No, I am interested. What does it say in connection with this topic?
The existence of a mechanism for a phenomenon doesn’t negate the ontology of that phenomenon. I made OJ by squeezing some mandarins doesn’t mean there’s no OJ now. A robot can be pain-enabled by installing a pain module, something comparable to our nociceptive neural circuitry.
Pain is a private sensation. You know yourself you have pain. For others than you, you infer their pain by their statement confirming their pain such as “I have pain” accompanying the usual pain signs, symptoms and behaviour of pain i.e. their facial expressions or scars, black and blue on the skin, bruise or swelling on their ankle etc.
Here you need to clarify a question rising asking “Is mental pain same as physical or bodily pain?”
Mental pains can be expressed in other terms. For example “The pain of your lost youth.” - here the pain is not the same pain -your toothache or shoulder pain. It is rather “regret” or “mental stress” in your thoughts or feelings, which is not the same nature of the bodily pain.
@ac64 That was my first thought after reading your posts.
The discussion has been going into so many different directions. @ac64 can you restate your original question or thesis that you are disputing?
1 Like
In assumtion we’re never wrong.
Many of us hardly know our own biology and can never feel another’s pain. We also don’t know enough about the physical part of consciousness in computers to say pain does not exist for them or at leaset to have an awareness of their components. As we are not at all times aware of our components when we’re not in pain so it may be the same for computers.
Much of philosophy’s problems stem from what we may call dismantle syndrome. Just because we can take it apart and know it in part, doesn’t mean we can explain everything about it or its true origins.
My question is, does consciousness even need a medium to exist ? If we can answer that question it may open doors to a myriad of other topics.
1 Like
@ac64 would you say this encaptures your concerns about pain?
Suffering in others is a belief we can’t verify with certainty, but it’s the best-supported belief available, and refusing to act on it doesn’t require a good reason—it just requires deciding that uncertainty is an excuse.
1 Like
I think that @Corvus has centered the aspect that I am most interested in:
From Corvus’ words, the consequence is that, as for other people’s pain, what I can get is just an inference. As for my own pain, my experience is so strong and so direct that makes me think it is something objective, but actually it is objective for me only, which means that for other people my own pain is something inevitably subjective, limited to me only.
From a social perspective, I think there is some kind of contradiction: I am sure that most people in this world would agree that pain is something undeniable, i.e. something objective, while actually, if we consider what I said, it is totally subjective.
When most people in this world agree that pain is something undeniable, it means pain exists in general in the living biological bodies. It is objective.
While actually when one is having pain, it means one is having a particular pain somewhere in one’s body. It is subjective.
The two cases of pains above are totally different pains they are talking about.
1 Like
I think thus, then your question is more accurately ‘does pain hurt?’.
I don’t think that this is true. According to this reasoning, when people thought that the earth was the center of the universe, since most people thought so, it was objective that the earth was the center of the universe.
No my question is still “Does pain exist?”, because what I am interested in is this mix, this contradiction between perceived objectivity and perceived subjectivity of the experience of pain.
Being objective doesn’t mean it is absolutely true. It means there are folks other than you who believe in something you believe as true or is the case.
How is it that you question the existence of pain? Boil a pot of water and stick your hand into it. Find a hornet nest somewhere within your reach, and rip it in half with your bare hands. You will go to great lengths to not do these things, because you know they will be extremely painful experiences.
1 Like
I wasn’t really asking you, I was telling you.
As ‘painful’ as that may be…
Basically, pain doesn’t hurt objectively, but hurts subjectively.
You are confirming what I said:
You just said that pain exist.
I don’t think it is the same.
When something exists, usually science is able to detect its existence, to find evidence of its existence. In the case of pain, science is completely unable to find anything. What science can find about pain is just a series of mechanisms, not pain. For example, science can give evidence that, whenever fire is put near my skin, I react immediately. But for science this is just a mechanism, not pain. For science I am 100% like a computer programmed to react to certain impulses. Science is completely unable to suspect that behind my reactions there is an experience of feeling pain. Science has absolutely no idea of the meaning of the word “pain”. For science pain is like ghosts, or gods: they might exist, but they are completely beyond its field of research.
People, instead, are able to think of pain because of the reason expressed by @Corvus : they assume that, when I show some reactions, what has happened in me is something equal to what they have felt, experienced, about pain. But science has no reference point to make such an assumption, because science has no experience of pain.
It is an objective fact that we subjectively experience. Most people see colors. Most people hear music. Most people feel pain. The question isn’t whether or not consciousness exists. The question is how it is accomplished/how it comes to be.