Something that seems to be getting ignored in the discussion of pain being good is the existence of pain asymbolia. People with pain asymbolia still get the signal of pain, so they know about damage and can mediate it, but it doesn’t feel bad. If we accept that having the information content of pain without the negative affect would be preferable to having the information and the negative affect, then there’s clearly something bad about pain.
I think there are two main bad things about pain. 1: Pain produces a strong negative affect, aka suffering, aka I just hate it. 2: Pain produces an aversion strong enough that people will do anything to stop or avoid enough of it. That makes pain something that can severely restrict people’s freedom just by existing, more so than most other unpleasant things.
People with pain asymbolia still get the signal of pain, so they know about damage and can mediate it, but it doesn’t feel bad.
One problem I can see with this: imagine that someone is in the middle of an activity that isn’t life-or-death, but that they care about, i.e. running in a race that they really want to win. They step on something uneven and twist their knee or whatever. They get the signal of pain in their knee, but because it doesn’t feel bad, they might just ignore it and try to win the race anyway, possibly causing a lot more damage in the process. The problem is that their temporary goal (i.e. increased social status after winning or whatever) conflicts with the long-term goal of having a functional body. Presumably humans or animals who were able to ignore pain in this way would have been more likely than average to injure themselves and exacerbate those injuries, and might not have survived to have as many children.
This is plausible. As someone who experiences pain as suffering, I need to cultivate the skill of doing painful things when I consciously decide that they should be done. If I had pain asymbolia, I imagine I’d need to instead cultivate the habit of making conservative decisions about my long-term health.
Is it obvious that the second attitude would be terribly much harder to achieve? By which I mean is it clear that the cost of becoming sufficiently conservative is higher than the cost of the pain?
Certainly not. On the contrary, successfully cultivating that sense of personal responsibility seems like a rewarding activity on its own. In fact, the only way of acquiring pain asymbolia that I’ve heard of involves treating pain as a warning signal and taking it seriously. So it seems like there are only benefits and no downsides to acquiring pain asymbolia, as long as you aren’t cruel to yourself.
I think it’s enough to reduce it to “Pain produces suffering.” Suffering is bad (it just is, that’s all, your question is stupid), although it can be coupled with good things, like behaviour-modification. Pain that doesn’t produce suffering isn’t bad.
Something that seems to be getting ignored in the discussion of pain being good is the existence of pain asymbolia. People with pain asymbolia still get the signal of pain, so they know about damage and can mediate it, but it doesn’t feel bad. If we accept that having the information content of pain without the negative affect would be preferable to having the information and the negative affect, then there’s clearly something bad about pain.
I think there are two main bad things about pain.
1: Pain produces a strong negative affect, aka suffering, aka I just hate it.
2: Pain produces an aversion strong enough that people will do anything to stop or avoid enough of it. That makes pain something that can severely restrict people’s freedom just by existing, more so than most other unpleasant things.
One problem I can see with this: imagine that someone is in the middle of an activity that isn’t life-or-death, but that they care about, i.e. running in a race that they really want to win. They step on something uneven and twist their knee or whatever. They get the signal of pain in their knee, but because it doesn’t feel bad, they might just ignore it and try to win the race anyway, possibly causing a lot more damage in the process. The problem is that their temporary goal (i.e. increased social status after winning or whatever) conflicts with the long-term goal of having a functional body. Presumably humans or animals who were able to ignore pain in this way would have been more likely than average to injure themselves and exacerbate those injuries, and might not have survived to have as many children.
This is plausible. As someone who experiences pain as suffering, I need to cultivate the skill of doing painful things when I consciously decide that they should be done. If I had pain asymbolia, I imagine I’d need to instead cultivate the habit of making conservative decisions about my long-term health.
Is it obvious that the second attitude would be terribly much harder to achieve? By which I mean is it clear that the cost of becoming sufficiently conservative is higher than the cost of the pain?
Certainly not. On the contrary, successfully cultivating that sense of personal responsibility seems like a rewarding activity on its own. In fact, the only way of acquiring pain asymbolia that I’ve heard of involves treating pain as a warning signal and taking it seriously. So it seems like there are only benefits and no downsides to acquiring pain asymbolia, as long as you aren’t cruel to yourself.
I think it’s enough to reduce it to “Pain produces suffering.” Suffering is bad (it just is, that’s all, your question is stupid), although it can be coupled with good things, like behaviour-modification. Pain that doesn’t produce suffering isn’t bad.