the
life of me figure out why i, and people, respond to pain the way we do.

Steven Snyder · Post by **Steven Snyder** » 2003-07-30 09:09am

kojikun wrote:incase anyone is wondering why i bring up the topic of pain and the badness
of pain, i have a rather annoying and painful toothache, and i cant for the
life of me figure out why i, and people, respond to pain the way we do.

Survival

Go back to a quote from T2, "I sense injuries, the data could be called pain."

This analytical form of pain, coming to you as data on the injury, might sound like a good thing, but it isn't. It is easy to ignore warnings like that and continue to engage in damaging behavior. This is probably going to work against a species through evolution.

The simple fact is that if you are able to easily ignore pain, say from a toothache, you are less likely to really take it seriously. While you might have a mind that is capable of determining for yourself that there is a problem and setting the proper priority, this is not always the case. Other forms of life do not have that capacity and need something to inform them of the problem and it's severity...hence we have pain.

Or at least that is the way I see it.

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2003-07-30 02:09pm

Once in a while, I do a little experimenting with pain. I've found if you concentrate on the pain, after a while it begins to lose its "meaning". Like saying one word a hundred times. I've also found that if you make an effort to interpret pain as pleasure, it will start to feel good.

Both techniques require a large mental effort and are difficult to keep doing for an extended period.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2003-07-30 02:22pm

kojikun wrote:The question, tho, is WHY do we dislike it? Thats circular. "Pain is bad cause
we dislike it. We dislike it cause its bad."

We dislike it because we're programmed by instinct to dislike it. Why do we like to eat? Or have sex? They're all survival mechanisms.

There are people who can't feel pain. These people tend to become injured more than those who can feel pain normally, because they have no warning system, no way to know how much is too much for their body to take.

Yes, pain can be reinterpreted. It's nothing but signals being sent through the nervous system to the brain. The default interpretation is pain, and the default response is "this is bad, make it stop," or, "OW!"

I don't know how much more specific than "survival mechanism" I -- or anyone -- can get.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-30 02:36pm

yes, mad, but i think what we're responding to when we go "OW!" is not the
actual feeling of pain, but the respond our brains have to it in an attempt to
get rid of it. i think when our bodies say "Got to stop that" we still havent
registered the pain consciously, only after we begin to want to stop the pain
do we go "OW!" because if we wanted to make it continue we wouldn't go
"OW!" at all, we'd go "ooh yes gimme more"