Pain (philosophy) - Wikipedia Pain (philosophy) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Pain" philosophy – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Philosophy of pain may be about suffering in general or more specifically about physical pain. The experience of pain is, due to its seeming universality, a very good portal through which to view various aspects of human life. Discussions in philosophy of mind concerning qualia has given rise to a body of knowledge called philosophy of pain,[1] which is about pain in the narrow sense of physical pain, and which must be distinguished from philosophical works concerning pain in the broad sense of suffering. This article covers both topics. Contents 1 Historical views of pain 2 The individuality of pain 3 Pain and meaning 4 Pain and theories of mind 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Historical views of pain[edit] Two near contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Sade had very different views on these matters. Bentham saw pain and pleasure as objective phenomena, and defined utilitarianism on that principle. However the Marquis de Sade offered a wholly different view - which is that pain itself has an ethics, and that pursuit of pain, or imposing it, may be as useful and just as pleasurable, and that this indeed is the purpose of the state - to indulge the desire to inflict pain in revenge, for instance, via the law (in his time most punishment was in fact the dealing out of pain). The 19th-century view in Europe was that Bentham's view had to be promoted, de Sade's (which it found painful) suppressed so intensely that it - as de Sade predicted - became a pleasure in itself to indulge. The Victorian culture is often cited as the best example of this hypocrisy. Various 20th century philosophers (viz. J.J.C. Smart, David Kellogg Lewis, D.M. Armstrong) have commented upon the meaning of pain and what it can tell us about the nature of human experiences. Pain has also been the subject of various socio-philosophical treatises. Michel Foucault, for example, observed that the biomedical model of pain, and the shift away from pain-inducing punishments, was part of a general Enlightenment invention of Man. The idea of species-wide empathy, he asserts, was created, in which the pain of the punished is itself a pain to the punisher[citation needed]. The individuality of pain[edit] It is often accepted as a priori principle that one has inherent knowledge of one's own consciousness simply by virtue of dwelling within an "inner world" of the mind. This drastic distinction between inner world and outer world was most popularized by René Descartes when he solidified his principle of Cartesian dualism. From the centrality of one's own consciousness springs a fundamental problem of other minds, the discussion of which has often centered on pain. Pain and meaning[edit] The philosopher Nietzsche experienced long bouts of illness and pain in his life, and wrote much about the meaning of pain as it relates to the meaning of life in general. Among his more famous quotes, are ones specifically related to pain: "Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? Oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. All things are linked, entwined, in love with one another." "What does not kill me, makes me stronger." Pain and theories of mind[edit] The experience of pain has been used by various philosophers to analyze various types of philosophy of mind, such as dualism, identity theory, or functionalism. David Lewis, in his article 'Mad pain and Martian pain', gives examples of various types of pain to support his own flavor of functionalism. He defines mad pain to be pain which occurs in a madman who has somehow gotten his "wires crossed" (possibly an early observation distinguishing normal pain from either clinical psychalgia or schizophreniac pain) in such a way that what we usually call "pain" does not cause him to cry or roll in agony, but instead to, for example, become very concentrated and good at mathematics. Martian pain is, to him, pain which occupies the same causal role as our pain, but has a very different physical realization (e.g. the Martian feels pain due to the activation of an elaborate internal hydraulic system rather than, for example, the firing of C-fibers). Both of these phenomena, Lewis claims, are pain, and must be accounted for in any coherent theory of mind. See also[edit] Nociception Pain Pain asymbolia Perception Suffering References[edit] ^ Murat Aydede, Bibliography — Philosophy of Pain http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/maydede/pain/ Further reading[edit] Grahek, Nikola (2007). Feeling Pain and Being in Pain. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-07283-0. External links[edit] Pain (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Bibliography—Philosophy of Pain Wittgenstein's Beetle - Philosophy Online v t e Philosophy of mind Theories Behaviorism (Radical) Biological naturalism Cognitive psychology Computationalism Mind–body dualism Eliminative materialism Emergent materialism Emergentism Epiphenomenalism Functionalism Idealism Interactionism Materialism Monism Naïve realism Neurophenomenology Neutral monism Occasionalism Panpsychism Psychoanalysis Parallelism Phenomenalism Phenomenology Physicalism identity theory Property dualism Representational Solipsism Substance dualism Concepts Abstract object Artificial intelligence Chinese room Cognition Cognitive closure Concept Concept and object Consciousness Hard problem of consciousness Hypostatic abstraction Idea Identity Ingenuity Intelligence Intentionality Introspection Intuition Language of thought Materialism Mental event Mental image Mental property Mental representation Mind Mind–body problem Non-physical entity New mysterianism Pain Perspective-taking Privileged access Problem of other minds Propositional attitude Qualia Tabula rasa Understanding Zombie more... Related topics Metaphysics Philosophy of artificial intelligence / information / perception / self Category Philosophers category Project Task Force  Philosophy portal Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pain_(philosophy)&oldid=888452103" Categories: Pain Hidden categories: Articles needing additional references from November 2009 All articles needing additional references All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007 Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages العربية فارسی 한국어 Italiano 日本語 Winaray Edit links This page was last edited on 19 March 2019, at 07:29 (UTC). 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