[lit-ideas] pain in the ass
- From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 17:29:11 +0000
Well one could claim that the matter is transmission (transducers and the
localizz an works on blocking signals only, hence the so called brain would not
have the pain) the problem is largely bogus
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 24 January 2015 14:16
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: [lit-ideas]
If the pain had nothing whatsoever to do with the peripheral nerves in the part
of the body which is affected, local anesthesia couldn't work.
O.K.
On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Donal McEvoy
<donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>the anglosphere are excited by having found the way to claim that the dog does
>not have 'pain' that the feeling is "in" the brain, that the pain is not "in"
>the hand, etc.>
None of these alleged idiots suggested "that the dog does not have 'pain'". It
may be idiotic to suggest they did given the whole discussion accepted that
dogs may, like humans, experience pain - even, more specifically, toothache.
The suggestion that pain is not located in the part of the body 'in which it is
felt' is supported by modern neurophysiology - and by facts like patients
experiencing great pain in limbs that have been amputated etc. and by our
ability to remove 'the experience of pain in a part of the body' [an expression
that itself may mislead] without treating that part of the body but by giving
painkillers to the part of the brain that creates the pain-experience.
There is a more general point here about the nature of consciousness (of which
pains may form a part) - consciousness is not a mere mirror to nature or
imprint from external reality but is a product of a very complex set of
processes that simulate a 'reality' for us. When I touch this keyboard so that
I experience it as if "it is there", the keyboard "is there" but my experience
of it being there is a simulation of its being there.
What misleads us is that we do not experience our experience as if it is a
simulation but as if it is giving us direct access to reality - but we are
wrong to be mislead, by the immediacy and apparent "realism" of experience,
into thinking it gives us direct or unmediated access to reality. Our
consciousness of the external world - including our sense of external W1
objects by sight or touch - is located in W2 and not in W1: when I touch an
external W1 object it may appear that my touch-experience is 'out there' in W1
(at the border of my W1 fingertips and the W1 object they connect with), but in
truth this W1 interface is not where my touch-experience is but is merely a W1
source that is elaborately processed so as to create my touch-experience in W2.
So the derogatory remarks about empiricism are misplaced in the case of Popper:
for Popper is not an empiricist in the tradition of Hume et al but a critical
empiricist in a tradition that derives from Kant.
Speaking of dogs, Pavlov's famous dog is a behaviourist fiction based on
misinterpreting the dog's responses using the idea of a reflex arc, an idea
that is derived from traditional and uncritical empiricism of Hume's sort - the
Pavlovian "reflex arc" is merely the dogmas of associationist psychology in the
disguise of an empirical test ("disguise" because Pavlov's work does not
falsify a non-associationist interpretation of the same experiments, and so
does not constitute a proper empirical test since it provides no differential
prediction to test between an associationist and a non-associationist
interpretation). Popper is very clear that in his theory of knowledge, which is
supported by modern neurophysiology, there is no such thing as a "reflex arc" -
there is no such thing as a "conditioned reflex" or an "unconditioned reflex".
It is traditional empiricism that is blind to the truth that toothache as an
experience is not located in the tooth, no matter how vivid the experience
appears to suggest that the pain is located in the tooth. The clear way of
thinking about these things is to disentangle the W1 aspects that go to create
the experience of toothache from the W2 experience of having a toothache,
rather than confusedly thinking the W2 experience means the toothache is
located in W1 (which is what, uncritically, we are wont to do).
Dnl
On Saturday, 24 January 2015, 6:11, Adriano Palma
<Palma@xxxxxxxxxx<mailto:Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
It is indeed embarrassing this constant exhibition of idiocy on the part of
this people.
A, not really -- but let me be generous, quasi noble while stupid tradition of
empiricism slips into behaviourism and all of sudden all assholes in the
anglosphere are excited by having found the way to claim that the dog does not
have 'pain' that the feeling is "in" the brain, that the pain is not "in" the
hand, etc.
fascinating
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Sent: 24 January 2015 01:42
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Toothache
In a message dated 1/23/2015 11:52:34 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes in "Re:
Facing the Music": Take a dog with toothache. The dog has no access to W3 in
Popper's conception. The dog may experience pain as if the pain is emanating
from the tooth with caries. We humans may know this is an illusion: the pain
is not located in the tooth at all rather the pain is in the brain or is a
product of the brain, and the brain then 'locates' the pain as if it is in the
body where the tooth is. The dog 's experience of toothache involves a complex
interaction of W1 states (including links between the W1 action of caries and
the W1 of the central nervous system) and W2 states (including the conscious
state which 'locates' the pain as if is emanating from the tooth). A human can
experience toothache in a way that involves just W1 and W2 in a way similar to
the dog. But the dog will have no conscious understanding that its brain is
'locating' the pain in the tooth (when the pain is actually located in the
brain rather than in the tooth), and the dog will have no grasp of the issue
of caries or its effect on its central nervous system (for "caries" and "CNS"
here involve W3 theoretical knowledge), nor will the dog grasp in W3 terms
that there is a potential solution to its plight in the form of a veterinary
dentist:- conversely, the human understanding of toothache, where it
encompasses all these things that a dog cannot grasp, may be a W3-dependent
understanding.
So there is a merely W1/W2 sense in which a human might experience and know
that they are having a toothache, but there is also a W3-dependent sense of
experiencing and knowing that they are having a toothache which goes beyond
this. We may also speculate as to the downward causation of W3-dependent
experience on experience in its W1/W2 form: for example, a person's experience
of a toothache may be altered by their W3-dependent knowledge, for example that
the pain is simply a figment of the CSN/brain or that dental treatment is
available to cure it - so we may for example speculate (and even subject to
psychological tests) that the experience of having a toothache may differ if
we are in the position to get immediate treatment from how we experience it
when there is no possibility of getting any treatment.
This kind of speculation and testing abandons the idea that 'experience'
is always one simple level of entity for the idea that experience is a complex
product of many interacting layers, including different layers that belong or
derive from W1, W2 or W3.
I don't know if it was Moore who instilled in Witters a fascination with
toothaches.
He (Witters) used to say, to echo Aune, that
i. I have a toothache.
is incorrigible, and H. P. G. makes a few interesting points about
a. incorrigibility
and
b. privileged access
(borrowing from Witters and Anscombe) in "From the banal to the bizarre"
(one of his publications: his presidential address to the American
Philosophical Association, Pacific Division).
It may different, it seems, with POPPER having a toothache.
Since McEvoy mentions dogs, it may do to mention Witters on lions, and
rephrase.
Androcles, however, apparently did understand the lion's ache -- and was
nicely rewarded for it (from being eaten by the animal).
For Witters says,
"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
This is elucidatory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations
It is this emphasis on becoming attentive to the social backdrop against which
language is rendered intelligible that explains Wittgenstein's elliptical
comment that "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
Witters' claim is _general_ (while he denied it, he craved for them). An
instance would be of a lion saying:
i. I have a toothache.
Or
ii. I have an ache in my right anterior foot, Androcles.
(Androcles: Mmm. Let me see. No wonder. You have a big thorn on the pad there.
Let me remove it, force pus from the wound, and bandage it.)
Mutatis mutandis, McEvoy's dog:
"Take a dog with toothache. The dog has no access to W3 in Popper's conception.
The dog may experience pain as if the pain is emanating from the tooth with
caries."
In summary, while
iii. I have an ache in my tooth.
may be _literally_ false.
ii. I have a toothache.
may IMPLICATE that
iii. It seems to me AS IF I have an ache in my tooth.
-- for dogs, lions, and humans alike. (Cfr. H. P. G., "Can I have a pain in my
tail?").
Cheers,
Speranza
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