I quite agree. Whatever such a private experience might be, of course we can’t have access to it - after all, that’s what “private” means here… unsharable.
And yet we do share in the pain of others.
So, it’s not private.
And if your account suggests otherwise, then it has gone astray.
So what we have is that Analgesics and their experimental effects are evidence that we can have some kind of access to somebody’s experience of pain.
Note the missing words.
I agree. Technology is the core of science. Radical instrumentalism. Philosophy is cobwebs. I mean no one is waiting around for the theorist to give their permission.
But it feels good to get a better grip of our fundamental concepts.
I should clarify here. I reject qualia as self-alienated confusion. Things in the world have “quality.” I broke my hand once. It hurts to break your hand. There is pain in the world.
I also dislike the phrase “private sensations.” But I of course emphasize the primacy of the perceptual world. And I can’t smell the roses with the noses of others.
Basically I want to insist on the priority of the shared perceptual world without evading the way this world “happens” in the “shape” of a relatively unified and isolated “stream of experience.” Experience is shared-world-for-organism.
I don’t. Method is the core of science. Hence, if we agree on the measurement, we can set aside the first person account and move on. The method used in science is that of maximising agreement. It is inherently communal.
Pain is a mechanism, but this omits the quality of the experience. Those exeriences clearly occur: we all know what pain feels like. Therefore I’d say pain (the experience) exists.
In spite of the functional role that pain plays, the experience cannot be programmed into a computer. We could program a computer to behave similarly - to sense damage, and to do what is necessary to deal with the damage. But this is not reproducing the sensation that humans (and other animals) feel.
So how does a materialist account for this experience? I’m aware of two ways:
I agree with what you wrote, but I think it has like a hole, a gap, a missing part. What it talks about is only the shared aspects of the experience of pain. The ways each of us describes their experience of pain make us think that what we experience must be essentially the same. However, in our socially communicating environment, I think that this awareness and attention is at a high risk of making us forget, lose sight of the total uniqueness of each experience of pain, not only because of the uniqueness of space and time where it happens, but mainly because of the absolute uniqueness that I experience when I pay attention to the fact that, to me, what happens in me has this characteristic of making me feel myself existing in my experience of being me here and now. In other words, I can refer your description to the experience of pain that I infer as happening in other people, but not to my direct, live, present experience of pain. My direct experience of things makes me always wander and wonder: how is that this experience does not just exist, is not just someone’s pain, but now it is my own pain, so that I don’t infere it, but I feel it as a unique experience, whose uniqueness nobody will ever be able to understand?
Now I am aware that whatever I say can be replicated as referred to and said by other people, but this is a problem of language. Language condemns us to move to a perspective outside ourselves whenever we use it. Whenever I try to keep it into my perspective, I feel like I can, but, as soon as I have said anything, I am condemned to realize that what I have said can be imagined as said by other people, so I am condemned to realize that the uniqueness of my feeling has been irreparably lost in the action of communication.
However, if you now are able to confirm that you experience the same phenomenon, we both have confirmed that in each of us we feel a kind of direct experience of our subjectivity that is beyond the intrinsic ability of words to communicate things.
This is what I am trying to talk about: the untalkable about, the inexpressible that I feel in my experiencing my feelings as alive. I would call this the unshared side of our experience.
Everything you say about pain, could also be said about every aspect of subjective experiences. We could be standing side-by-side in front of a painting, and our experiences of the painting will differ. That is just the nature of subjective experience: it is a relation between the subject and the object (or quality) being experienced. I can’t possibly perceive things exactly as you do, because you’re wired at least slightly differently, and your past experiences have changed you in ways that are different from mine.
We are sufficiently similar that we can discuss each others experience (of pain, beauty, joy…) and relate to it (usually). Without the similarities, language would be impossible.
I think that, if we carry on on this kind of external perspective, we will carry on agreeing 100% on everything, but still missing the core point.
I 100% agree with what you said. But I disagree with Wittgenstein, about his saying that "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. If this was true, for example, a mom and her baby should stay both silent. On the contrary, they talk and deeply communicate really a lot because they continuously force language, all kinds of languages they make use of, to express the inexpressible. This is my challenge to philosophy.
Now I would like to try this with you. Let’s see if it can work.
Try to forget what other people, including me, see in you. Leave aside any external perspective on you. Throw away, for a moment, what language is able to say with logical and consistent statements. I don’t want to know your logic, your reasoning: I have said that I agree 100% with your logic and your reasoning.
Now try to pay attention to yourself, you feeling yourself alive in your body, your feelings, your ability to move your arm, to decide what to do with your hand and what to think of with your mind. Pay attention to your here and now, the time that you can feel passing while you are existing, in your here and now. I would like to know if this attention raises in you the following question: “How is that here there is not just someone, but me, me feeling me? Why precisely me and not anybody else? Who am I, seeing that I am the only one person in the world who experiences this being me in first person, rather than being just someone?”
Now I don’t want from you explanations about how this is logically possible: if you try to give me explanations, you are jumping from inside yourself to an external perspective on yourself. But I don’t want to know how other people can explain what is happening in you. I want to listen to your experience of feeling yourself, not to any understanding of it.
I know that I am asking for something impossible to express. What I am doing is an attempt to force language to express the inexpressible, like artists try to do, as well as babies and parents in their emotional communication.
I’m not anti-method. I’d just say that perceptual “physical” objects are communal, and technology speaks to us on a deeper level than theory or method.
Just because pain is merely a response to injury doesn’t mean this response doesn’t exist. The response exists, regardless of what we call it—a neural signal or pain. And suffering, as a subjective experience of a biological being, also exists. It exists regardless of its name. It exists as a phenomenon that impairs the quality of life of a living being. If someone doubts its existence, they can measure the brain’s electrical potentials and compare them with changes in the living being’s behavior. The name doesn’t change the essence.
What made you refer your answer to living beings only?
Because of the meaning we attach to the term “pain”: “the feelings that you have in your body…” (pain noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com). If you are not satisfied with this dictionary, please tell me which dictionary you prefer.
The problem with that definition is that it is self referential. I looked for “feeling” on the same dictionary and it says “something that you feel”; then I looked for “to feel” and it says “to experience a particular feeling or emotion”. It looks like the dictionary itself doesn’t know the meaning of “feeling”, because it builds definitions by using again the word whose meaning you want to understand.
Absolutely right, I’ve encountered this problem too. It all stems from people’s traditional views, which are reflected in dictionaries. To grasp the true meaning of definitions, you have to take several at once and analyze them as a whole. Only then can you break free from this cycle.
So, if you take several definitions at once and analyze them as a whole, what definition of “feeling” do you get?
«pain»
the feelings that you have in your body when you have been hurt or when you are ill
«feeling»
Senses relating to sensation or touch. The capacity to experience the sense of touch or other bodily sensations (as of heat, cold, pain, motion, etc.); physical sensation other than sight, hearing, taste, or smell.
«body»
1. the whole physical structure of a human or an animal.
So, by incorporating our own experience of understanding speech, we came to understand that “body” is used specifically in this first sense, referring to animals or humans. The word “body” has other meanings, but they don’t fit the context of the first two definitions, as no one says stones are in pain. Our brain usually does this work subconsciously, which is why we understand each other when we communicate, despite the fact that words often have multiple meanings.
This means that your answer to my question
is something like
“because this is the definition of pain”. So, pain exists because humans established that it exists. How do humans know that it exists? You answered to this question in your previous statements about effects and measurements:
A computer can be programmed to produce the same responses and measurable effects. I guess that, if I ask if a computer suffers, you would answer that this is not the definition of pain, since pain is referred to living beings only, by definition.
So, finally, what finally establishes that pain exists is not measurement, but the human decision about its definition.
In other words, you said that pain exists because humans decided that, when its effects appear in living beings, they are evidence of its existence.
In the past, humans made several curious decisions similar to this one. For example, they decided that the Sun turns around the Earth. Now we have a more advanced science, but science doesn’t say anything about the existence of pain, because what science can measure is its effects, not the feeling itself.
Being this the situation, we could say that what exists behind these effects that we can see in living beings is not pain, but a supernatural ghost, a demon, a devil, that takes possession of human beings and determines these behaviours.
What’s the difference between referring certain behaviour to a devil, rather than to pain?
This shows that, after all, we have absolutely no idea of what pain itself is, what “feeling” is. It might be really some kind of devil, who knows?
This means that the idea that behind certain effects there is this mysterious thing that we call “pain”, or ”feeling”, can be accused of superstition.
William of Ockham said that “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. Once we speak of effects and measurable things, what is the point of referring them to a “feeling”? Do we really need to create the existence of this magical entity, that we call “feeling”, or “pain”?
For example, we know that there is gravity. We don’t need to imagine that gravity is created by invisible devils that have the patience to move each single object in a certain way. Gravity works fine without introducing the existence of devils. Why do we introduce the existence of “feeling” or “pain” into the system of mechanisms that create certain behaviours, such as crying, asking to stop, asking for analgesics?
Previously you mentioned subjectivity
but this conflicts with your reference to measurable things. If something is subjective, we cannot measure it.
So, at the end, it seems that humans, at a certain point, decided, subjectively, to create this arbitrary entity as a source of certain measurable things. What’s the point of inventing this source and saying that it exists because we can measure its effects? It would be similar to saying that certain devils exist because we can clearly see the effects of their presence in the phenomenon of gravity, which we can measure.
I’ll answer you with your own example. People saw the sunrise and said it was a fireball—the Sun rising above us, and so they gave it that name—sun + rising. The same applies to sunset. Then people learned that it was actually the Earth turning away from the Sun. But did this cause sunrise and sunset to disappear? No, and we still call them that, even though we understand their mechanism better. What humans experience and what other beings show through their behavior, humans call sensations. What is particularly unpleasant, humans call pain. These are the simplest definitions humans have ever given. Understanding the complex mechanisms of pain and sensations doesn’t mean they cease to be what they were. Just like sunset and sunrise.
Science is a process, not a set of glass bottles and machines.
I think that the essence of your argument is that objectivity is evidence of the existence of subjectivity. You take measurable phenomenons as evidence of the existence of feelings. If this reasoning was correct, then feelings would be a scientific phenomenon, but they aren’t. Actually, the moment you will find real evidence of anything subjective, that thing would stop being subjective, it would turn into being an objective phenomenon. This is the essence of the question: you cannot objectify subjectivity. You cannot find evidence of the existence of feelings, because feelings are inherently subjective, they belong entirely to the realm of subjectivity, you will never be able to reach them by using objectivity.
Thank you for your detailed explanation of your thought. Well, let me try to explain the subjective through the objective. So, a baby is born. Everything that his eye has seen and everything that he has felt before is nothing. Now he begins to see the world around him. How does he do this? Photoreceptors react to differences in illumination and wavelength and pass the image on to other neurons for processing - and from the chaotic play of light, shadow and color, the child’s attention begins to pick out an object. Let’s say this is the mother’s face. Now this face is in the memory and can be recalled simply as a thought, as a memory. What is this - our memory? It is just a mosaic of photoreceptor signals, analyzed by neurons of a higher level. Do you think it is possible to reproduce a picture in a person’s mind just by sending the appropriate impulses to the right neurons? It is possible, and this is already being done. And do you think it is possible to read thoughts by registering these signals in the brain? Also possible, and this is also already being done. So, everything subjective is born from objective processes, and they can be linked into a single process only with the appropriate level of knowledge. Humans are only just approaching this level—we can read thoughts in words, but we can’t reproduce them on a screen as an image. We can’t yet, but we will be able to do so in the future.