Perhaps we’ll find more clues about such things in a rare condition that results from injuring certain parts of the brain: the victims of ‘Pain Asymbolia’ still recognize what the rest of us describe as pain—but do not find those feelings unpleasant, and may even laugh in response to them. Perhaps they have lost some resources that cause what, in others, are cascades of torments.
Physical vs. Mental ‘Pain’
Citizen: Physical pain is just one kind of pain—and emotional pains can be just as intense; they can even drive people to suicide. How could your theory also explain those other kinds of agonies?
Are mental and physical pains the same? They frequently seem to have similar ways to make changes in our mental states. What kind of relation could there be between how we react to, say, pinching or burning of the skin, and ‘painful’ events inside our minds, like,
The pain of losing a long-term companion.
The pain of watching the pain of others.
The pain of sleep deprivation.
The pain of humiliation and perceived failure.
The pain of excessive and prolonged stress.
Suppose that you were to hear Charles say, “I felt so anxious and upset that it felt like something was tearing my gut.” You might conclude that Charles’s feelings reminded him of times when he had a stomachache.
Physiologist: It might even be true that ‘your stomach crawled’ —if your mental condition caused your brain to send signals to your digestive tract.
Similarly, we often speak as though ‘hurt feelings’ resemble physical pains, no matter that they originate from such different situation-types. This could be because, although they begin in different ways, both may end up by seizing control of the same higher-level machinery. Thus, disrespect on the part of a friend can disrupt your brain in much the same way as a deep, aching pain. And sometimes, what starts with physical pain can get amplified ‘psychologically’:
Student: As a child, I once I hit a chair with my head, and covered the area with my hand. Although the pain was intense, I was not much disturbed. But when I looked and saw blood on my hand, then I really panicked and started to cry.
In any case, most kinds of feelings are hard to describe because we know so little about how their machinery works. However, it can be easy to recognize a mental state (either in yourself or in someone else) because you may only need to detect a few features of that particular mental condition. And this will often be enough to help us to communicate—by using what we call ‘empathy.’ For if two minds have enough structure in common, then just a few clues could lead each one to recognize some of the other’s condition.
§3-3. Feeling, Hurting, and Suffering
“As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fiber of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.”
We have many words for types of pain—like stinging, throbbing, piercing, shooting, gnawing, burning, aching, and so on. But words never capture quite enough of what any particular feeling is, so we have to resort to analogies that try to describe what each feeling is like—such as ‘a knife’ or ‘a hand of ice’—or images of a suffering person’s appearances. Dorian Grey felt no physical pain, but was horrified about growing old—hideous, wrinkled, and worst of all, of having his hair lose its beautiful gold.
What makes hurting so hard to describe? Is this because feelings are so simple and basic that there’s nothing more to be said about them? No, it’s precisely the opposite; chapter §9 will argue that feelings are intricate processes—but because we have so little sense of how these work, we can only describe their effects in terms of analogies with familiar things.
“I’m so something that I can’t remember what it’s called.”
For example I’ve heard suffering likened to a balloon that keeps dilating inside your mind until there’s no more room for your usual thoughts. Then you might feel you’ve lost your ‘freedom of choice’ and that your mental condition has become like that of a prisoner.
In any case, this raises the question of what distinctions we’re trying to make with like pain, discomfort, and suffering. Sometimes these seem interchangeable, sometimes they signify different degrees, and at other times we use them as though we’re referring to different phenomena. The next few sections will try to use different words for the kinds of mental activities that come shortly after an injury. We’ll only use pain for what comes first—the sensations that come from the injury. Then we’ll use hurting for what comes next—that is, for how we describe pain’s early effects. Finally, we’ll use “suffering” for the states we get when these escalate into large-scale cascades.
Critic: Even if your theory is right—that sufferings are disruption-cascades—why can’t all that machinery work without making people feel so uncomfortable?
Our theory suggests that one cannot separate those things because when we speak about ‘feeling uncomfortable’ we are in large part referring to that disruption of our other thoughts! Indeed, pain could not serve the functions for which it evolved if our usual processes were to continue in the face of painful stimuli—for if we kept pursuing our usual goals we might not try to escape from those sources of pain, and just carry on with our usual thoughts while our bodies were being torn apart. [See §§Zombie-Machines.]
Philosopher: Isn’t there still something missing here. You have been describing various mental conditions, and some machinery that might make them occur. But you have not given the slightest hint of why those conditions should give rise to feelings—or that basic sense of being or of experiencing.
Terms like ‘basic’ or ‘experience’ only hide our lack of insight about the processes they purport to describe. For example, when you ‘see’ your own hand, you seem to know that it is your hand without any intermediate steps—but that is because you have so little sense of the complex systems that recognize this.
It must be the same for feelings, too; when they seem basic or direct, this merely reflects our ignorance of how we recognize types of mental events.
What do we mean when we talk about feelings? What do we mean by “I feel good,” “I’m confused,” “I’m excited,” or “Now I feel that I’m making progress.” You feel pleased when you achieve a goal—but this can be mixed with a sense of regret because now you must find something else to do. And sometimes success makes you feel surprise—which may lead you to ask what caused that success, or why you failed to expect it. Clearly, some such feeling must result from reflective attempts to describe your states.