On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:20 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 4/11/2013 2:44 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: > > > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:22 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> On 4/11/2013 7:32 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: >> >>> On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: >>> >>> Hi Telmo, >>> >>> Yes, those are good counter examples. >>> >>> But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." >>> is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If >>> evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? >>> >>> Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are >>> mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those >>> nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle >>> pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but >>> then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result >>> in different characters of experience. >>> >>> >>> You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to >>> evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it >>> quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive >>> disadvantage. >>> >>> Brent >>> >> >> Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this >> example by way of trying to make this clear. >> >> You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation >> occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel >> pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to >> reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the >> mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What >> is the mechanism? >> >> >> It needn't be one specific "pain" mechanism. It could be a part of the >> brain that interprets a complex of neural signals as pain, it could be >> release of some hormones, it could be the development of specific pain >> sensors. All that is significant is that it elicit the "pain response". >> >> Brent >> > So you would identify the subjective experience of pain with an objective > description of some agent's pain response. That's no worse than my original > idea I suppose, though vulnerable to the same sorts of objections... for > instance, how would you account for phantom limb pain? headaches? What kind > of mechanism leads to the pain experience when it is impossible to identify > a pain response? > > > Why is it impossible to identify a pain response? Don't people with > phantom limb pain complain and try to alleviate it? > > Brent > > Yes, of course. In the case of the fire though, the explanatory power comes from the fact that the "response" is a response to something objective. For phantom limb pain your explanation is that the pain response is a response to pain itself - which is not helpful because it includes the phenomenon in the explanation of the thing you're trying to explain. Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
