Pain of pains

bogwalrus

I was thinking today about how pain effects my decisions in the future and what its general purpose is in relation to living. I cut myself with a knife today while chopping an onion and it bloody hurt. It was bleeding so i took a break and went for a walk. While i was walking i was pondering the purpose of pain for humans. I came to a conclusion of one reason as to why we have physical pain and i could only think of one;

>when we are physically hurt by something we learn to be careful around that something as its use can hurt us/kill us (like a knife)

When i thought more on this i was curious to know why i should feel pain from an object that i clearly know can hurt me. As for an example let me make the comparisson between a dog and a human (for a laff if anything). A human can learn that a knife will hurt them through knowledge and having a bigger brain and all that. When a human looks at a knife they will go "oh that looks sharp, i better not touch that". For a dog though they do not have a notion of sharp things can cut, so i can understand the use of pain here and i made a nice rhyme for it (smaller brain so need for pain....nice). When the dog gets cut by the knife through curiosity (if anything) they will learn that the knife is not to be messed with. So pain in my understanding is a tool to tell beings of physical things that could possibly kill and harm you.

In the world of humanity though where we are taught of the many things that could end our lives and come to a logical conclusion to things such as "knives could kill you and electricity could burn.kill you etc". What is the true purpose/use/reason for pain to us in this modern human being.

I know the knife will hurt me but even though i was careful it still cut me and i feel pain where it was not my fault (lets just say i am a professional chef). Is it because life is naturally unfair?? In other words does pain provide certain people with power.eg When there is a quarrel between two men. First they start arguing, then there is a small window of reasoning and then boom, fists are flying. The man who induces the most pain wins (through knockout). But tell me this.....does the man who gets up after being knocked out learn a lesson from the beating he has gotten? Or does the man that walks away feel that he was right and won the arguement cause he knocked the other fella out? (I hope you know where i am going with this)

And just to take things a small bit farther. In this day and age for humans, Psychological pain is much worse than physical pain, so is physical pain gradually being phased out because it proves useless in the modern "intellectual age"? And is this being replaced by more severe and complicated psychological anguish?

I would love for this discussion to go on further and to hear your own opinions of pain and its purpose.

Procasinator

Physical pain is always needed, despite our intellect. If you didn't feel pain when the knife first cut you're finger, you might have sliced right through it. If you didn't feel pain, you might not worry about getting away from danger and treating your wounds.

Pain is a very primitive thing, no doubt, but it is still necessary. Pain alerts you to problems, to harm. You can become more tolerant to pain, (a professional skateboarder would have a lot of tolerance to pain, for instance) but removing it totally would be self-detrimental. You need to be alerted to pain, so you can stop yourself from being in harms way.

bogwalrus

I suppose if i was blind and did not feel pain and a knife was rubbed off my arm i would not be able to distinguish that "sharp object" from a "blunt object" thus causing pain. Maybe as our species evolve our threshold for pain will get smaller cause of less reliance on it to inform us of uncertain dangers. Afterall it is the electrical signals from the skin sent to the pain part of the brain that gives us the perception of pain in another part of the brain.

I was looking up that there are breeds of insects that dont feel physical pain and some small animals and fish. I will post later some of the breeds i found, but it is amazing that evolution chose not to give these species physical pain but greater awareness of danger maybe??(spider sense maybe or intuition).

markyedison

hi bogwalrus

the reason that you still feel pain when you cut yourself is because pain is not a psychological reaponse to injury but a physiological one. your epidermis is full of nerves that allow you to feel things e.g. hot, cold, smooth, rough, pleasure and pain.

whether you are aware that you have been injured or not, the nerves surrounding the injury will still send a message to your brain telling you that you are in pain.

you can see the knife cut your hand but if those nerves were absent and i stabbed you in the back, the first you would know of it would be when you started coughing up blood.:eek:

in evolutionary terms, a species of hominid with no pain sensation would have little chance of survival in the wild.

interesting though about other animals that cannot feel. there's probably some medical abnormality where people can't feel, don't know what it is but i don't think i'd like to have it!

cheers, marky

bogwalrus

markyedison wrote: »

hi bogwalrus

the reason that you still feel pain when you cut yourself is because pain is not a psychological reaponse to injury but a physiological one. your epidermis is full of nerves that allow you to feel things e.g. hot, cold, smooth, rough, pleasure and pain.

whether you are aware that you have been injured or not, the nerves surrounding the injury will still send a message to your brain telling you that you are in pain.


cheers, marky

I understand that physical injury results in physical pain. I Know it might seem a bit simple as to what i am discussing but sure it might bring something interesting out worthy for discussion.

So this is what Wiki says on pain:

Pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”.

Pain is frequently the result of nociception;[1] activity in the nervous system that results from the stimulation of nociceptors. This activity is carried to the brain, usually via the spinal cord, conveys information, without conscious awareness, about damage or near-damage in body tissues. Pain is the conscious experience of sensorial information and a feeling of unpleasantness that can manifest as a result of nociception.

As a part of the body's defense system, pain triggers mental and physical behavior that seek to end the painful experience. It is also a feedback system that promotes learning, making repetition of the painful situation less likely. The nociceptive system may transmit signals that trigger the sensation of pain, it is a critical component of the body's ability to react to damaging stimuli and it is part of a rapid-warning relay instructing diverse organs and principally the central nervous system to initiate reactions for minimizing injury.


So in reading this i came to the conclusion that the conscious pain that we feel is related to our body responding to damaged tissue both mentally and physically. So i was wondering why is this "Conscious feeling of pain" so important to the body's dealing with the problem (lets say tissue damage from being cut by a knife).I know they say above that pain trriggers mental and physical behaviour but in what way? Does me feeling pain speed up my bodys fuctions to deal with the problem quicker?does it give more focus to my mind about the problem? Why can't the body just deal with the situation calmly and by itself in an unconscious manner?(does it really need someone going, ouch my poor finger, its bleedy ouch, can some1 come here and give me sympathy and comfort me). Or Does our body know that when us humans feel pain that we will go to the nearest doctor or look for help or other treatments that our body might need to help in the situation.

Could it be that our bodies are so advanced that they make us feel pain to teach us lessons as to not hurt ourselves and learn to be more careful? Are they so advanced that they are aware of other humans that can help the body in times of agony? (such as the calls of a child for a mother who will help a child that has fallen).

I know im looking too far into and from an arse-ways perspective, but some points are quite interesting on a philosophical sense. Loads of Philosophers have studied pain....had a look on Wiki....great stuff it is.

Joe1919

Quick Reply: Anchient greek philosophers and ulitiarians (Mill)saw pleasure as the good or at least a major component of the good, so i presume the opposite applies to pain. Epicurus saw avoidence of anguish and pain as the goal in life. Camus saw life as one great enduring pain to some extent. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche also wrote a lot on pain. Its true that people are motivated by pleasure and pain ,hedonists arguing that these are probably the only ultimate motivations but many others disagreeing. There may be other motivating values such as truth, knowledge,virtue, beauty............. I have to go and role my boulder back up the hill....

Offalycool

What about psychological pain? Say a mother looses a child. Would the pain that results according to your hypothesis, motivate the mother to decide never to have another child? Surly this would not be beneficial to the mother or the spices!

bogwalrus

Offalycool wrote: »

What about psychological pain? Say a mother looses a child. Would the pain that results according to your hypothesis, motivate the mother to decide never to have another child? Surly this would not be beneficial to the mother or the spices!

Well i think one mother that decides not to have children wont effect the species at all. but to say psychological pain and maybe pain itself is a tool of evolution and natural selection, such as, pain being used to guide humans in a certain direction or fate for humnaity, thats fairly interesting. Pain itself might be a sensation that can be felt on many levels, be it psycho....or physical but maybe even on levels that certain life has not yet evolved into.
Would i be right in saying that humans feel the most pain of all the species on earth???? I think its true....i dont know any other species that can overide their will to live with Suicide. This being a psychological factor.

It does seem to me that pain is one of the most important things that governs humans so why not say that its purpose is not just primitive but advance and a foundation for life to move on and possibly natural selection/evolution to take place. An interesting fact i read about evolution is that its influence increases in certain periods of our history. so as an example lets say 100,000 yrs ago evolution sped up and species started to evolve quicker and then slowed down and up again....(you get the idea). Pain could be one factor that might have influenced these fluctuations???? I know im talking out my arse again and very simple but sure i love this kind of banter=)

bogwalrus

yiykes, i mis read your post offaly. If a mother loses a child i think the psychological damage would be great indeed. But as i said in the post above, the mother deciding not to have another child from this pain she felt from losing the other wont make much of a difference to the species. On a more broader scale though....lets say a war that happens in a very large country and people are witnesses to great horrors and millions decide to not bring any kids into this harsh reality.....then there would be economical problems that could spread globally.

Joe1919

Its important to distinguish between pleasure and happiness, pain and sadness. The glutten who tucks into a big meal keeps eating so his pleasure will continue as long as possible BUT is he happy? One can be in pain and yet happy (or sad). Is it better to be a happy pig with his head in his food than Socrates unhappy? (Mills swine argument)? What is happiness/saddness? Can pain be good? In the case of the mother grieving for her child, is that pain not good? If we seen that same mother laughing and not been sad at her dead child, would we think that there is something wrong or not good? Do we not feel that some people deserve pain e.g. Hitler, Stalin........Is pleasure/pain really only an indication of good/bad? The person who seeks happiness through pleasure usaully never finds it. Happiness seems to sneek up on people when they are least looking for it. People who look for shortcuts to happiness( e.g. drugs) never succeed? Can we grow through pain?

In the case of the grieving mother then who sits grieving at her dead child, is it the death of her child that is bad and not her pain. For as we said, we are happier ourselves that we see the mother grieving and we ourselves would be unhappy if the mother was not grieving or was indifferent to her dead child. Therefore the mothers pain is actually a good and noble thing, and we should be happy that the mother has shown her love of the child by being in pain but unhappy at the death of the child and the fact that the mother had to feel this pain. Therefore it is the death of the child that is bad and not the pain itself suffered by the mother.

bogwalrus

Well from the perspective of the mother her pain is bad and will last a very long time til the end of her life. She will probably never be truly happy again because of the psychological trauma from losing a child.

On the other hand the perspective of an on looker who does not know the mother, they can feel the pain and feel sorry for the woman. This pain is not the same as the womans as it is sympathetic in nature.

and on the third hand (yes three), on the essence of life and existence as a whole you could say that yes it is good to see the mother grieve for her child and that life is a beautiful thing for her to be able to express herself like that but it is in no way a good thing that she had to do that.

Offalycool

I was trying to follow your idea that pain ingrains in us a means of survival and evolution; to its logical end, probably too simplistically. If we react to pain subconsciously in order to survive; psychological pain (if treated as pain in general) would discourage us from doing the most basic things necessary to survive, such as reproduce. Obviously this is not the case, I was trying to make a rhetorical argument (badly).

Is might right? It probably depends on a number of subjective factors. Religious, lawful, psychotic.. who can say for sure which reason is better to support an individuals belief system. Both men will leave the encounter taking different things with them. It is possible next time there is a confrontation, there new encounter will lead them to depend on there previous experiences. As every situation is different, there is no guaranty results for either will be favourable. I generally try to take an objective point of view myself, on life. Might belongs at the top, but every top must have a bottom.

Joe1919 makes a good distinction between different states of mind. I have seen a dog with sore feet, overcome his pain to chase a ball. The dog would just keep running till his feet were filed down to nubs.

bogwalrus

Offalycool wrote: »

Joe1919 makes a good distinction between different states of mind. I have seen a dog with sore feet, overcome his pain to chase a ball. The dog would just keep running till his feet were filed down to nubs.

Mind over matter no? Thats another thing about pain. You ever hear of those cases where a fella gets a limb chopped and he doesnt notice til some one goes and tells him (doesnt have to be a limb). Its funny how in some circumstances that depending on how focused on the pain you are, the more you will feel it or not feel it. Thats a Kant philosophy in one of his critiques i believe. "Matter is an illusion of the mind".

It is clear to me anyway now that a persons own inner pain is not really a hinderence on their future achievements as it can help in making them more stronger, where physical pain is long term and does effect a persons abilities in the physical world.

DadaKopf

markyedison wrote: »

hi bogwalrus

the reason that you still feel pain when you cut yourself is because pain is not a psychological reaponse to injury but a physiological one. your epidermis is full of nerves that allow you to feel things e.g. hot, cold, smooth, rough, pleasure and pain.

whether you are aware that you have been injured or not, the nerves surrounding the injury will still send a message to your brain telling you that you are in pain.

you can see the knife cut your hand but if those nerves were absent and i stabbed you in the back, the first you would know of it would be when you started coughing up blood.:eek:

in evolutionary terms, a species of hominid with no pain sensation would have little chance of survival in the wild.

interesting though about other animals that cannot feel. there's probably some medical abnormality where people can't feel, don't know what it is but i don't think i'd like to have it!

cheers, marky

I got news for you bud: our brains are made of nerves, too. Psychological states are, but not identical to, physical states.

'Physical' or 'Emotional' pain are intertwined. We're psycho-physio-neurological beings.

Our whole sense of being in the world is, in fact, a combination of objective and subjective factors; our accents, manners our parents taught us, ideological dogmas etc. may be external social structures, but they are encoded in our bodies so strongly, that to resist those can conditionings result in very strong emotional reactions. For the most part, they are pre-reflexive: i.e. we dont even think about how the objective and subjective are so intertwined. In certain circumstances, people can even find pleasure in pain, giving or receiving. Go figure.

Joe1919

An old theory exist that goes back to Plato and beyond that our psyche (soul) contains rational / irrational(instinctive) parts, or logical/emotional parts or human/animal parts. So our survival depends on both our intellect and also our instincts. When we do something that is bad for us , for example a baby puts its hand on a hot stove, we suffer. You could argue that it is not the pain of the burn that is bad but the burn itself as it damages the skin etc. Indeed the pain in this case is good as it prevents the child from damaging himself. As we get older, we should get wiser and know enough not to burn ourselves as we have our use of reason.
You could say then that we are influenced at two levels of survival, the pain/pleasure level which is instinctive and also present in animals and our intellectual and conscious level which may be responsible for our happiness/sadness.(its debatable at what level, if at all , this is present in animals).Pain/pleasure therefore is very necessary, as it instinctively steers us toward my own survival. However we also have intellects, habits, conscience, prudence,sympathy/empathy, which points us towards group survival as well as our own as we, like other creatures such as bees, ants are quite helpless on our own and need the mutual safety of others to survive and multiply.

johnnyskeleton

Physical pain and pleasure seem to me to be the same basic sensation, only with pain it is much stronger. When someone rubs your arm gently you might get a pleasant sensation from it, and if they grab you tightly, the sensation may be unpleasant. However, it is essentially the same thing - nerves telling your brain that you are being touched. While some people claim to be able to block out pain (i.e. the unpleasant part of the sensation) I don't think they actually do. Instead they simply ignore it.