[FRIAM] My Work On Earth Is Not Yet Done

Wed Oct 19 23:44:15 EDT 2022

Hi, Dave, 

See Larding below

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2022 2:05 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] My Work On Earth Is Not Yet Done

Hi, Dave, 

Notice that in cashing out the honorable Dr. Green, you get yourself into a rhetorical tangle.  

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2022 2:05 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] My Work On Earth Is Not Yet Done

Colloquially, "in your head" signifies that construct—the self, the consciousness— that you do not accept as a real thing.

[NST===>well, the question dangling here is whether the person should be blamed for it or not.  It’s like that old childhood question:  Is not wanting to go to school going to be made better or worse by going to school.  Or, are other people going to get sick, if go to school.  Not clear how consciousness enters in.  <===nst] 

If one were to be charitable, one might interpret the sentence as "it is not psychosomatic."[NST===>Not at all clear to me what psycho somatic means, unless it involves some sort of assignment of blame.  If I, a diabetic eat a hot fudge Sunday and go into ketosis, is my coma psychosomatic? Does it matter that I did it as an unconscious protest against the idiocies  of contemporary diabetes management? <===nst]     

Reason being pain results in signals in both the body 

[NST===>Pain results in signals…  I thought pain WAS the signals.  Or even, the result of the signals.  So pain causes pain.  Uhuh.  I get that.  Nothing more satisfying than a good tautology.  <===nst] 

and the brain, so it is a phenomenon in the 'physical world of electrons and neurons' as well as the 'physical world of the flesh'.

But why be charitable?[NST===>To use Glen’s language, I don’t think the idea that “pain ==> pain signals in the body ==> pain signals in the brain causes pain” can be rescued by charity.  Nor do I think the idea that the brain is not in the body is capable of rescue.

I am an anarchist with respect to consciousness talk; we need to burn the whole fucker down.  See below from a dialogue eric and I wrote years ago.  Eric asks the questions:

Nick <===nst]  

So a robot could be made that would feel pain?

Well, you are cheating a bit, because you are asking me to participate in a word game I have already disavowed, the game in which pain is something inside my brain that I use my pain-feelers to palpate (contra Natsoulas, this volume). To me, pain is an emergency organization of my behavior in which I deploy physical and social defenses of various sorts. You show me a robot that is part of a society of robots, becomes frantic when you break some part of it, calls upon its fellow robots to assist, etc., I will be happy to admit that it is “paining”. 

On your account, non-social animals don’t feel pain? 

Well, not the same sort of pain. Any creature that struggles when you do something to it is  “paining” in some sense. But animals that have the potential to summon help seem to pain in a different way. 

But Nick, while “paining” sounds nice in an academic paper, it is just silly otherwise. The other day I felt quite nauseous after a meal. I am interested in what it’s like to feel nauseous, and you cannot honestly claim that you don’t know what feeling nauseous is like. Behavioral correlates aren’t at issue, stop changing the subject. 

What is “being nauseous” like? It’s like being on a small boat in a choppy sea, it’s like being in a world that is revolving when others see it as stable, it’s like being grey in the face and turning away from the sights and smells of food that others find attractive, it’s like having your head in the toilet when others have theirs in the refrigerator. 

            But you have brought us to the crux of the problem. Nobody has ever been satisfied with my answers to these, “What is it like to be a _______?” questions. “What is it like to be in pain? What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be Nick Thompson?” Notice how the grammar is contorted. If you ask the question in its natural order, you begin to see a path to an answer. “What is being Nick Thompson like?” “It’s like running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” OK. I get that. I see me doing that. You see me doing that. But most people won’t be satisfied with that sort of answer, because it’s the same as the answer to the question, “What do people like Nick Thompson do?” and therefore appears to convey no information that  is inherently private.  To me, the question, “What is it like to be X?”, has been fully answered when you have said where X-like people can be found and what they will be doing there. However, I seem to be pretty alone in that view. 

Dave wrote:  Colloquially, "in your head" signifies that construct—the self, the consciousness— that you do not accept as a real thing.

If one were to be charitable, one might interpret the sentence as "it is not psychosomatic." Reason being pain results in signals in both the body and the brain, so it is a phenomenon in the 'physical world of electrons and neurons' as well as the 'physical world of the flesh'.

But why be charitable?

davew

On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, at 12:44 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

A highly regarded pain expert, Dr. Carmen Green, talking about chronic pain on the pod cast of an equally highly regarded neurosurgeon, Dr.  Sanjay Gupta:

“… pain is also perceived in the brain, so it’s not only in your head.”

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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