How would you objectively establish who's feeling more pain ?
On Consciousness
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PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
In the exact same way we approach every other problem: Define our terms, then measure stuff.
Now, why do you think this is problematic?
Sounds good so far. How do you propose we define our terms ?
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
In terms of objectively verifiable facts.
AlBell
Philosopher
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Please list a few objectively verifiable facts you would use in your experiment.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
I'd start with stimuli measurements and map that to resultant neural activity and motor response.
On flatworms. Or, if I can't get that past the ethics committee, philosophers.
And what does the neural activity and motor response tell you about the amount of pain the subject is experiencing ?
I'm still not seeing an objective test.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Everything.
Try defining your terms. Once you understand what your question means, the answer will become clear.
When people talk about about pain they are talking about something. We know that something is particular state of the brain, or relationship between parts of the brain, or something like this. So, obviously it's theoretically possible to find out what that thing "pain" is by looking at the brain, and compare one person's brain when in pain with another person's when in pain and objectively state "this person's pain is greater than that one's". Okay.
But you can't get there purely by defining your terms, because you may end up talking about something other than the experience of pain that most people are talking about. Which is fine and may end up telling us something interesting. But there has to be a step in the process where you confirm that the pain that you've defined corresponds to "pain" as the experience that I have when I, say, get a filling at the dentist. It's certainly possible to make that confirmation, but you do have to make it.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Yes.
Sure.
But you won't get anywhere unless you start by defining your terms.
That's my point. Asserting that a question is unanswerable when the question is in fact undefined is at best a red herring.
My point is that defining objective terms is impossible. You are disagreeing with that, and as a demonstration, you want me to come up with a definition ?
If you're claiming it's simple to provide an objective definition, why aren't you giving one ?
So, apparently we agree that even though we all have a understanding of "feeling pain", we cannot quantitatively define it ?
ETA: This post was a reply to Pixy's post #790.
I agree with all that. I think maybe I misinterpreted your discussion. Particularly when Itztli said:
I figured he meant that since we haven't answered the first question yet, we obviously can't answer the second sort of question now. I thought he just meant we need to learn more before we really understand the details of consciousness, but as I said it seems I'm misinterpreting things.
I agree with all that. I think maybe I misinterpreted your discussion. Particularly when Itztli said:
I figured he meant that since we haven't answered the first question yet, we obviously can't answer the second sort of question now. I thought he just meant we need to learn more before we really understand the details of consciousness, but as I said it seems I'm misinterpreting things.
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What I meant was that consciousness is a private, subjective experience, and we'll never agree on an objective definition.
As an example, I mentioned "feeling pain", and that it is impossible to quantify it objectively. If it was, we could answer the question if person A was feeling more pain than person B. The sensation of pain is just a small part of our consciousness, and if we can't even define that, there's no hope we can come up with a objective definition of consciousness as a whole.
To objectively measure the pain difference of two different (presumably painful) experiences, we would need to (magically) make a duplicate of a person who already exists, so the two beings would have the same experiential backgrounds and genes and number of pain receptors, condition of axons, recent diet which could increase/decrease neurotransmitter production and/or myelination, etc., and then ask them to subjectively quantify different painful experiences that we would subject them to, while also taking fMRI scans of a few pain areas in the brain, while also obtaining event scr's and some other neurophysiological measure like muscle contraction, eye blink, etc.
And even then we couldn't be sure.
Pain is a subjective experience. And it depends on all sorts of specific (non-subjective) factors. Too many. Experience shapes us, and shapes our neuronal connections (your brain changes every minute based on your experience), our gene expression, our memories and associations (one and the same, in many ways).
Fascinating topic!
And even then we couldn't be sure.
Pain is a subjective experience. And it depends on all sorts of specific (non-subjective) factors. Too many. Experience shapes us, and shapes our neuronal connections (your brain changes every minute based on your experience), our gene expression, our memories and associations (one and the same, in many ways).
Fascinating topic!
None of this suggests that the experience of pain is not amenable to scientific inquiry.
The fact that a question has not been answered yet doesn't demonstrate that it is not possible to answer it.
You can try, but since you have no access to subjective experiences, you must rely on the subject reporting about their feelings. They could for instance try to quantify the pain on a scale of 1-20, but how would you calibrate the scales ? And how would you get the report out of someone who lacks suitable means of communication, such as a baby ?
Correct, but that's not the reason for my claim. I'm saying it can't be answered because there's no objective access to someone's personal experience.
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