As a relatively seasoned clinician, I can say absolutely that “subconscious” pain and injury are important parts of human health and suffering.
That said, I think there is potential for confusion here. I think that Jamie’s point was that an entity that has no capacity for sentient experiencing, say a
single cell or a robot or something along those lines cannot suffer because to suffer requires the capacity for subjective experience at some level.
So, clearly I might have traumatic wounds that are “unfinished” and outside my self-conscious narrative and experiential attentional set, but that influence and
impair me. Every clinician who has fostered some relatively deep insight work has seen that.
But at the same time, an entity that cannot feel cannot feel pain and thus cannot suffer.
Best,
G
Jamie:
I am thinking, in particular, of the type of pain referred to as psychological pain.
And, yes, it very much appears to me that psychological pain, in particular, can be “felt” or “exist” in the unconscious and they person not be fully aware thereof.
That doesn’t mean that such unconscious psychological pain doesn’t influence the person’s behavior (physical or mental) or that it cannot become part of the “conscious” experience.
But, that is based upon my experience in life as a person and a physician.
And that is why I both of us will benefit from comments from a psychotherapist on this matter.
Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD
(Perseveret et Percipiunt)
503.631.8044
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)
Well, it depends on what you mean by conscious. There are various meanings to the word. One is to be cognizant and aware of something by thinking about it or having a representation of it in short-term memory.
Another meaning is simply subjective or phenomenal, first-person experience, thought to be made of qualia.
I contend that pain is necessarily an experience, and when pain is not felt, it doesn't even count as pain.
However, one can be in pain, truly feeling it, but not be cognizant of it, and not have the idea in their head that they're in pain.
Meditators often realize that when they started meditating and paying closer attention to their experience, they became cognizant of pain they hadn't been paying attention to.
To me, this means that the pain was felt but the idea hadn't dawned on the person that they were in pain. So they were conscious in terms of feeling, but not in terms of cognizance.
Do you contend that there can be pain that isn't even felt?
On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 4:14 PM,
[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Jamie:
I’m interested in what Gregg and others have to say.
I contend that there is indeed unconscious suffering.
Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD
(Perseveret et Percipiunt)
503.631.8044
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)
I understand that Skinner discovered the natural selection of behavior, that basically reward selects for and reproduces behaviors, and punishment eliminates behaviors.
The psychological term for well-being and suffering is valence. The pressing question is what are the physical determinants of valence?
Even the smallest single-celled organisms respond to reward and punishment, so how can we say that nervous systems are required for behavioral selection? I suppose the behavior of single-celled organisms can't
diversity or vary that much, but they do have aversive and attractive responses to stimuli.
I can't imagine a more pressing concern for ethics than to solve the mystery of valence.
The theory that I most agree with is that suffering is a form of attentional capture. One might ask, does the feeling of nausea cause more attentional capture than a warm shower? I don't think so.
Behavioral investment theory talks about how suffering inhibits behavior and pleasure leads to behavioral investment.
The problem of valence also boils down to the mystery of consciousness. I'm inclined to believe that Jesse Prinz's AIR theory is very close to a theory of consciousness, but I'm not sure if it encompasses all
of subjective experience. Prinz argues that qualia is based on attention, and his book The Conscious Brain provides a theory of consciousness based on a theory of attention:
‘AIR’ (‘Attended Intermediate-level Representation’) theory of consciousness. According to this theory, consciousness arises when intermediate-level perceptual
representations (representations of the world at a certain stage in the brain’s processing) undergo changes that allow them to become available to working memory.
Here is a summary of his book The Conscious Brain
So, I believe that suffering is attentional capture, and this at least relates to the idea of a sort of "behavioral capture" as punishment. The question is, what is the relationship between attention and behavior?
Clearly we have unconscious behavior, but I don't agree that we have unconscious suffering. Suffering, in my understanding, doesn't occur unless it occurs in awareness (which is a broad form of attention; and attention is concentrated awareness)
Suffering is used by evolution to inhibit behavior and it does this by capuring attention.
A problem here is what do I mean by "capture" of attention? I do mean something like a mosquito buzzing in your ear, and I think a screaming broken leg is just an increased version of that.
I'm confident that attentional capture at least has a strong relationship to suffering. There's a reason Buddhist call the cessation of suffering "liberation". But I can't explain why it should feel the way it
does, and this is perhaps the most important question to solve for ethics.
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