Non-anthropomorphic alien pain
Eray Ozkural exa
I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
"folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
it feels pain. Of course philosophically that is a very naive approach
as evidenced in this essay:
http://www.bluejoh.com/dungeon/archives/000423.php
Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it is
very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever "subjective
experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go all the way
whether there is a Universal pain!)
Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
there is no pain!)
And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
readily in our dictionaries?
Thanks,
__
Eray Ozkural (exa)
CS Dept, Bilkent Univ
Cat Paparazzi
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.0304...@posting.google.com...
> Hi there,
>
Our
> "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
> of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
> it feels pain.
I would like to see a 'Turing' test to pass of which a computer, after being
subjected to a brutal kick, would writhe and moan the way that fools most reasonable
people into thinking that it feels pain. Would this be at par with the present Turing
test based on verbal manipulations as far as its usefulness for AI is concerned?
PsykoPat
Erik Max Francis
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
At a high level, pain is just a signal to a creature that something is
wrong. As you look at the scale from microbes to insects to plants to
animals to primates to humans, there's a graduation of the
sophistication of the sensory output. Certainly many animals feel pain,
so it is not something specific to humans. Humans just have the ability
to express their displeasure, and, perhaps to their detriment, think
about a potential future filled with pain.
Pain really serves two purposes: It makes you stop whatever you're
doing, and it makes you treat the injured area very gingerly. The
former is good when you're doing something like putting your hand in a
fire; the latter is good when you have a broken arm and you need to be
very careful with it so that it will heal properly. These are both
useful evolutionary traits, which is no doubt why humans feel pain even
despite being able to intellectualize about their problems.
It's likely that a completely alien creature, whether sentinent or not,
would have _some_ similar signal. Whether it's what we would call
"pain" is a separate question, of course. It's likely that it would not
be pleasant, but it might not be as debilitating as our form of pain;
all that's really required is something that makes it very clear what's
going on and that you should stop. So to an alien it might be a really
awful itch, or maybe a weird vibration feeling, or something like that.
Things like shock might well have no analogue.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Chance favors the trained mind.
\__/ Louis Pasteur
Blackgirl International / http://www.blackgirl.org/
The Internet resource for black women.
Erik Max Francis
> Here's my opinion: You can't take anything for granted. As much as we
> know,
> a lot of human life has feels no pain (or anything at all). E.g.
> plants,
> single celled organisms, and probably a good chunk of the animal
> kingdom.
> We can only make assumptions for beings sufficiently close to us.
I'm guessing you mean Earth life, not human life?
Michael Ash
Wolfgang Schwanke <REMOVE.use...@wschwanke.de> wrote:
> Here's my opinion: You can't take anything for granted. As much as we know,
> a lot of human life has feels no pain (or anything at all). E.g. plants,
> single celled organisms, and probably a good chunk of the animal kingdom.
> We can only make assumptions for beings sufficiently close to us.
Playing the devil's advocate, you can't even assume that your twin
brother feels pain. All you have to go on is his reactions, after all,
and the fact that you live in a similar body that does, in fact, feel
pain.
Jim Burns
I think you'd like to read "The Soul of the Mark III Beast," by
Terrence Miedaner. It's a story involving a philosophical
experiment much as you describe. Here's an excerpt:
: As she inverted the machine and set it down, its lights changed
: back to red. Wheels spun briefly, stopped. Dirksen picked up
: the hammer again, quickly raised it and brought it down in a
: smooth arc which struck the helpless machine off-center,
: damaging one of its wheels and flipping it right-side up again.
: There was a metallic scraping sound fromn the damaged wheel,
: and the beast began spinning in a fitful circle. A snapping
: sound came from its underbelly; the machine stopped. lights
: glowing dolefully.
I read it in _The Mind's I_, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel
Dennett (1981). Their reference says it's an excerpt from
_The Soul of Anna Klane_ (by Miedaner, copyright 1977 by the
Church of Physical Theology).
I think it's pretty clear how the Miedaner wanted the test
to come out. I'm inclined to agree with him. I look at these
electronic "pets" like Furbies and Pokemons, and it seems
to me the main problem with your test is it's too easy
to pass.
Yours,
Jim Burns
John Park
>
> Playing the devil's advocate, you can't even assume that your twin
> brother feels pain. All you have to go on is his reactions, after all,
> and the fact that you live in a similar body that does, in fact, feel
> pain.
Certainly you can assume it, and I imagine most nonpsychopaths would
assume it. The question is, rather, how could you _prove_ it?
--John Park
Julie Pascal
"John Park" <af...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:b706oa$bes$1...@freenet9.carleton.ca...
Chances are most humans see color in the same way but
it can't be proven. The fact that some humans see color
differently and that this is known and has an impact on how
those people interact with the world...it has an effect...
would suggest that differences in color vision would become
apparent over time if they existed.
Pain is objective in that nerves are objective and signals
sent through nerves and all that are objective. People
whose perception of pain is messed up can tell that they
are reacting differently than other people. Assuming that
people feel pain in a similar way as other people is
entirely reasonable and rational. And as Michael said,
nonpsychopaths do assume this.
--Julie
Julie Pascal
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.0304...@posting.google.com...
>
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
Erik basically said very much what I intended to say
about this. Pain has an evolutionary purpose. Or, I should
say it has a *protective* purpose, evolutionary or not. ;-)
> My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
> experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
> "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
> of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
> it feels pain. (...)
The behavior may not be identical for different creatures but
there ought to be similarities. Jumping up and down, swearing,
and sucking on one's injured appendange might not be evident
in other creatures than humans. Pulling away from a fire or
stopping some other injuring action ought to be universal.
(Assuming that fire is a problem for that creature.) Pain is
some degree of unpleasant. A little hot isn't pain but it is
still warning. A lot hot is cell damage.
One thing to look at may be to find what people who loose
feeling in their extremities have to do to accomodate the
loss of the pain warning.
Pain even tells us to *eat*.
(...)
> Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
> that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
> culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
> so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
> inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
> really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
> when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
> there is no pain!)
That question could only be posed of a living creature if the
person asking it didn't care at all about the creature.
What purpose inflicting physical damage? Damage is damage
isn't it? Even if the creature felt no pain it would be mutilation
or worse. Pain becomes an excuse in your example, or at the
least morality is defined by pain or lack of it. What is the
purpose of your hypothetical example? If a person had no
feeling in their legs does it become moral to break them?
As for your robot. If it were damaged by being hit it doesn't
matter if the programmed response is pain, the damage exists.
An AI or robot or any mechanical thing could be programmed
to detect damage and to protect itself from damage. This
doesn't make it alive. Being programmed to avoid damage
doesn't mean that the AI is not alive either.
Unless you intended to talk about emotional anguish?
> And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
> an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
> ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
> readily in our dictionaries?
Of course.
I would still expect some sort of damage avoidance mechanism
to be present.
My energy beings would definately get a rash if they approach
too closely to conductive metals. Can't have them exsanguinating
because they decided to nest in copper tubing now can we. :-)
--Julie
Cat Paparazzi
"Jim Burns" <burn...@osu.edu> wrote in message news:3E939A1C...@osu.edu...
>
>
> Cat Paparazzi wrote:
> >
> > "Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
> > news:fa69ae35.0304...@posting.google.com...
> > > Hi there,
> > >
> > > Our "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and
> > > has a good chance of becoming very wrong-headed: if it
> > > behaves as if it is in pain, then it feels pain.
> >
> > I would like to see a 'Turing' test to pass of which a
> > computer, after being subjected to a brutal kick, would writhe
> > and moan the way that fools most reasonable people into
> > thinking that it feels pain. Would this be at par with the
> > present Turing test based on verbal manipulations as far as
> > its usefulness for AI is concerned?
>
> to come out. I'm inclined to agree with him. I look at these
> electronic "pets" like Furbies and Pokemons, and it seems
> to me the main problem with your test is it's too easy
> to pass.
>
> Yours,
> Jim Burns
Well, my idea was to make money with the concept. If you create an android or even a
piece of machinery that can believably moan and writhe in terrible pain and
discomfort, there should be a lucrative market among the sadists for it. People
similar to George Bush (Serial Killer of Texas) and Saddam Hussein would not think
twice paying heaps to get their hands on one.
PsykoPat
Francis Burton
Cat Paparazzi <PatHa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Well, my idea was to make money with the concept. If you create an
>android or even a
>piece of machinery that can believably moan and writhe in terrible pain and
>discomfort, there should be a lucrative market among the sadists for it.
Or it could just complain in depressed tones about the
diodes down its left side. :-)
Francis
Jim Cambias
er...@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural exa) wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
>
> My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
> experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
> "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
> of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
> it feels pain. Of course philosophically that is a very naive approach
> as evidenced in this essay:
>
> http://www.bluejoh.com/dungeon/archives/000423.php
This seems to be nothing more than a matter of semantics. It's like the
old conundrum "Do other people see the same colors I do?" Ultimately it's
a pointless question. If a creature, whether Terran animal or intelligent
alien being, has a sensation which it finds unpleasant or causes it to
avoid certain stimuli (sorry to get all behaviorist here, but I don't want
to go begging the question), then you may as well call it "pain" and treat
it as such.
Similarly, emotional anguish can fit the same pattern. If losing a loved
one makes an alien feel "shiugna" then you treat it as profound sadness,
even if the overt manifestations don't match what humans do. I mean,
unless you expect aliens to weep saline water from their eyes when sad,
this is kind of obvious.
>
> Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
> AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it is
> very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever "subjective
> experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go all the way
> whether there is a Universal pain!)
>
I disagree strongly. An artificial intelligence wouldn't feel pain in the
same way a living being would. For an AI, "pain" is a response simulating
feelings it can't have; a cosmetic response. I also doubt AIs would ever
be designed to feel pain -- for conscious beings it's a waste. Sensations
which give more information about what has happened to your body would be
more useful than simple physical pain, and the ability to recover from
emotional hurts without sadness would be equally useful.
> Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
> that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
> culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
> so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
> inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
> really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
> when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
> there is no pain!)
>
Again, this is like the color question. So what? If it looks like pain
and the creature behaves as if it's in pain, why not call it pain?
> And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
> an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
> ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
> readily in our dictionaries?
>
Now this is the interesting part. Aliens who _don't_ feel pain would have
a very different view of the world. Among other things, the idea of
bravery would be laughable to them -- "you consider it admirable to not
fear physical sensations of injury? But every hatchling learns that!"
Their responses might be a bit more logical and they might be better able
to "take the long view" even about matters of personal safety.
Cambias
Richard James
> Hi there,
>
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
>
> My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
> experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
> "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
> of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
> it feels pain. Of course philosophically that is a very naive approach
> as evidenced in this essay:
>
> http://www.bluejoh.com/dungeon/archives/000423.php
>
> Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
> AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it is
> very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever "subjective
> experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go all the way
> whether there is a Universal pain!)
I have a rather interesting perspective on pain, due to the fact that I
suffer chronic acute emotional pain. From social phobia which is a
fight/flight mechanism disorder. Pain is purely in our minds, it is there
to protect us and if our pain mechanism is damaged it can wreck havoc.
People talk about emotional pain as if it is different from physical pain
but it isn't. Given the right sort of treatment there is no pain. This
could be certain chemical alterations to the brain or cognitive training to
alter a persons perception just as pavlov's dogs were trained.
For example I might think about asking a stranger directions.
My mind will react and cause my body to twinge.
If I take the right medication then my mind does not react. If I think there
is no danger from the stranger then my mind does not react. I have not
removed the pain stimulus I have just altered my reaction to it.
Someone may do the same for physical pain, although it might be harder.
If one can alter their reaction to a pain stimuli, it creates an interesting
question. Is it really pain? or is it just a reaction? When you kick a dog
is the pain it feels just a reaction? is their really no philosophical
basis for pain? If the dog can feel no pain what does it mean if you kick
it?
Without a philosophical argument that pain is actually damaging all you are
left with is a reaction. In your AI example does the AI react or is there a
moral/philosophical reason for it to be hurt? When you feel pity what is
going on?
Thus I think that an AI can feel pain but only if it believes that it is
morally/philosophically "wrong" for it to be hurt. Whatever wrong means in
that context. As for aliens feeling alien pain, many things can cause pain
reactions but what would be a reason for the pain to trouble such a being
otherwise?
A moral/Philosophical reason for pain could be something like continued
existence. If I keep kicking the dog I will kill it and its possible life
shortened. Some people believe this to be wrong (as do I). Hence pain can
help you survive longer.
I hope that makes some sense.
Richard :)
--
Will kill for Documentation.
A Vic 20 is faster than a C64: 8bit roxs
http://www.abnormalpenguin.com/~dogmilk/
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> Erik basically said very much what I intended to say
> about this. Pain has an evolutionary purpose. Or, I should
> say it has a *protective* purpose, evolutionary or not. ;-)
>
Yes, but note that this obvious survival quality is not a sufficient
condition for pain!
> The behavior may not be identical for different creatures but
> there ought to be similarities. Jumping up and down, swearing,
> and sucking on one's injured appendange might not be evident
> in other creatures than humans. Pulling away from a fire or
> stopping some other injuring action ought to be universal.
> (Assuming that fire is a problem for that creature.) Pain is
> some degree of unpleasant. A little hot isn't pain but it is
> still warning. A lot hot is cell damage.
Ok, I buy that there can be an almost universal characterization of
avoidance/injury behavior. Hmmm, that gives me an idea!! What about
minds without physical bodies that could be said to be "injured" in
the usual sense? Consider a Space-Odyssey fashion monolith that runs
an AI. Can that AI feel pain? It should be possible since I could
simulate a human brain that feels pain and then play with its inputs.
> One thing to look at may be to find what people who loose
> feeling in their extremities have to do to accomodate the
> loss of the pain warning.
>
A valid cognitive psychology experiment. The behavior change would be
probably detectable since subconscious cues are changed. However, in
that case we first know of a type of entities (humans) that are known
to experience pain and exhibit certain behavior.
> Pain even tells us to *eat*.
>
I too agree that it's probably a general mechanism in our
goal-oriented subsystems.
> That question could only be posed of a living creature if the
> person asking it didn't care at all about the creature.
> What purpose inflicting physical damage? Damage is damage
> isn't it? Even if the creature felt no pain it would be mutilation
> or worse. Pain becomes an excuse in your example, or at the
> least morality is defined by pain or lack of it. What is the
> purpose of your hypothetical example? If a person had no
> feeling in their legs does it become moral to break them?
>
I make no moral argument. That is simply a thought experiment to
analyze the sufficient conditions for pain. Much easier than finding
damaged brains around :) Making merely a thought experiment isn't
immoral :)
> As for your robot. If it were damaged by being hit it doesn't
> matter if the programmed response is pain, the damage exists.
> An AI or robot or any mechanical thing could be programmed
> to detect damage and to protect itself from damage. This
> doesn't make it alive. Being programmed to avoid damage
> doesn't mean that the AI is not alive either.
>
> Unless you intended to talk about emotional anguish?
>
I intend to talk solely about pain. An emotional anguish could follow
pain nonetheless :)
[snip]
__
Eray Ozkural
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> Certainly you can assume it, and I imagine most nonpsychopaths would
> assume it. The question is, rather, how could you _prove_ it?
>
That's easy. I can compare his brain scans to the general case of
pain-feeling-individuals using a stochastic model. IOW, looking inside
his brain with an advanced method.
The problem gets complicated philosophically when we consider beings
of a sufficiently distant nature. Nobody would argue that mammals can
feel pain, and indeed the basic feeling of pain could be adequately
described as "mammal pain"!
However, consider a loathsome spider. We don't seem to assume that a
spider actually experiences pain. A reactionary answer to this is
"but the spider isn't conscious like us!", so is human-like
consciousness a prerequisite of the pain we know? Not unlikely.
In my opinion, it is also conceivable that there is such a thing as
"raw pain" that is not quite the same thing as "conscious pain" in its
whole glory. Maybe a diminished sense of pain like that is what the
spider experiences?
What about "mental pain", "distress", "agony", "desperation"... Aren't
all those products of consciousness?
Thanks,
__
Eray Ozkural
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> Again, this is like the color question. So what? If it looks like pain
> and the creature behaves as if it's in pain, why not call it pain?
Because it's a naive behavioristic account of pain which can be said
to say nothing useful about the phenomenology of pain. Kripke's said
that such an external characterization would make the meaning of
"pain" a transient name for all "pains", and in reality it's much
worse since internal states may actually be in opposition to external
behavior in conscious creatures such as ours. Consider reading that
excellent article that I linked to in the original post, it contains a
nice progression of ideas in the subjective character of pain. David
Lewis has a very interesting argument involving "madman pain" and
"alien pain".
Ultimately, I believe that behaviorism can account for only the
simplest creatures such as ameoba which do not really have a mind. (So
I don't respect neobehaviorism either)
In the case of color, the importance of intensional states would
become even clearer. It is impossible to explain the subjective nature
of color without explaining how one perceives color, ie a functional
or intensional or another advanced theory of perception would be
needed.
Regards,
__
Eray Ozkural
Eray Ozkural exa
> > an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
> > ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
> > readily in our dictionaries?
> >
> Now this is the interesting part. Aliens who _don't_ feel pain would have
> a very different view of the world. Among other things, the idea of
> bravery would be laughable to them -- "you consider it admirable to not
> fear physical sensations of injury? But every hatchling learns that!"
> Their responses might be a bit more logical and they might be better able
> to "take the long view" even about matters of personal safety.
>
I agree :)
I think it would be challenging to come up with a strong/basic feeling
that is completely alien to us! Although some feelings seem to be
"learnt", it is quite dfficult to imagine that extra feeling we
haven't experienced!!
Absence of pain would surely result in a different damage avoidance
strategy than ours, as you say it is a workable option that it is
acted upon rationally.
I can't think how such a thing as an "Alpha feeling" could even be
described in words. You can't surely tell it by likening to another
feeling, you could say that "ecstacy" is amplified "pleasure". But
then again those are not too different. Have to take it from ground.
Let me give it a try. Probably it will stink, but nonetheless :)
The Liitur bore a mentality further than ours. The range of their
conscious sphere exceeded even the Trepium breed of advanced humans
with adaptive sensory cores. Their societies being found on efficient
co-operation of a large number of minds, they were able to tear down
the barriers of individual consciousness. Abilities that could only be
possessed by the collective. Liitur's evolved traits included a
specific emotion that I can call "Alpha feeling" that helped them
participate in social networks. In their accounts, they likened it to
"the feeling of company and presence and loneliness at the same time",
but I suspect it is not quite possible to appreciate what it really
is. Maybe a little like telepathy. The ship's scientist told me that
it imposed permanent computational changes in their processing
apparatus, apparently the network operated like a supercomputer
distributing the tasks to individuals. Thus some compartments of their
minds would be moved or restructured in the process, and a great deal
of high-speed communication accompanied the reorganization. "Alpha
feeling" is what they experience when all of this happens.....
Hope it was not terribly boring :P
Cheers,
__
Eray Ozkural
Joao Pedro
> In the case of color, the importance of intensional states would
> become even clearer. It is impossible to explain the subjective nature
> of color without explaining how one perceives color, ie a functional
> or intensional or another advanced theory of perception would be
> needed.
Color is a needed function of the brain based on radiation discriminant
molecules such has those found in CCD cameras.
Isaac Kuo
feature on the obvious levels, it's not necessarily true
that pain is always a useful feature. For example, on a
cellular level certain cells literally self destruct as
part of normal functioning. A failure to do so may "benefit"
the errant cell in the short run, but in evolutionary
terms it fails due to death of the organism (due to cancer,
or other health problems).
In harsh desert environments, ants survive by sending out
workers on suicidal forays. Thus, the principal of
overall survival by regularly sacrificing individuals can
work on a higher level also. At an extreme, a pain response
to avoid danger/damage may be evolutionarily counterproductive.
Thus, I speculate it plausible for an alien species to exist
without anything resembling a pain response. These would
be creatures with a high reproduction/growth rate living
in a way which requires purposefully inviting danger.
Isaac Kuo
Oliver Neukum
> In harsh desert environments, ants survive by sending out
> workers on suicidal forays. Thus, the principal of
> overall survival by regularly sacrificing individuals can
> work on a higher level also. At an extreme, a pain response
> to avoid danger/damage may be evolutionarily counterproductive.
A pain response or fear of pain influencing future behaviour?
> Thus, I speculate it plausible for an alien species to exist
> without anything resembling a pain response. These would
> be creatures with a high reproduction/growth rate living
> in a way which requires purposefully inviting danger.
Don't they rather lack a fear of death or rather have an urge
to do suicidal things, than lack a pain response?
Information about damage done to the body seems to be very
valuable. Even in suicidal fury knowledge about injury and
malfunction of body parts are useful and allow a better
fight.
The response to pain might be totally different.
A creature could for example instinctively strive to
kill the source of pain rather than protect itself.
Regards
Oliver
J.B. Moreno
> I disagree strongly. An artificial intelligence wouldn't feel pain in the
> same way a living being would. For an AI, "pain" is a response simulating
> feelings it can't have; a cosmetic response. I also doubt AIs would ever
> be designed to feel pain -- for conscious beings it's a waste. Sensations
> which give more information about what has happened to your body would be
> more useful than simple physical pain, and the ability to recover from
> emotional hurts without sadness would be equally useful.
A certain degree of "pain" might be useful as both an avoidance
mechanism, and as a quick response message -- i.e. you might be able to
transimt "ow" faster than the precise damage data.
(Of course that supposes that a quick response is useful, which probably
depends upon the AI and what it's doing).
--
JBM
"Everything is futile." -- Marvin of Borg
Joseph Hertzlinger
wrote:
> Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
> AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it
> is very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever
> "subjective experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go
> all the way whether there is a Universal pain!)
Didn't Marvin have an ache in the diodes on his left side?
Isaac Kuo
Oliver Neukum <oli...@neukum.name> wrote in message
news:b72a6f$dht$06$1...@news.t-online.com...
> > In harsh desert environments, ants survive by sending out
> > workers on suicidal forays. Thus, the principal of
> > overall survival by regularly sacrificing individuals can
> > work on a higher level also. At an extreme, a pain response
> > to avoid danger/damage may be evolutionarily counterproductive.
> A pain response or fear of pain influencing future behaviour?
In a typical animal which can learn, pain is a strong activator
of learning behavior to avoid. It's this sort of pain response
which might be counterproductive for the proposed alien
species.
> > Thus, I speculate it plausible for an alien species to exist
> > without anything resembling a pain response. These would
> > be creatures with a high reproduction/growth rate living
> > in a way which requires purposefully inviting danger.
> Don't they rather lack a fear of death or rather have an urge
> to do suicidal things, than lack a pain response?
> Information about damage done to the body seems to be very
> valuable. Even in suicidal fury knowledge about injury and
> malfunction of body parts are useful and allow a better
> fight.
Or it might be an unnecessary and undesirable distraction.
For example, consider an ecosystem where biological "guns"
are the norm. There's no advantage for a soldier bug to
be distracted by the damage of bullet holes. Rather, its
purpose is to just keep on doing what it's supposed to (like
shooting at its target) for as long as it can.
> The response to pain might be totally different.
> A creature could for example instinctively strive to
> kill the source of pain rather than protect itself.
That might be counterproductive if predators take advantage
of it. For example, a predator colony sends out small
sacrificial bees to distract the victim to cover the larger
warriors and queen.
Isaac Kuo
John
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.0304...@posting.google.com...
> Hi there,
>
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
>
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/function.htm
Jim Balter
> "Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
> news:fa69ae35.0304...@posting.google.com...
>
>>Hi there,
>>
>>I have a question for you SF folks out there.
You apparently haven't been around here enough to know what
a bad idea it is to crosspost these particular groups.
>>What are the interesting
>>views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
>>aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
>
>
> Erik basically said very much what I intended to say
> about this. Pain has an evolutionary purpose. Or, I should
> say it has a *protective* purpose, evolutionary or not. ;-)
Pain is a *product* of evolution, since organisms better able
to avoid sources of damage will tend to produce more offspring.
Of course this implies that any such avoidance is properly
called pain, but this, like any other use of a word, is
just a convention. There's no plaque in Plato's heaven
that lists those organisms that "really" feel pain.
>>My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
>>experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
>>"folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
>>of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
>>it feels pain. (...)
>
>
> The behavior may not be identical for different creatures but
> there ought to be similarities.
Right; what is relevant is the *function* that pain plays,
not just behavior. "If it functions as pain then it is pain"
isn't "very wrong-headed" at all.
> Jumping up and down, swearing,
> and sucking on one's injured appendange might not be evident
> in other creatures than humans. Pulling away from a fire or
> stopping some other injuring action ought to be universal.
> (Assuming that fire is a problem for that creature.) Pain is
> some degree of unpleasant. A little hot isn't pain but it is
> still warning. A lot hot is cell damage.
>
> One thing to look at may be to find what people who loose
> feeling in their extremities have to do to accomodate the
> loss of the pain warning.
>
> Pain even tells us to *eat*.
>
> (...)
>
>>Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
>>that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
>>culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
>>so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
>>inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
>>really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
>>when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
>>there is no pain!)
Again, if it functions as pain, call it pain.
> That question could only be posed of a living creature if the
> person asking it didn't care at all about the creature.
> What purpose inflicting physical damage?
Um, I think it was a thought experiment to answer
"if it can feel pain" -- no one is actually advocating
inflicting any damage.
> Damage is damage
> isn't it? Even if the creature felt no pain it would be mutilation
> or worse.
People wrong-headedly prevented forest fires which, it turned
out, were necessary for giant sequoias to survive. Perhaps
some aliens need occasional mutilation.
> Pain becomes an excuse in your example, or at the
> least morality is defined by pain or lack of it. What is the
> purpose of your hypothetical example? If a person had no
> feeling in their legs does it become moral to break them?
>
> As for your robot. If it were damaged by being hit it doesn't
> matter if the programmed response is pain, the damage exists.
> An AI or robot or any mechanical thing could be programmed
> to detect damage and to protect itself from damage. This
> doesn't make it alive.
No, but it's one of the standard criteria for life.
> Being programmed to avoid damage
> doesn't mean that the AI is not alive either.
Yup, but it does make it better fit the standard criteria.
> Unless you intended to talk about emotional anguish?
Which is not some magical essence, it's a matter of
being in certain organizations of physical states,
just like any other pain.
>>And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
>>an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
>>ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
>>readily in our dictionaries?
>
>
> Of course.
If we have no words, then it isn't at all clear that
we've succeeded in conceiving. Or to put it another way,
I can conceive of something so alien that I can't conceive of it. :-)
> I would still expect some sort of damage avoidance mechanism
> to be present.
>
> My energy beings would definately get a rash if they approach
> too closely to conductive metals. Can't have them exsanguinating
> because they decided to nest in copper tubing now can we. :-)
But what about energy beings that *don't* get rashes?
What one should expect and what one needs to introduce in order
to make a character interesting are two different things.
--
<J Q B>
"... to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ..." -- UN Charter
"War is Peace" -- George Orwell
"we have come in peace" -- Colin Powell, Mar 26, 2003
Jim Balter
Circular argument. It can't these feelings because -- it wouldn't
have these feelings.
Just why is it that things made out of C, H, and O can have these feelings
but other things can't?
> I also doubt AIs would ever
> be designed to feel pain -- for conscious beings it's a waste. Sensations
> which give more information about what has happened to your body would be
> more useful than simple physical pain,
If it's possible to use that info to correct the problem -- which
it would be. Unfortunately for us evolution didn't look ahead.
> and the ability to recover from
> emotional hurts without sadness would be equally useful.
These play a complex role in social species; indeed we would
probably want to engineer AI's diferently.
>>Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
>>that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
>>culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
>>so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
>>inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
>>really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
>>when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
>>there is no pain!)
>>
>
> Again, this is like the color question. So what? If it looks like pain
> and the creature behaves as if it's in pain, why not call it pain?
Cuz most people are naive Platonists who think that there's a fact of
the matter as to whether or not something is "really" pain.
>>And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
>>an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
>>ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
>>readily in our dictionaries?
>>
>
> Now this is the interesting part. Aliens who _don't_ feel pain would have
> a very different view of the world. Among other things, the idea of
> bravery would be laughable to them -- "you consider it admirable to not
> fear physical sensations of injury? But every hatchling learns that!"
> Their responses might be a bit more logical and they might be better able
> to "take the long view" even about matters of personal safety.
Such aliens would have a different view of harming others. It might
be difficult to design a functioning society of such alienated aliens.
Gary Forbis
and so may not communicate anything (I want to communicate) to others.
Consider the emotion "lust". At least in me it is quite unlike pain.
I don't feel lust but rather its effects on my body. Suppose an alien
were to feel lust as I feel pain and the effect of the pain would not
be avoidance of the stimulus as I attempt to do but rather the approach
to a stimulus. In the alien the pain of lust would slowly well up until
temporarily ameliorated, similar to the way I feel hunger and ameliorate
it.
Come to think of it, pain isn't always an avoidance signal even though
it motivates actions of one type or another.
Jim Balter
This is nice. My own experience with ants suggests
that an ant colony is an organism and that indeed ants do
not avoid danger/damage -- they seem quite impervious to it,
and simply return bits of dead ant-cell to the nest.
Of course the queen is protected, just as our vital organs
are, but that's a different protective mechanism from pain,
and moving the queen out of harm's way is usually not an option.
Jim Balter
> Here's a slightly different approach to alien pain. It's quite personal
> and so may not communicate anything (I want to communicate) to others.
>
> Consider the emotion "lust". At least in me it is quite unlike pain.
> I don't feel lust but rather its effects on my body. Suppose an alien
> were to feel lust as I feel pain and the effect of the pain would not
> be avoidance of the stimulus as I attempt to do but rather the approach
> to a stimulus. In the alien the pain of lust would slowly well up until
> temporarily ameliorated, similar to the way I feel hunger and ameliorate
> it.
Such aliens wouldn't produce offspring and thus there would never
be such aliens.
There's a *reason* why pain feels the way it does and lust feels
the way *it* does.
> Come to think of it, pain isn't always an avoidance signal even though
> it motivates actions of one type or another.
In humans pain, if not too severe, can be channeled in various ways.
We're complex organisms and our various features interact
in interesting ways. But pain always demands attention -- that's
it's primary feature.
Eray Ozkural exa
> There's a *reason* why pain feels the way it does and lust feels
> the way *it* does.
Good point!
I would, rather guilty feeling, suggest that the successful theory of
pain has to explain not only when pain occurs, but also why it feels
that bad and why lust feels so good!
This is going to sound Nagel-ish, but I have to admit I myself am not
wholly satisfied with the philosophical explanations of the subjective
in this regard. Maybe I can convince myself, but I don't consider them
convincing enough in general.
Suppose the computational view is correct. Then, pain corresponds to a
particular computation. We have already established that it is not
simply a reflex agent, so it is not a simple protocol. What kind of
computation would correspond to "feeling pain?" That's quite hard to
pinpoint, it's much harder than pinpointing a general theory of
perception that I mentioned earlier. I could combine auditory or
visual modalities, but does pain fit into the same picture?
I think it's difficult to fit pain into the same picture as the
subjective experience of say, seeing, because pain is different in
some important ways. First of all, pain asserts itself, it has a
force. It changes focus of consciousness by that force. It also
inflicts in the being an immediate goal to end this effect. While in
the case of lust, there is anticipated pleasure and the being will be
driven to the goal of starting that effect.
Also notable is the mode of communication among subsystems, likely
accompanied by sophisticated biochemical agents to drive the effect.
Now I think I sound more like an analytical philosopher because this
gives a simple characterization of the kind of computation that is
pain :) The computation I outline, which is not too different from
Society of Mind account, is different enough than seeing because it
has a purely functional nature! It is the vivid expression of a
control system that knows about (among other things)
1) computational processes
2) goals
3) representation of "things" in the world and mind
And the computation it does is to, somewhat like an Operating System
scheduler, play with the way we are thinking. That is pain, and
because it eliminates some "thoughts" which are things that are loved
and adored by other subsystems, it creates a little havoc in our mind
which is "painful", including all physical and mental pain.
Regards,
__
Eray Ozkural
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University
Eray Ozkural exa
> I have a rather interesting perspective on pain, due to the fact that I
> suffer chronic acute emotional pain. From social phobia which is a
> fight/flight mechanism disorder. Pain is purely in our minds, it is there
> to protect us and if our pain mechanism is damaged it can wreck havoc.
> People talk about emotional pain as if it is different from physical pain
> but it isn't. Given the right sort of treatment there is no pain. This
> could be certain chemical alterations to the brain or cognitive training to
> alter a persons perception just as pavlov's dogs were trained.
>
I agree. Pain is in one's mind.
> For example I might think about asking a stranger directions.
> My mind will react and cause my body to twinge.
>
> If I take the right medication then my mind does not react. If I think there
> is no danger from the stranger then my mind does not react. I have not
> removed the pain stimulus I have just altered my reaction to it.
>
> Someone may do the same for physical pain, although it might be harder.
>
I was just thinking about Morphine which is said to "make you
indifferent to pain". That's very interesting because you know there
is pain, but it doesn't work as effectively as it always does! So it
actually alters your subjective experience.
> If one can alter their reaction to a pain stimuli, it creates an interesting
> question. Is it really pain? or is it just a reaction? When you kick a dog
> is the pain it feels just a reaction? is their really no philosophical
> basis for pain? If the dog can feel no pain what does it mean if you kick
> it?
>
Sidestepping the moral questions, I think it at least has a
psychological basis! And then we will be justified to seek a
philosophical theory that is consistent with it. Obviously, "pain" is
something that happens in my mind, so it should have some effects
"inside". Whether I am able to react to such stimuli is something
else, it can actually be caused by experiencing pain or not. My guess
is it is a class of things that happen in the mind, like pushing away
a thought, or cutting a thought in half (to put it in more graphical
terms :)
> Without a philosophical argument that pain is actually damaging all you are
> left with is a reaction. In your AI example does the AI react or is there a
> moral/philosophical reason for it to be hurt? When you feel pity what is
> going on?
>
I had some trouble understanding that. Ok, here is the obvious case.
I design a robot so that when something hits it, it escapes and hides
to protect itself. In fact, it can do only that. It is not even that
intelligent as some of the current robots. And it obviously doesn't
have to feel pain to behave as such. On the contrary, I can imagine a
"black box AI" who has no external actions, but is living pain all the
time due to a bug in its incredibly sophisticated program.
I could feel pity or not, that doesn't change the argument.
> Thus I think that an AI can feel pain but only if it believes that it is
> morally/philosophically "wrong" for it to be hurt. Whatever wrong means in
> that context. As for aliens feeling alien pain, many things can cause pain
> reactions but what would be a reason for the pain to trouble such a being
> otherwise?
>
But that is inconsistent with your own experience.
> A moral/Philosophical reason for pain could be something like continued
> existence. If I keep kicking the dog I will kill it and its possible life
> shortened. Some people believe this to be wrong (as do I). Hence pain can
> help you survive longer.
>
I am not sure if you could go from ethics to philosophy of mind like
that :)
> I hope that makes some sense.
Indeed interesting.
Thanks,
__
Eray Ozkural
Jordan179
> Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
> AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it is
> very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever "subjective
> experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go all the way
> whether there is a Universal pain!)
The definition of "pain" is that it is a "warning of perceived damage
to the organism." One can imagine many different ways that the warning
could be presented, but in anything that evolved naturally the warning
would have to be something that would generate an interrupt to routine
behavior, since anything that evolved naturally would necessarily go
through a non-sapient stage at some point. Certainly, the sapient
stage of that evolutionary branch would find its "pain" extremely
unpleasant and emotionally distressing.
Now, once a race gained the ability to modify its own wiring, it might
well choose to change its "pain" sensation to something less
emotionally distressing. I can easily see the advantages of something
like an internally perceived siren / flashing light sort of signal
coupled with a clickable popup window giving a detailed damage
assessment, for example.
However, whatever the sensation actually was, it would have to be
something capable of generating a behavioral interrupt unless
overridden, because the function of "pain" is to make the organism
stop doing the painful thing so that it does not damage itself
further. This is sometimes convenient to torturers, but it is much
more often useful to the organism itself, which withdraws from the
painful situation and thus avoids further damage.
> Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
> that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
> culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
> so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain?
1) Eventually, we'll have the technology to directly trace and
comprehend neural networks in all organisms (we can already do this
for a few simple ones)
2) If an alien being responds to a stimulus by shrinking away from it,
we've identified at least "fear," and this is closely linked to
"pain."
> Would you have to
> inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
> really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
> when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
> there is no pain!)
... because you've deliberately programmed the robot to have a more
limited response repertoire than any higher animal actually has. A
general-purpose robot, able to adapt to many possible situations,
would have to be capable of feeling "pain" (though if not as smart as
a higher mammal, it might not attach much emotional significance to
being damaged).
> And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
> an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
> ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
> readily in our dictionaries?
Poul Anderson did some work on that.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Oliver Neukum
>> Don't they rather lack a fear of death or rather have an urge
>> to do suicidal things, than lack a pain response?
>> Information about damage done to the body seems to be very
>> valuable. Even in suicidal fury knowledge about injury and
>> malfunction of body parts are useful and allow a better
>> fight.
>
> Or it might be an unnecessary and undesirable distraction.
> For example, consider an ecosystem where biological "guns"
> are the norm. There's no advantage for a soldier bug to
> be distracted by the damage of bullet holes. Rather, its
> purpose is to just keep on doing what it's supposed to (like
> shooting at its target) for as long as it can.
But there is an advantage. It takes cover and fights better.
You don't want a member of a soldier caste to shirk from combat,
but a suicidal disregard for its own combat effectiveness.
I can't see an advantage from not having the sensory input.
What you do with it, is the problem.
Regards
Oliver
Default User
Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
> I was just thinking about Morphine which is said to "make you
> indifferent to pain". That's very interesting because you know there
> is pain, but it doesn't work as effectively as it always does! So it
> actually alters your subjective experience.
No, not really. Morphine has a number of effects, mainly to interefere
with the synapses of the pain receptors in the brain. Morphine is
similar in effect to natural endorphins. The pain signals are not
received and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the pain.
Brian Rodenborn
ian glendinning
"Anthropomorphic"
is the word I was after.
(Anthropocentric / Personification I tried ....)
See hear ... http://www.psybertron.org/Dawkins%20Hyper-Rationalism.html
Never mind alien pain - Anthopomorphic = Meaningful.
Discuss.
Ian Glendinning
Erik Max Francis
> You apparently haven't been around here enough to know what
> a bad idea it is to crosspost these particular groups.
Great, here we go again.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ We're here to preserve democracy, not to practice it.
\__/ Capt. Frank Rasmey
REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!
Jan
Pain would be unnecessary if a creature lived in a totally benign
universe
or one where there was no gradation of damage - where any damage
resulted in death (assuming non-immortality)
or where nothing can be done about damage because of immobility etc.
Tho` pleasure might be necessary to encourage procreation.
Is absence of pleasure in any way pain?
Having a rat chewing at your fingers while you`re asleep (leprosy etc)
is clearly not good, and a mechanism to wake you up and make you want to
stop the damage is clearly beneficial in our system. Tho` one can
imagine a situation where the only limit on population expansion would
depend on evolution away from pain, encouragement of damage.
--------------------
Wolgang Schwanke wrote:
>Ask it. If it is an intelligent being, it might be able to explain its
>feelings. If not, there's relly no way of knowing. Even within human
>lifeforms not closely related to us it's impossible.
Wouldn`t strong learned avoidance behaviour be a decent indicator? +
babies go through an observable learning process. Babies can `explain`
their feelings very clearly!
--------------------------------
Erik Max Francis wrote:
>all that's really required is something that makes it very clear what's
>going on and that you should stop. So to an alien it might be a really
>awful itch, or maybe a weird vibration feeling, or something like that.
Yes but it would have to be an unpleasant itch etc - one to be avoided
(= pain) unless one knew that ignoring it would be unpleasant, eg phone
call from your boss or flashing blue lights behind you when driving.
That would require no evolution - eg a manufactured being?
-------------------------------
Generally, if something or similar somethings show avoidance behaviour
to some action then it is an indication that that action should be
avoided unless it is one`s intention to cause/risk damage (eg hunting,
surgery, rugby).
Fishermen say that fish feel no pain because if they did they wouldn`t
let themselves be hooked time after time after time in popular lakes.
The AI or other `manufactured` being thing seems dodgy to me. Is it ok
to cause `pain` to the clone of my sister/kitten/sheep? Isn`t all
intelligence AI for thr the purposes of this discussion?
to pursue the science fiction thing, since Captain Kirk is
`manufactured` whenever he uses the transporter, is it ok for Spock to
check out a phaser by shooting him in the leg?
I read a short story once in one of my SF periods where an alien race
decided to solve humanity`s problems by releasing a `happiness` agent on
earth, one which made everyone perfectly happy wherever they were or
whatever they were doing.
This would obviously be a bad thing?
-------------------------------
Eray Ozkural wrote:
>Hope it was not terribly boring :P
No, you`re never boring :-), but aren`t humans pretty much there
already?
--------------------
Richard James wrote:
>Pain is purely in our minds
Yes. But isn`t everything?
------------------
Joseph Hertzlinger wrote:
>Didn't Marvin have an ache in the diodes on his left side?
:-)
That `cow` in the restaurant at the end of the universe poses
interesting questions.
-------------------
Why are pain and pleasure so often allied?
-------------------
With genetic engineering advancing so fast we may soon be able to get
some insights into what some other species feel. They`ll be able to tell
us, and maybe open a few unexpected doors as well.
--
Jan
Erik Max Francis
> Yes but it would have to be an unpleasant itch etc - one to be avoided
> (= pain) unless one knew that ignoring it would be unpleasant, eg
> phone
> call from your boss or flashing blue lights behind you when driving.
Yes, I specifically used the word _unpleasant_ in my response.
Isaac Kuo
> > Or it might be an unnecessary and undesirable distraction.
> > For example, consider an ecosystem where biological "guns"
> > are the norm. There's no advantage for a soldier bug to
> > be distracted by the damage of bullet holes. Rather, its
> > purpose is to just keep on doing what it's supposed to (like
> > shooting at its target) for as long as it can.
> But there is an advantage. It takes cover and fights better.
That might be an advantage in some circumstances. In
others, it's undesirable. For example, in a massed
breakthrough attempt it's desirable for the lead elements
to not slow down in any way whatsoever the following
elements.
> You don't want a member of a soldier caste to shirk from combat,
> but a suicidal disregard for its own combat effectiveness.
> I can't see an advantage from not having the sensory input.
> What you do with it, is the problem.
If a sensory input is not hardwired in some way to necessarily
be "negative", then it's not pain. Looking at it from an
outside behavioral perspective, it's hard to justify calling
a stimulus "pain" if it is sometimes ignored, sometimes
avoided, and sometimes invited.
Isaac Kuo
Jan
<m...@alcyone.com> writes
>Jan wrote:
>
>> Yes but it would have to be an unpleasant itch etc - one to be avoided
>> (= pain) unless one knew that ignoring it would be unpleasant, eg
>> phone
>> call from your boss or flashing blue lights behind you when driving.
>
>Yes, I specifically used the word _unpleasant_ in my response.
>
You`re right, sorry. Mostly off the top of my head as usual :-)
And it was after midnight :-)
--
Jan
Lucius Chiaraviglio
>er...@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural exa) wrote in
>> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
>> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
>> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
>
>a lot of human life has feels no pain (or anything at all). E.g. plants,
>single celled organisms, and probably a good chunk of the animal kingdom.
>We can only make assumptions for beings sufficiently close to us.
Talk about the mind-numbing effects of television and fraternities --
I didn't realize that couch potatoes and party animals were immune to pain!
:-)
--
Lucius Chiaraviglio
Approximate E-mail address: luci...@chapter.net
To get the exact address: ^^^ ^replace this with 'r'
|||
replace this with single digit meaning the same thing
(Spambots of Doom, take that!).
how...@brazee.net
On 8-Apr-2003, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote:
> > Certainly you can assume it, and I imagine most nonpsychopaths would
> > assume it. The question is, rather, how could you _prove_ it?
>
> Chances are most humans see color in the same way but
> it can't be proven.
Depending upon how much you want to accept the world at face value, you
can't prove ANYTHING. You may be the only creature in the world - an AI
program thinking you're a person.
But until we see some evidence, it works well to assume that what we see is
what we get.
Besides what does it mean when someone postulates that someone else sees
"purple" the way we see "green"? It's a meaningless statement.
how...@brazee.net
On 9-Apr-2003, er...@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural exa) wrote:
> The problem gets complicated philosophically when we consider beings
> of a sufficiently distant nature. Nobody would argue that mammals can
> feel pain, and indeed the basic feeling of pain could be adequately
> described as "mammal pain"!
I have a friend who's an avid hunter who doesn't fish. He thinks fishing
is much more cruel than hunting is. (He also doesn't do bow hunting - he
says sticking a stick in an animal and waiting for it to bleed to death is
not at all humane).
Nancy Lebovitz
>On 4/10/03 6:01 AM, Gary Forbis wrote:
>> Here's a slightly different approach to alien pain. It's quite personal
>> and so may not communicate anything (I want to communicate) to others.
>>
>> Consider the emotion "lust". At least in me it is quite unlike pain.
>> I don't feel lust but rather its effects on my body. Suppose an alien
>> were to feel lust as I feel pain and the effect of the pain would not
>> be avoidance of the stimulus as I attempt to do but rather the approach
>> to a stimulus. In the alien the pain of lust would slowly well up until
>> temporarily ameliorated, similar to the way I feel hunger and ameliorate
>> it.
>
>Such aliens wouldn't produce offspring and thus there would never
>be such aliens.
>
>There's a *reason* why pain feels the way it does and lust feels
>the way *it* does.
OBSF: There was a story based on the premise of an alien species that
literally would die without sex. Anyone remember author/title?
Obrealworld: From all I've heard, female ferrets have to at least have
sex (not sure about breeding) every time they come into heat, or they're
at serious risk from major infection.
I'm not sure whether the ferret is more driven by desire for pleasure
or fear of pain, though. I'm also not sure whether this is a trait
of all ferrets, or just domesticated ferrets.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Hallvard B Furuseth
> OBSF: There was a story based on the premise of an alien species that
> literally would die without sex. Anyone remember author/title?
*SPOILER*
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
--
Hallvard
Glen M. Sizemore
BR: No, not really. Morphine has a number of effects,
mainly to interefere with the synapses of the pain
receptors in the brain. Morphine is similar in effect to
natural endorphins. The pain signals are not received
and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the
pain.
GS: It may, ultimately, not make sense to say that
"morphine makes a person indifferent to pain," but
what you have written here makes no sense. For one
thing, the effects of drugs on behavior can be directly
assessed and the facts are not disputable. They
certainly are not disputable by pointing to their
pharmacological mechanisms of action.
All drugs have a wide variety of effects, and it is more
than possible that there is some sense to the statement
that "morphine makes a person indifferent to pain."
Such a statement is an allusion to the "motivational
aspect of pain-generating stimuli and conditions" (i.e.,
the fact that they generate escape and avoidance) as
distinct from the issue of detectability. If, indeed, it is
frequently reported that "I'm still in pain but I don't
care" when morphine is administered, then there may
very well be something to the notion that morphine
affects the motivational aspect of pain, but not its
detectability. It is complicated because what is observed when one
"observes pain" is some aspect of one's response to
pain-generating stimuli and conditions. So, morphine
eliminates some aspects of behavior (like escape) but
not others. This happens with drugs all the time.
A main point here, though, is that the effects of drugs
on behavior may be directly assessed and these are
facts that any theory of brain/behavior relations must
address, and they are a different level that the level of
the receptor.
Incidentally, opiates have a curious effect on behavior
in the shock titration procedure, at fairly high doses,
they completely eliminate operant escape responding,
but the reflexive behavior is still completely intact.
These effects can also be observed when DAMGO is
injected into the amygdala.
Default User <first...@company.com> wrote in message news:<3E95E9DA...@company.com>...
Jim Cambias
er...@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural exa) wrote:
> cam...@SPAHMTRAP.heliograph.com (Jim Cambias) wrote in message
news:<cambias-0904...@diakelly.ppp.mtholyoke.edu>...
> >
> > Again, this is like the color question. So what? If it looks like pain
> > and the creature behaves as if it's in pain, why not call it pain?
>
> Because it's a naive behavioristic account of pain which can be said
> to say nothing useful about the phenomenology of pain. Kripke's said
> that such an external characterization would make the meaning of
> "pain" a transient name for all "pains", and in reality it's much
> worse since internal states may actually be in opposition to external
> behavior in conscious creatures such as ours. Consider reading that
> excellent article that I linked to in the original post, it contains a
> nice progression of ideas in the subjective character of pain. David
> Lewis has a very interesting argument involving "madman pain" and
> "alien pain".
>
But now you're defining pain so vaguely it's impossible to discuss.
You're presupposing the existence of something called "pain" even when it
cannot be identified or measured objectively, and then using that to prove
itself.
The only meaningful way we can discuss pain is a physiological
phenomenon. I cut my hand, certain nerves are stimulated, they activate
certain centers in the brain, I feel pain. We can discuss how this works
on the cellular level. We can measure the strength of the impulse. We
can even come up with a good model of how it evolved -- the creatures with
pain response got better at avoiding injury and so had a better chance of
surviving and leaving offspring. We can see how creatures react to it and
its effects. You dismiss all this as "naive behaviorism" but offer
nothing but airy generalities about "internal states" and "the subjective
character of pain."
> Ultimately, I believe that behaviorism can account for only the
> simplest creatures such as ameoba which do not really have a mind. (So
> I don't respect neobehaviorism either)
>
> In the case of color, the importance of intensional states would
> become even clearer. It is impossible to explain the subjective nature
> of color without explaining how one perceives color, ie a functional
> or intensional or another advanced theory of perception would be
> needed.
>
Again, we have a good physiology of color perception.
I don't understand why you're so determined to cut any anchors this
discussion might have to scientific knowledge. Not trying to be snide,
either -- how can you discuss pain in the abstract? Or color, either?
What insights does "the phenomenology of pain" provide?
Cambias
Default User
"Glen M. Sizemore" wrote:
>
> ...
> BR: No, not really. Morphine has a number of effects,
> mainly to interefere with the synapses of the pain
> receptors in the brain. Morphine is similar in effect to
> natural endorphins. The pain signals are not received
> and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the
> pain.
>
> GS: It may, ultimately, not make sense to say that
> "morphine makes a person indifferent to pain," but
> what you have written here makes no sense. For one
> thing, the effects of drugs on behavior can be directly
> assessed and the facts are not disputable. They
> certainly are not disputable by pointing to their
> pharmacological mechanisms of action.
What are you talking about? The original statement was that the pain is
there, but the patient in indifferent to it. While there are some doping
effects from morphine, that is NOT the prime pain-relieving mechanism,
it is that of directly affecting the pain receptors in the brain.
You may not think what I wrote makes any sense, but that's your problem.
What I have comes directly from pharmacolgical literature.
Brian Rodenborn
Jim Balter
> Why are pain and pleasure so often allied?
Because they share implementation. They are based on the same
neural machinery and they are both highly charged emotionally.
It's kind of the way extremists on the left and right tend
to have the same personalities, and in fact sometimes flip
from one to the other.
Julie Pascal
"Jim Cambias" <cam...@SPAHMTRAP.heliograph.com> wrote in message
news:cambias-1104...@diakelly.ppp.mtholyoke.edu...
> In article <fa69ae35.03040...@posting.google.com>,
> er...@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural exa) wrote:
>
> > cam...@SPAHMTRAP.heliograph.com (Jim Cambias) wrote in message
> news:<cambias-0904...@diakelly.ppp.mtholyoke.edu>...
> > >
> > > Again, this is like the color question. So what? If it looks like
pain
> > > and the creature behaves as if it's in pain, why not call it pain?
> >
> > Because it's a naive behavioristic account of pain which can be said
> > to say nothing useful about the phenomenology of pain. Kripke's said
> > that such an external characterization would make the meaning of
> > "pain" a transient name for all "pains", and in reality it's much
> > worse since internal states may actually be in opposition to external
> > behavior in conscious creatures such as ours. Consider reading that
> > excellent article that I linked to in the original post, it contains a
> > nice progression of ideas in the subjective character of pain. David
> > Lewis has a very interesting argument involving "madman pain" and
> > "alien pain".
> >
> But now you're defining pain so vaguely it's impossible to discuss.
> You're presupposing the existence of something called "pain" even when it
> cannot be identified or measured objectively, and then using that to prove
> itself.
>
> I don't understand why you're so determined to cut any anchors this
> discussion might have to scientific knowledge. Not trying to be snide,
> either -- how can you discuss pain in the abstract? Or color, either?
> What insights does "the phenomenology of pain" provide?
I don't know either. Asking SF enthusiasts to imagine something
outside the box makes perfect sense. Asking that the imagined
state have no relevance or application is rather mind boggling.
I can play a mind game called "What if I were born in a small
villiage in China instead of a small town in Midwest USA" and
that's all fine and good. But if the game was really "Why is my
consciousness inside this body and not inside some other body
and what proof do I have that other consciousnesses even exist
since I can not in any way objectively experience some other
self than my own and can I even say that my experience of
consciousness is real?"
Honestly, I stopped asking if I was a figment of someone elses
imagination quite a long time ago.
--Julie
Jim Balter
If it's a matter of pain, then it is avoidance of pain that does the
work -- "amerlioration" was Forbis's word. I misread him as saying that it
would be painful to mate, but he's more confused than that. It's not the
stimulus that we avoid when we're *in* pain, it's the *pain* we avoid, or
rather seek to eliminate, and ending the stimulation is the
primary way to eliminate the pain (but there are other ways, like a
morphine drip; or consider those advil commercials for athletes --
they don't suggest becoming a couch potato as the solution to pain).
To eliminate pain we *learn* to avoid the stimuli that cause pain;
Skinner's conditioned response. If lust were simply painful,
we would do our best to avoid being in lust, but lust doesn't
work that way, at least not in humans. Ferrets are different
because their behavioral choices aren't modulated through
consciousness the way they are in humans; they don't
*weigh in their minds* whether to mate.
Jim Balter
Sizemore is an ideological radical behaviorist. Most of his behavior
can be explained by that cognitive characterization (which he must
reject, but in fact can't without being a hypocrite because he employs
such characterizations all the time -- it was this observation of Chomsky's
about Skinner that led to the loosening of the grip of the ideological
radical behaviorists on psychological research).
Default User
Jim Balter wrote:
> Sizemore is an ideological radical behaviorist.
So's I should not argue with him, I suppose? Check.
Brian Rodenborn
Glen M. Sizemore
"Glen M. Sizemore" wrote:
>
> ...
> BR: No, not really. Morphine has a number of effects,
> mainly to interefere with the synapses of the pain
> receptors in the brain. Morphine is similar in effect to
> natural endorphins. The pain signals are not received
> and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the
> pain.
>
> GS: It may, ultimately, not make sense to say that
> "morphine makes a person indifferent to pain," but
> what you have written here makes no sense. For one
> thing, the effects of drugs on behavior can be directly
> assessed and the facts are not disputable. They
> certainly are not disputable by pointing to their
> pharmacological mechanisms of action.
BR: What are you talking about? The original statement
was that the pain is
there, but the patient in indifferent to it. While there are
some doping
effects from morphine, that is NOT the prime pain-
relieving mechanism,
it is that of directly affecting the pain receptors in the
brain.
GS: What am I talking about? I'm talking (and I was
being cordial then) about your insipid statement (which
you cut from your post). The long and short of it is that
it is quite possible that opiates affect behavior such that
"pain is still detectable but the patient doesn't care." Of
course I phrased it in "big boy" language. The term
"doping" is not a technical term in anybody's
nomenclature, so I have to say that I don't know what
the..........you're talking about.
Further, whether or not it makes sense to talk about
"pain being there but the person being indifferent to it,"
is a behavioral question. That is why I pointed out to
you that the behavioral effects of drugs can be directly
assessed, without reference to anything physiological,
and that such behavior-pharmacological facts are facts
that can't be changed by pointing to the
pharmacological mechanism of action. Idiot.
BR: You may not think what I wrote makes any sense,
but that's your problem.
What I have comes directly from pharmacolgical
literature.
GS: You know, I have read some of that.....and I've
published papers in Synapse, PBB, JPET, Drug and
Alcohol Dependence, Psychopharm., and JEAB.
Default User <first...@company.com> wrote in message news:<3E96FFAB...@company.com>...
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> Because they share implementation. They are based on the same
> neural machinery and they are both highly charged emotionally.
> It's kind of the way extremists on the left and right tend
> to have the same personalities, and in fact sometimes flip
> from one to the other.
Evolutionarily speaking, the pathways might have distinct origin. I
don't neglect that they co-operate, but I just want to point out we
don't really understand what they are in the full reductionist sense
so what you say is possible, but we can't be certain.
Instead of saying they are "highly charged emotionally", I would say
that they are among the most fundamental emotions.
A conjecture that we could make is that human-like consciousnes
requires these emotions. It's kind of hard to agree or disagree
definitely, but I think it's an interesting thought. Without pain you
aren't a conscious human.
Thanks,
__
Eray
Eray Ozkural exa
> Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
> with the synapses of the pain receptors in the brain. Morphine is
> similar in effect to natural endorphins. The pain signals are not
> received and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the pain.
FYI, the phrase is from a distinguished biochemist who has an umatched
experience in the field of pscyhoactive drugs.
Not having taken a single course in pharmacology of drugs like
morphine, I cannot know whether what he said reflected the truth.
Before reading that phrase, I thought exactly as you said and maybe it
is the correct pharmacology. Are you certain?
Thanks,
__
Eray
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> Besides what does it mean when someone postulates that someone else sees
> "purple" the way we see "green"? It's a meaningless statement.
It actually makes some sense to ask questions like that, but that's
called "philosophy of color" and I don't think we would want to go
there, it's a little cutting-edge philosophy. There is a recent book
with that title but even I couldn't dare buying and reading the book
(I didn't want to hate color)
Note that such a question has a great degree of relevance when we are
asking:
"Does entity X feel pain like a human does?"
It's almost analogous.
It is not too distinct from asking "What is it like to be a bat?"
which is the generalised form of this query of the subjective.
The answer to that question would have to account for the exact nature
of color perception.
So, let me twist it slightly to ask you: Does a camera "see blue"? I
think pondering that question ultimately makes one appreciate the
philosophical depth of discussions on color. (So does the inverted
spectrum problem, but you seem to dislike it :)
Cheers,
__
Eray Ozkural
Eray Ozkural exa
> >
> Have a look at the bit on "Mad Pain and Martian Pain"...
>
> http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/function.htm
Yes, I'm aware of Lewis's theory.
Thanks,
__
Eray
Jyrki Valkama
> Hi there,
> I have a question for you SF folks out there. What are the interesting
> views on alien pain in SF literature, especially non-anthropomorphic
> aliens? (not humanoid aliens like in Star Trek NG)
> My curiosity stems from an inquiry into the nature of subjective
> experience as may be present in insects, aliens or computers. Our
> "folk psychology" stance is mostly behavioristic and has a good chance
> of becoming very wrong-headed: if it behaves as if it is in pain, then
> it feels pain. Of course philosophically that is a very naive approach
> as evidenced in this essay:
> http://www.bluejoh.com/dungeon/archives/000423.php
> Ideally, I would easily attribute pain to an AI, and in much SF work
> AIs have genuine human feelings. However, when you think deeply it is
> very confusing under what conditions we can say whatever "subjective
> experience" an AI has includes "pain". (This could go all the way
> whether there is a Universal pain!)
> Interestingly, the question is very close to "pain" in an alien being
> that is vastly different than a human's wrt physiology, society,
> culture, etc. You couldn't easily detect pain by observing behavior,
> so how can you ever tell if it can feel pain? Would you have to
> inflict physical damage to see if it reacts, and if it does would it
> really tell the existence of pain? (ie I can program a robot so that
> when somebody hits it, it would escape and hide in the corner, but
> there is no pain!)
> And a side question for the imaginative writers: could we conceive of
> an alien that has a completely different set of primary feelings than
> ours, so different that we wouldn't be able to find words for them
> readily in our dictionaries?
There is other aspect of looking into this problem. What is gained
through expressing feeling of pain? Prey or generally solitary creatures
gain nothing or worse admit their weakness and so may attract predators.
Social creatures in contrast may attract help or give feedback to
prevent more damege/pain to happen.
Probably social aliens would have loud visible signals of pain.
Unsocial wouldn't, but then how could you communicate with them anyway?
--
Jyrki Valkama
Aaron Denney
>
>
> Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
>
>
> > I was just thinking about Morphine which is said to "make you
> > indifferent to pain". That's very interesting because you know there
> > is pain, but it doesn't work as effectively as it always does! So it
> > actually alters your subjective experience.
>
> with the synapses of the pain receptors in the brain. Morphine is
> similar in effect to natural endorphins. The pain signals are not
> received and processed, not that the person in indifferent to the pain.
The effects of many drugs, including morphine, do have significant
variances from person to person. Not having taken morphine, I can't
tell you what effect it would have on me. I do know that vicodin
did "make me indifferent to pain." I could still feel that my leg
hurt like hell, but I didn't care.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Glen M. Sizemore
Default User <first...@company.com> wrote in message news:<3E97393D...@company.com>...
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> The effects of many drugs, including morphine, do have significant
> variances from person to person. Not having taken morphine, I can't
> tell you what effect it would have on me. I do know that vicodin
> did "make me indifferent to pain." I could still feel that my leg
> hurt like hell, but I didn't care.
Thank you for this comment. This is the kind of psychoactive effect
that I was looking for. It's very interesting to analyze how such a
drug would actually function, I wonder if it's well known.
This would show that the effect of pain signals is to invoke a certain
"pain process" from within our space of perception that would change
the way we think. If that doesn't work somehow, then we experience
pain in a very different manner.
What's interesting here is that one is still conscious of the pain,
he's able to perceive it. But like looking at an object and not
recognizing it, the perception doesn't mold into full realization.
Regards,
__
Eray Ozkural
Default User
You could look it up :)
I do have personal experience with morphine, having had major abdominal
surgery. I was on the "pain machine" which is morphine drip plus the
patient-administered boosters. I had little or no narcotic effect from
the medication. The incision still hurt, and I was NOT indifferent to
whatever pain was left. However, the pain was reduced to a tolerable
level.
After they weaned me off the morphine, I was administered percodan once
or twice. I didn't bother to request any when I left the hospital
though, just using some Tylenol when I got home. That's of course just
some anecdotal evidence, take it for what it's worth.
Brian Rodenborn
pervect
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.03040...@posting.google.com...
> af...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (John Park) wrote in message
news:<b706oa$bes$1...@freenet9.carleton.ca>...
> >
> > Certainly you can assume it, and I imagine most nonpsychopaths would
> > assume it. The question is, rather, how could you _prove_ it?
> >
>
> pain-feeling-individuals using a stochastic model. IOW, looking inside
> his brain with an advanced method.
It may be slightly off topic, but there was a show on that I caught a
glimpse of where a martial artist claimed not to feel pain when he "adjusted
his chi".
They didn't go so far as to do a brain scan, but they did measure his pulse
rate when he was subjected to the same stimulus (cold water, I believe) as
other non-martially trained volunteers were. His pulse rate didn't go up,
the other people's did.
So, did he actually feel pain, or not?
I do recall reading a popularization about pain which talked about the
associated brain scans. It's not a simple phenomenon at all. There is a
characteristic pattern associated with pain, but its quite a complex
pattern - it's not just one single area of the brain being stimulated.
There is a *lot* of processing that goes on before a nerve signal gets
interpreted as pain. Some of this is done even before the signals reach the
brain, by various ganglia.
So, if you look at two similar "brain scan" patterns, how do you decide when
they are similar enough that they both can count as "pain", given that the
patterns are fairly complex?
>
> The problem gets complicated philosophically when we consider beings
> of a sufficiently distant nature. Nobody would argue that mammals can
> feel pain, and indeed the basic feeling of pain could be adequately
> described as "mammal pain"!
>
Philosophy gets very complicated. My personal approach to philosophy is
simple, but refined by experience :-). It's not going to be very attractive
to a philosphy student, however.
If a statement makes any testable difference to the universe, I regard it as
a non-philosophical question, subject to scientific inquiry.
If a statement has NO mechanism for testing it, I regard it as being a
philosophical statement. I have fairly strict standards, so I must be able
to assume the statement is true, or assume the statement is false, in all
circumstances without it making any testable predictions. If this condition
is met, I then feel free to assume whatever I like about the statement when
I'm thinking about testable results.
So in short, when a statment meets my criterion for being philosophical, I
realize that it's a waste of time thinking about it anymore, because I can
assume whatever I like. Very often one way of thought about philosphical
questions is more intuitively appealing, so I go with that approach. But
the main point is that it doesn't really matter what approach I take, if the
question is truly philosophical.
pervect
"Isaac Kuo" <mec...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:acc26c07.0304...@posting.google.com...
> Thus, I speculate it plausible for an alien species to exist
> without anything resembling a pain response. These would
> be creatures with a high reproduction/growth rate living
> in a way which requires purposefully inviting danger.
I had some very roughly similar thoughts. In my view, one of the reasons
that pain operates the way it does is that the healing process is slow, and
it requires a period of immobility for many injuries to heal.
The onset of the pain sensation is variable. Often, during a fight or other
crisis, the pain of sustained injuries may not fully register immediately -
perhaps it may not register at all, or register to a very limited extent.
This has some advantages, because while it is good for the creature involved
in a life or death fight or other crisis to realize that it is being injured
and to seek to avoid it, the first priority is survival. It may be
necessary to sustain some injury to survive.
After the fight or crisis is over, the slowness of the healing process
dictates that the afflicted entity find shelter and a place to rest, and to
remain relatively motionless while the injuries heal. Pain, with a slow
onset, serves this purpose.
If we imagine creatures with fantastic healing abilities or rates, there
would not be the same need for pain.
There are plenty of examples from comic books of this sort of ability, but
realistic examples are harder to come by.
Plants might be an example from the other end of the spectrum - since they
basically don't move, there doesn't seem to be any need for an imobilizing
pain.
If we grant plants some mobility (or consider some other sort of very
slow-moving entity), or consider our hypothetical "fanstasic healing rate"
creatures, clearly there should be some reaction to injury or threat, but it
might be considerably different from pain as we know it in its effects.
Pain would be likely to loose some of its incapacitating nature, though I
assume that injury would still be perceived as unpleasant in some sense.
pervect
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
> I was just thinking about Morphine which is said to "make you
> indifferent to pain". That's very interesting because you know there
> is pain, but it doesn't work as effectively as it always does! So it
> actually alters your subjective experience.
That's not morphine, but there are some drugs with the problem that the
patient might still feel pain but not be able to communicate it if something
goes wrong (not quite sure what goes wrong, whether it is dosage, or taking
it too late, or what).
I don't recall what the name of the drug with this problem was, this was
related to me as someone elses personal (unpleasant) experience.
Jens Egon Nyborg
> If a sensory input is not hardwired in some way to necessarily
> be "negative", then it's not pain. Looking at it from an
> outside behavioral perspective, it's hard to justify calling
> a stimulus "pain" if it is sometimes ignored, sometimes
> avoided, and sometimes invited.
>
> Isaac Kuo
But now you have defined pain away in *humans*.
I dont think I could design an alien that *never* avoid damage, however
I recall a story about a species were the female were devoured by her
offspring. And her anguish when 'saved'
Jens Egon Nyborg
> On 4/10/03 6:01 AM, Gary Forbis wrote:
>
>> Here's a slightly different approach to alien pain. It's quite personal
>> and so may not communicate anything (I want to communicate) to others.
>>
>> Consider the emotion "lust". At least in me it is quite unlike pain.
>> I don't feel lust but rather its effects on my body. Suppose an alien
>> were to feel lust as I feel pain and the effect of the pain would not
>> be avoidance of the stimulus as I attempt to do but rather the approach
>> to a stimulus. In the alien the pain of lust would slowly well up until
>> temporarily ameliorated, similar to the way I feel hunger and ameliorate
>> it.
>
>
> Such aliens wouldn't produce offspring and thus there would never
> be such aliens.
>
> There's a *reason* why pain feels the way it does and lust feels
> the way *it* does.
Then again we know at least one sentient which cannot reproduce without
a lot of pain
Lucius Chiaraviglio
>[. . .]
>If a sensory input is not hardwired in some way to necessarily
>be "negative", then it's not pain. Looking at it from an
>outside behavioral perspective, it's hard to justify calling
>a stimulus "pain" if it is sometimes ignored, sometimes
>avoided, and sometimes invited.
But even humans can do this to some extent. Just because an
organism can feel pain doesn't mean that it can't override the pain and
the responses that follow therefrom when the situation demands it.
--
Lucius Chiaraviglio
Approximate E-mail address: luci...@chapter.net
To get the exact address: ^^^ ^replace this with 'r'
|||
replace this with single digit meaning the same thing
(Spambots of Doom, take that!).
Lucius Chiaraviglio
>[. . .]
>OBSF: There was a story based on the premise of an alien species that
>literally would die without sex. Anyone remember author/title?
And of course (groan) "Amok Time" from the original _Star Trek_.
Cat Paparazzi
"Lucius Chiaraviglio" <luci...@chapter.net> wrote in message
news:3ea367e9...@news.charter.net...
Wouldn't human species literally die without sex? I guess they would have in the
past, but artificial insemination and cloning has changed all that.
PsykoPat
Ash Wyllie
>na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>>[. . .]
>>OBSF: There was a story based on the premise of an alien species that
>>literally would die without sex. Anyone remember author/title?
> And of course (groan) "Amok Time" from the original _Star Trek_.
/The Mote in God's eye./
-ash
for assistance dial MYCROFTXXX
Leveli Beka
> glimpse of where a martial artist claimed not to feel pain when he
"adjusted
> his chi".
>
> They didn't go so far as to do a brain scan, but they did measure his
pulse
> rate when he was subjected to the same stimulus (cold water, I believe) as
> other non-martially trained volunteers were. His pulse rate didn't go up,
> the other people's did.
>
> So, did he actually feel pain, or not?
I can add some subjective comments to this. I've got about ten years of
martial arts training behind me including about 5 years of bare knuckles,
full contact. It is possible to learn to suppress pain. For me taking a deep
breath and pushing it downwards works. It takes away about 90% of pain from
physical hits. Interestingly it does not work for internal stuff like
headaches or stomach problems. Maybe they work through a different
mechanism.
Jim Balter
> GS: Always the refuge of the coward.
Yeah, like refraining from playing with rabid dogs is cowardly.
> Default User <first...@company.com> wrote in message news:<3E97393D...@company.com>...
>
>>Jim Balter wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sizemore is an ideological radical behaviorist.
>>
>>
>>So's I should not argue with him, I suppose? Check.
>>
>>
>>
>>Brian Rodenborn
>
--
<J Q B>
"War is essentially an evil thing... To initiate a war of aggression,
therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme
international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
-- Nuremberg International Military Tribunal
Jim Balter
> wno...@ugcs.caltech.edu (Aaron Denney) wrote in message news:<slrnb9hgvo...@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>...
>
>>The effects of many drugs, including morphine, do have significant
>>variances from person to person. Not having taken morphine, I can't
>>tell you what effect it would have on me. I do know that vicodin
>>did "make me indifferent to pain." I could still feel that my leg
>>hurt like hell, but I didn't care.
One should be careful about taking such descriptions as authoritative.
hurt: To cause mental or emotional suffering to; distress.
> Thank you for this comment. This is the kind of psychoactive effect
> that I was looking for. It's very interesting to analyze how such a
> drug would actually function, I wonder if it's well known.
>
> This would show that the effect of pain signals is to invoke a certain
> "pain process" from within our space of perception that would change
> the way we think. If that doesn't work somehow, then we experience
> pain in a very different manner.
>
> What's interesting here is that one is still conscious of the pain,
> he's able to perceive it. But like looking at an object and not
> recognizing it, the perception doesn't mold into full realization.
>
> Regards,
>
> __
> Eray Ozkural
--
Default User
Jim Balter wrote:
>
> On 4/13/03 12:48 PM, Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
> > wno...@ugcs.caltech.edu (Aaron Denney) wrote in message news:<slrnb9hgvo...@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>...
> >
> >>The effects of many drugs, including morphine, do have significant
> >>variances from person to person. Not having taken morphine, I can't
> >>tell you what effect it would have on me. I do know that vicodin
> >>did "make me indifferent to pain." I could still feel that my leg
> >>hurt like hell, but I didn't care.
>
> One should be careful about taking such descriptions as authoritative.
>
> hurt: To cause mental or emotional suffering to; distress.
It's also at odds with my own anecdotal evidence of post-operative
morphine. In that case, I was aware of whatever pain remained, and was
NOT indifferent to it. In fact, it hurt. However, the pain level was
reduced to a managable level. When I juiced myself with a few extra
shots, the pain went down. I came to use anticipatory slugs from the
machine when I was expecting increased pain, like when I would switch
sides in the bed or (later) get out of bed.
I had no euphoric or narcotic effects from the morphine. I felt pretty
much normal, except that my incision hurt to a certain extent. The
discomfort from that was less than that of the damn nasal-gastric tube,
which was a constant irritant.
I'm not sure what the pharmacological effects of vicodin are vs.
morphine, but what I experienced was right in line with what I'd expect
from later readings on the effects.
Brian Rodenborn
Aaron Denney
> One should be careful about taking such descriptions as authoritative.
>
> hurt: To cause mental or emotional suffering to; distress.
That's a rather incomplete definition. Are masochists not in pain?
John Duncan Yoyo
If they enjoy it is pleasure. You might think it hurts bad but they
think it hurts good.
-
John Duncan Yoyo
------------------------------o)
Acme Debugging
>
> This would show that the effect of pain signals is to invoke a certain
> "pain process" from within our space of perception that would change
> the way we think. If that doesn't work somehow, then we experience
> pain in a very different manner.
>
> What's interesting here is that one is still conscious of the pain,
> he's able to perceive it. But like looking at an object and not
> recognizing it, the perception doesn't mold into full realization.
How naive did my comment about AI pain turn out to be? Recall I
thought if it was a mechanical computer it probably wouldn't, if
biological it probably would. Whether or not that is true, you pointed
out that the dividing line is fuzzy.
Did you think the cross-posting to rec.arts.sf.science was useful? I
wonder if it was you that dropped it?
I am a harsh critic of the "pain is psychological" idea. I have bad
teeth, and I blame that idea which seems to grow more and more in the
dental field over time. There is obviously a very large range in the
sensation or severity of perceived pain, also in the ability of
anesthetics to overcome it, from individual to individual. I know
people that choose dental work without Novocaine, or at least have
very little problem with it. It also varies according to type and
location. For instance, I have little problem with ulcer pain (and
I've had attacks as bad as they get), whereas I notice most people
have a lot more apparent severity of pain.
I recently went to a dentist who tried to assure me by recounting his
own experiences with dental pain as a kid. Who care's about his
experience with pain? Who cares about his music or his theories about
how I perceive pain? How does he know what's going on inside my own
unique head? He should instead value his patient's experience and pass
out the damn pentothol to people like me. 'Scuse the language! People
like myself would 1,000 times rather take the associated risk than
endure the torture. Yet dentists and governments decide that for us,
partly based on the "pain is psychological" theory.
Your comments are highly valued.
Larry
Karl M Syring
>
> I recently went to a dentist who tried to assure me by recounting his
> own experiences with dental pain as a kid. Who care's about his
> experience with pain? Who cares about his music or his theories about
> how I perceive pain? How does he know what's going on inside my own
> unique head? He should instead value his patient's experience and pass
> out the damn pentothol to people like me. 'Scuse the language! People
> like myself would 1,000 times rather take the associated risk than
> endure the torture. Yet dentists and governments decide that for us,
> partly based on the "pain is psychological" theory.
>
> Your comments are highly valued.
Who has invented this funny "pain is psychological" theory?
Just give him for 15 min to me and my electric drill, then the
theory has been disproven. Well, I can do that only for himself,
in case he has solipsist tendencies.
The Big Toe of The Torturer
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> How naive did my comment about AI pain turn out to be? Recall I
> thought if it was a mechanical computer it probably wouldn't, if
> biological it probably would. Whether or not that is true, you pointed
> out that the dividing line is fuzzy.
>
As I said it was a good enough theory to start with :) I hope I was
successful in showing that the line was fuzzy.
> Did you think the cross-posting to rec.arts.sf.science was useful? I
> wonder if it was you that dropped it?
>
Yes, it was me, and it looks quite useful because readers and writers
of fiction can bring different points of view as demonstrated on this
thread. A habit I borrowed from Feyerabend (although I am told some of
this theories are not the strongest in their fields....)
> I am a harsh critic of the "pain is psychological" idea. I have bad
> teeth, and I blame that idea which seems to grow more and more in the
> dental field over time. There is obviously a very large range in the
> sensation or severity of perceived pain, also in the ability of
> anesthetics to overcome it, from individual to individual. I know
> people that choose dental work without Novocaine, or at least have
> very little problem with it. It also varies according to type and
> location. For instance, I have little problem with ulcer pain (and
> I've had attacks as bad as they get), whereas I notice most people
> have a lot more apparent severity of pain.
I think a nice thing about philosophical theories is that they want to
be general. So, it is very natural for a philosopher to ask whether
mental pain, such as the loss of a loved one is in fact the same thing
as tooth pain. A quite difficult question to answer. And I think you
would find Marvin Minsky's Emotion Machine quite interesting in that
respect. For instance Chapter 3 is entitled "From Pain to Suffering"
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html
It might be that the kind of pain we experience is _necessarily_
mental pain, so they should be the same thing. Also, I was trying to
show here that some elements of the pain we experience seem to be part
of consciousness, such as attention-processes (indeed that's what
Minsky seems to say) So, in a sense human-like consciousness depends
on the emotion of pain.....
[snip]
Thank you very much for your comments,
Regards,
__
Eray Ozkural <erayo at cs.bilkent.edu.tr> <-- I know, spambots know
about this already!
Eray Ozkural exa
> Who has invented this funny "pain is psychological" theory?
> Just give him for 15 min to me and my electric drill, then the
> theory has been disproven. Well, I can do that only for himself,
> in case he has solipsist tendencies.
Well, if there is a girl you love I will take her and have somebody
decapitulate her limps one by one in front of you (all in a simulation
of reality of course). That will teach you about psychological pain.
:>
Seriously, I'm hoping you lack such sadistic tendencies.
Cheers,
__
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo at cs.bilkent.edu.tr>
Malcolm McMahon
wrote:
>I am a harsh critic of the "pain is psychological" idea. I have bad
>teeth, and I blame that idea which seems to grow more and more in the
>dental field over time.
Pain is neurological: Suffering, however, is psychological and the link
between the two is more complicated than generally believed.
Jaime Frontero
>
> Well, if there is a girl you love I will take her and have somebody
> decapitulate her limps one by one in front of you (all in a simulation
> of reality of course). That will teach you about psychological pain.
> :>
if you "decapitulate her limps," does that mean you'll cut off all those
little heads growing out of her legs, even if they surrender - and then she
won't walk funny any more?
j
Acme Debugging
> L.F...@lycos.co.uk (Acme Debugging) wrote in message news:<35fae540.03042...@posting.google.com>...
Thanks for answering my trivial questions, e.g. on the value of
r.a.s.s.
> > I am a harsh critic of the "pain is psychological" idea. I have bad
> > teeth, and I blame that idea which seems to grow more and more in the
> > dental field over time. There is obviously a very large range in the
> > sensation or severity of perceived pain, also in the ability of
> > <snip>
> <snip>
> It might be that the kind of pain we experience is _necessarily_
> mental pain, so they should be the same thing. Also, I was trying to
> show here that some elements of the pain we experience seem to be part
> of consciousness, such as attention-processes (indeed that's what
> Minsky seems to say) So, in a sense human-like consciousness depends
> on the emotion of pain.....
So instead of Novocaine for dental pain, we should instead take
consciousness-altering drugs? And maybe Van Halen instead of that AI
elevator music? I will support your theory 100% (Just kidding here!)
Thanks for your idea about pain related to consciousness, which is new
to me. That would (for some time) separate the mechanical from the
biological re: pain. Though I usually think the recognition of
consciousness needs to be tortured quite painfully to confess to a
definition.
In the interest of saying something (which I probably haven't so far),
note that I asked the wrong question. My question related to the
variation of severity of (however) perceived pain in humans only, how
to reduce it, and how incomplete theory is nevertheless applied in the
law to my great detriment, while your discussion is about whether or
not various types of pain are perceived in the first place, and how,
by various entities, with an emphasis on your theory(s) of perception.
You gave an answer in context of the latter, which is entirely
appropriate. But I didn't find any painless tooth-fixes.
I've received several good answers to questions in r.a.s.s., however
the last time I asked the wrong question, i.e. a logic/probability
question in a science group (I didn't realize how scientific they
were). Again I got the right answer to the wrong question (but learned
something else important, as in the case at hand about consciousness).
If you are right that theories should generalize, then I would say
that one generally needs to know (more important: does know) something
about a question before it is asked (this is a main issue in the
tricky logic behind probability). For that reason, one could not have
an AI knowitall, or better to say an AI knowitall would need to know
something about the question to know how, or which logic or whatever
to use, to answer it.
In the case of the (IMWO forever) mythical knowitall machine, we would
not know enough about the questions, nor even some questions. Some
answers it might generate on its own to questions we don't know enough
about to ask would be meaningless to us. Thus we could not receive
some knowledge even if the knowitall knew the answers (easy to argue:
most knowledge). Also, if the AI machine were using any form of
logic(s), and besides the problems we listed in another thread, there
is the problem that the universe (certinaly not reality, and more
certainly not existence) is probably not derivable from logic, whether
or not integrated with probability. And Carl Sagan agrees with me, so
there! <g>
Then there is always the possibility that the knowitall will answer
the question with a question to decide if it could answer, or how to
answer, which question might then not have an answer, or human answer.
Do you know the Mastermind shaggy dog story? Illustrates this
wonderfully. It's the best.
You are fun to talk with. And very well informed...
Larry
Karl M Syring
>
> Seriously, I'm hoping you lack such sadistic tendencies.
Nah, the drill thing leaves too much of an evidence, but it works
fast. If you have more time, chaining the guy to the wall in
a deep vault and playing loud techno-pop is the method of choice.
The resident disk-jockey from hell
Eray Ozkural exa
> I think it's pretty clear how the Miedaner wanted the test
> to come out. I'm inclined to agree with him. I look at these
> electronic "pets" like Furbies and Pokemons, and it seems
> to me the main problem with your test is it's too easy
> to pass.
IMHO the main lesson to learn from this discussion is
While pain is aimed at producing certain behavior, the existence of
behavior itself isn't identical to pain. So, when I hear "ouch" from
my windows machine I know it doesn't feel pain, a programmer is just
trying to fool us into thinking it's in pain. We're smarter than that
:)
OTOH, it's hard to nail down whether physical pain is indeed the same
thing as mental pain. Even if it is fundamentally identical, it should
differ in some respects. Is physical pain stronger than mental pain?
Then why do some people commit suicide because of mental pain? How can
you adjust your "chi" to control your physical pain? If such a thing
is possible, then the only difference between physical and mental pain
is perhaps a difference in the intensity of an input signal.
Sincerely,
__
exa
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote in message news:<3E939A1C...@osu.edu>...
> > I think it's pretty clear how the Miedaner wanted the test
> > to come out. I'm inclined to agree with him. I look at these
> > electronic "pets" like Furbies and Pokemons, and it seems
> > to me the main problem with your test is it's too easy
> > to pass.
>
> IMHO the main lesson to learn from this discussion is
>
> While pain is aimed at producing certain behavior, the existence of
> thing as mental pain. Even if it is fundamentally identical, it should
> differ in some respects. Is physical pain stronger than mental pain?
> Then why do some people commit suicide because of mental pain? How can
> you adjust your "chi" to control your physical pain? If such a thing
> is possible, then the only difference between physical and mental pain
> is perhaps a difference in the intensity of an input signal.
Physical pain can be switched OFF by hypnosis and certain medications,
which proves that signal from periferial nevral system is first converted
into "internal" presentation in the brain (and that is the place when
it can be blocked). This internal presentation is nothing
else then mental pain perception. So pain perception = physical pain + data convertor.
That means to model pain with computer you need a sensor which goes ON if a wheel of your robot
gets broken, data convertor converting this signal into internal presentation of
your CPU, and software means to respond to such signal.
Modeling mental pain is a much more complex issue. It involves modeling (simulating) by your CPU
the situation where the wheel gets broken, and when it happens (in the simulation),
CPU itself partly activates "pain" data-convertor to emulate that actual signal came from
sensor, just to create sensation sufficiently unpleasent as to activate behavioral response
similar to that produced by actual signal. This response causes the CPU (other parts of
it, remember that we have massively parallel processing here) to favour behaviour
preventing realization of modelled situation.
Why all the trouble - why would simulation part not communicate directly with the
parts responsible for behaviour, and does that indirectly by activating the pain center?
Because communications inside the brain are hierarchial, massively parallel and have their
order of communication. Simulation parts just do not have authority (of physicaly speaking,
ability to initiate neural activity) in other parts of the brain, whereas pain-center is
well wired directly to most areas.
Certainly this sort of thing only make sence in massively parallel systems like brain. In single
CPU system modeling "subroutine" can directly influence the "behavioural" subroutine.
But even in one CPU systems some objects can not speak to each other directly
(thanks object orienting programing) so even there some tricks which involve intermediate
objects might be needed to communicate results of the work from one program to another
(or many others).
Regards,
Evgenij
--
__________________________________________________
*science&fiction*free programs*fine art*phylosophy:
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com
----------remove hate_spam to answer--------------
pervect
It's interesting, but Acme concludes from direct observation that people
experience pain differently. This is more or less my opinion, as well. But
then both Acme and Karl go on to conclude that it is not psychological.
This seems more or less inconsistent - it pain was totally physical, you'd
expect people to deal with it in similar manners, yet they do not. You'd
also expect to be able to assign units to it and measure it, like you can do
with any other physical quantity - and yet, you cannot do that.
Note that it is not necessary to believe that one can deal with any or all
amount of pain to believe that it is psychological rather than physical.
Because a lot of pain is complex and psychological, it is hard to make
definite statements about it. I think it is untrue that the average person
can deal with unlimited amount of pain (sadistic Karl and his drill, for
instance). But it is not clear that definite limits can be assigned to a
persons ability to deal with pain (as per the interesting example of the
martial artist who had trained this ability to where he claimed not to feel
pain, and his physiological responses were consistent with his statements).
It is probably counterproductive to form a definite belief that pain cannot
be dealt with at all. Of course since people do vary, perhaps this is true
for some people, I don't know. My own observation is that people learn to
deal with different sorts of sensations on a case by case basis, rather than
learning to deal with "pain". For instance, people who cook a lot can
handle objects I find painfully hot, without apparently experiencing pain.
They have learned that the sensation associated with that degree of heat
isn't harmful, and so they learned to percieve it differently.
As far as governmental regulations and dental work go, I'm not aware of any
(at least in the US). I have seen dentists who would offer to put patients
under general anesthesia if they had a lot of work to be done, though this
is risky and I personally wouldn't recommend it. I'm not sure if there are
any regulations or guidelines about how much work needs to be done before a
patient can be given a general anesthesia - this may be up to the individual
dentist. There is probably some pressure from insurance companies not to do
this for routine operations.
Paul F. Dietz
> This seems more or less inconsistent - it pain was totally physical, you'd
> expect people to deal with it in similar manners, yet they do not.
What a bizarre statement. What justifies this conclusion?
Paul
Karl M Syring
>
> As far as governmental regulations and dental work go, I'm not aware of any
> (at least in the US). I have seen dentists who would offer to put patients
> under general anesthesia if they had a lot of work to be done, though this
> is risky and I personally wouldn't recommend it. I'm not sure if there are
> any regulations or guidelines about how much work needs to be done before a
> patient can be given a general anesthesia - this may be up to the individual
> dentist. There is probably some pressure from insurance companies not to do
> this for routine operations.
The necessity of general anesthesia can be assessed by the
length of time required for the operating, because you can only
apply so much of local of anesthesia (as we have a doctor in
the house, what other factors play a role here?). I once
had that problem, when the time to finish the dental operation
was under-estimated and I had nearly complete recovery of
pain reception in the end. The threat of hospitalization
for a night convinced to agree, in some of muffled voice, to
finish the operation. Boy, that did hurt, do not try it for
yourself. Forget about that "pain is psychological" crap.
Karl M. Syring
Erik Max Francis
> Boy, that did hurt, do not try it for
> yourself. Forget about that "pain is psychological" crap.
Well, I think there's no doubt there's a significant psychological
component; after all, people in the right state of mind can withstand
greater pain through hypnosis and all sorts of other wacky things that
have been proven time and again in studies.
But denying that there is a physiological component that simply cannot
be ignored is bordering on absurd. It's not _all_ physiological, but it
sure ain't all psychological, either.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
\__/ Benjamin Franklin
Max Pandaemonium / http://www.maxpandaemonium.com/
A sampling of Max Pandameonium's music.
pervect
"Erik Max Francis" <m...@alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3EB0B0D4...@alcyone.com...
>
> But denying that there is a physiological component that simply cannot
> be ignored is bordering on absurd. It's not _all_ physiological, but it
> sure ain't all psychological, either.
I'm not sure how you separate "psychological" from "physiological" even in
priniciple.
I have a feeling we're arguing semantics now.
pervect
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote in message
news:4LecnYnvQoY...@dls.net...
I'll try rephrasing my original thought, rather than attempting to justify
my exact wording, which probably wasn't very precise.
The ways we have to measure pain are subjective, and not objective. We
"measure" pain by setting up subjective pain scales, like those described in
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/29721/32087.html
Pain is not something like mass, or energy, or momentum that can be well
quantified and exactly measured (which is what I refer to as a physical
quantity). It's a perception.
Peoples "pain response" to identical physical stimulii vary widely. We have
the example of the person seeing the dentist. We have the example of the
martial artist. We have the example of peoples differing reactions to hot
objects (though I suppose one might attempt to explain some of this
difference with explanations such as "thicker skin").
If pain were some simple mechanism like dedicated nerve receptors, we would
not expect this much variability. We'd expect that when the receptors
fired, there was pain -when the receptors did not fire, there would not be
pain. Reality seems to be different.
We've got some other interesting results, like people who have pain with
limbs that are no longer attached (phantom limb pain), though actually this
is starting to be understood as possibly resulting from the transfer of ions
along severed nerves. (IIRC - I'm not sure where I read that factoid
anymore).
Another interesting problem is leprosy (Hansen's disease), where people
literally do not feel pain. OBSF - all those books by Donaldson, though
there is some serious treatment as well
(lookup "The Gift of Pain on amazon.com for instance).
Actually leprosy might someday turn out to provide good information as to
the origins of pain - but so far, it has eluded us (AFAIK, I haven't kept up
with the latest on this disease).
pervect
mountain climber who amputed his own arm with a pocketknife - then rapelled
down a rope 60-75 feet, and walked 4-5 miles to get help?
I am amazed that he did not go into shock, but apparently this man survived
all this.
News reports at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85933,00.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/908232.asp?cp1=1
seem to show these reports are true - rescuers apparently found the site
where the accident occured and recovered the arm, and also saw evidence of
the man's efforts to shift the boulder with pulleys and rope before he
settled on amputation as the last resort.
Paul F. Dietz
> I am amazed that he did not go into shock, but apparently this man survived
> all this.
Shock is caused by blood loss, right? If he applied a sufficiently tight
tourniquet and cut below it, he could have avoided both blood loss and
pain (since the nerve endings there would have been deadened by lack
of oxygen.)
Paul
pervect
I assume he did what he could to avoid blood loss - but judging by the news
reports, he had lost at least enough blood to be visibly obvious (on his
clothes, etc).
However, there is more to shock than just fluid loss. In this specific
case, a big concern would be what's called "neurogenic shock", which would
amplify the problems associated with a low fluid volume due to loss of
blood.
http://www.manaink.com/nurse/shock.html
and
http://www.tpub.com/corpsman/136.htm
go into some more detail, basically a low fluid volume is aggravated by a
"loss of tone" in arteries and veins which lowers the effective circulating
volume even more.
I suppose that putting on a very tight tourniquet and leaving it on for long
enough to deaden the nerves would help a lot, I hadn't really thought about
the process in that much detail. I doubt that the process could be
described as "pain-free" (but I must admit to a lack of data).
George William Herbert
>pervect wrote:
>> I am amazed that he did not go into shock, but apparently this man survived
>> all this.
>
>Shock is caused by blood loss, right?
Not necessarily. Major blood loss usually brings it on,
but the two times I have seriously bled out I was not
shocky, and the one time I destroyed a joint I was unconscious
and in shock for almost an hour. The two are not necessarily
related; both can happen without the other.
My vaguely remembered Red Cross training indicated much the
same, though we should really find an emergency room doctor
or EMT to ask definitively...
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
George W. Harris
Herbert) wrote:
:Paul F. Dietz <di...@dls.net> wrote:
:>pervect wrote:
:>> I am amazed that he did not go into shock, but apparently this man survived
:>> all this.
:>
:>Shock is caused by blood loss, right?
:
:Not necessarily. Major blood loss usually brings it on,
:but the two times I have seriously bled out I was not
:shocky, and the one time I destroyed a joint I was unconscious
:and in shock for almost an hour. The two are not necessarily
:related; both can happen without the other.
Shock is a condition which occurs when
the cardiovascular system cannot deliver enough
blood to the body, and has many causes, including
(but not limited to) bleeding, deydration, heart failure,
allergic reactions, and infection. It is life-threatening,
and can accompany any medical emergency. A few
years ago I went into anapylactic shock (shock due
to an allergic reaction) and my blood pressure fell to
80/40.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000039.htm
:-george william herbert
:gher...@retro.com
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.