A much-talked-about issue in philosophy is the role of pain. Pain is often referred to in philosophical discussions concerning qualia and the fundamental nature of human experience. The meanings and consequences of pain have been a topic of writing by philosophers and theologians alike. The experience of pain is, due to its seeming universality, a very good portal through which to view various diverse aspects of human life.

Historical Views of Pain

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Two near contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Sade had very different views on these matters. Bentham saw pain and pleasure as objective phenomena, and defined utilitarianism on that principle. However the Marquis de Sade offered a wholly different view - which is that pain itself has an ethics, and that pursuit of pain, or imposing it, may be just as useful and just as pleasurable, and that this indeed is the purpose of the state - to indulge the desire to inflict pain in revenge, for instance, via the law (in his time most punishment was in fact the dealing out of pain). The 19th century view in Europe was that Bentham's view had to be promoted, de Sade's (which it found painful) suppressed so intensely that it - as de Sade predicted - became a pleasure in itself to indulge. The Victorian culture is often cited as the best example of this hypocrisy.

Various 20th century philosophers (viz. J.J.C. Smart, David Lewis, D.M. Armstrong) have commented upon the meaning of pain and what it can tell us about the nature of human experiences. Pain has also been the subject of various socio-philosophical treatises. Michel Foucault, for example, observed that the biomedical model of pain, and the shift away from pain-inducing punishments, was part of a general Enlightenment invention of Man. The idea of species-wide empathy, he asserts, was created, in which the pain of the punished is itself a pain to the punisher.

The Individuality of Pain

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It is often accepted as an a priori principle that one has inherent knowledge of one's own consciousness simply by virtue of dwelling within an "inner world" of the mind. This drastic distinction between inner world and outer world was most popularized by René Descartes when he solidified his principle of Cartesian dualism. From the centrality of one's own consciousness springs a fundamental problem of other minds, the discussion of which has often centered around pain.

Wittgenstein's Beetle in the Box

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote much about pain. In Section 293 of book I of his Philosophical Investigations, he described, with an example, the arbitrary and unverifiable character of the paradigm we use to describe pain. Suppose, he states, that everyone has a box with something in it, which shall be called a "beetle." No one person can look into another person's box, and each person knows what a beetle is only by looking at his own "beetle." If this group of people were to have a shared vocabulary describing "beetles," this vocabulary would, in fact, describe nothing. This is so because each person has no knowledge of any other person's beetle, and one's own beetle could, in fact, be in a constant state of change, and could thus hypothetically refer to no one thing.

Wittgenstein intended to draw a parallel between the "beetle" and one's own pain. Since each person has access to only his own pain and can know nothing of any other person's, it becomes clear that pain is a completely individual phenomenon. This view is similar to that held by many working within the postmodern tradition.

Pain and Theories of Mind

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The experience of pain has been used by various philosophers to analyze various types of philosophy of mind. David Lewis, in his article Mad Pain and Martian Pain, gives examples of various types of pain to support his own flavor of functionalism. He defines mad pain to be pain which occurs in a madman who has somehow gotten his "wires crossed" in such a way such that what we usually call "pain" does not cause him to cry or roll in agony, but instead to, for example, become very concentrated and good at mathematics. Martian pain is, to him, pain which occupies the same causal role as our pain, but has a very different physical realization (eg the Martian feels pain due to the activation of an elaborate internal hydraulic system rather than, for example, the firing of C-fibers). Both of these phenomena, Lewis claims, are pain, and must be accounted for in any coherent theory of mind.

See also

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• Pain
• Perception

External links

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• Wittgenstein's Beetle - Philosophy Online

Pain | Philosophical terminology