Where does physical pain come from?

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BenSinner

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I’ve been thinking over how we are able to feel emotions.

Scientifically, we feel pain or some other sensation when an object interacts with our body, and it sends a signal to our brain to “feel”. For example, if a nail is driven through our hand, the nerves in the hand will send a signal to our brain to say “OUCH!!”

This process is completely immaterial though. I’m trying to figure out how physical pain exists, if all our sensations are simply just a message (which is immaterial) our brain sends to our body.
 
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It’s not really immaterial since electrical signals are present. I’d imagine a neurologist could go into a lot more detail.
 
Pain is a mystery. The fact we are able to feel any feelings, and have conscious experience of those feelings, is a mystery.
 
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Not only that but there is acute and chronic pain. In the second, the brain releases natural opiate in response to the electrical signals to try and relieve the pain.
 
ZMystiCat said:
It’s not really immaterial since electrical signals are present.
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Yeah, this.

Why is OP describing this process which is generated by the actions and reactions of the material components of his body as ‘immaterial’?
 
I think that’s because the material process isn’t enough to explain the qualitative sensation. Why is it that a certain conjunction of firing of neurons etc. produces the feeling of pain? Wouldn’t it be possible for the same neurons to fire and no pain to be experienced? You might be interested in the concept of a “philosophical zombie”, a hypothetical creature that looks and acts human but lacks the element of experience. Some philosophers use hypothetical thought experiments like it to argue that consciousness is not purely physical. See Zombies (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
 
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That’s what hapoens for people with various neurological disorders. They don’t feel the pain or they experience it in other ways
 
I don’t know but what interest me is that leprosy destroys the nerves so the patient feels no pain and keeps injuring himself until parts of the body fall off. Fingers, toes etc. Pain is actually a blessing. Sin is compared to leprosy because often we feel no pain from our sins and the sin does great damage.
 
That’s very true. But how can we explain it? How can we even explain any conscious experience in purely physical terms? That’s still a major debate in current philosophy.
 
Yeah, I don’t think we are going to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness here.

And the thing about p-zombies I’ve always found disturbing is how can you be certain that they really don’t have the internal consciousness that we assume they don’t.

What if you created a really good p-zombie as an experiment and it turns out that consciousness really is an emergent property and that your experiment was so good that it emerged in your p-zombie.

And it turns out that what you thought was a mechanical creation really was a sentient self aware creature that you’ve been torturing as it begged you to stop.

But you didn’t, because you were really sure that it couldn’t be self aware.

But it was…
 
Guess we can never be sure… But then again, how can we be sure that other people we interact with are actually conscious and not just p-zombies?
 
I’m not sure that anyone except for myself are self aware sentient beings, but I find things go better when I act as if they are.

Interestingly enough, I find my computers work better when I treat them as conscious beings with feelings and show them appreciation when they work well.
 
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BenSinner said:
I’m trying to figure out how physical pain exists,
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Is it even meaningful to describe the sensation of pain in physical terms? Yes, there is a physical process by which the sensation of pain is actualized. But materialism and science lacks the capacity to describe the sensation of pain in physical terms. Pain has no dimensions; it is not a physical object.
 
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But don’t animals feel pain? They have no immaterial aspect.
 
Animals do appear to feel pain and have conscious experience of it, that’s true. Explaining how the qualitative sensation is physical is the hard part. I see pain can’t point to anything specially immaterial about humans; thank you for this observation.
 
BenSinner said:
I’ve been thinking over how we are able to feel emotions.

Scientifically, we feel pain or some other sensation when an object interacts with our body, and it sends a signal to our brain to “feel”. For example, if a nail is driven through our hand, the nerves in the hand will send a signal to our brain to say “OUCH!!”

This process is completely immaterial though. I’m trying to figure out how physical pain exists, if all our sensations are simply just a message (which is immaterial) our brain sends to our body.
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There is soooooo much science in the answer to your questions.

Your questions, however, contain factual errors which others have already pointed out, the most important of which is that pain is NOT immaterial.

To send a message to or from the brain along the neurons within your body, there is an amazing chain reaction of chemical processes that takes place. I had to learn this stuff in a biopsychology course in college – it is an AWESOME system, especially when one considers the distance a “message” needs to travel along the neuron, and that what allows that travel is a chain of microscopic actions along the surface of each neuron!

Just wow.

Anyway, if you’re really interested in this stuff, you might want to visit your local college or university library and do a little research. Biopsychology (the anatomy and physiology of our brains) is a fascinating science. :+1:t4:

And just to be clear, I’m an elementary school music teacher, not a scientist. I just happen to love science and remember a few interesting items I’ve learned along the way. 🙂
 
Scientists are very interested in those persons as they could be helpful with finding out how it is possible to block or minimise pain during and after surgery for example.
 
Consult a local town doctor.
Call an actual city hospital.
In fact, go to a hospital -
Go to the children’s hospital -
Volunteer - for the summer - look around - ask questions.
 
BenSinner said:
This process is completely immaterial though. I’m trying to figure out how physical pain exists, if all our sensations are simply just a message (which is immaterial) our brain sends to our body.
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As far as we know our mind creates the pain and the mind is triggered by an electrical signal.

The electrical signal is physical and material but the pain is created by the mind and projected to a certain locality in an immaterial way I believe. Perhaps it is similar to the mind creating images and creates colour etc. It is truly a mysterious thing when you think deeply about what is happening.
 
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