Mind

What is pain? Does pain really affect us, or is it a trick the mind plays to help protect us?

Comments

Many philosophers have held that the only thing that is bad in itself is pain. Nothing else can count as bad except to the extent that it gives rise to pain. But I wonder whether your suggestion (if I’m understanding it correctly) is closer to the truth. It’s not pain itself that is harmful; rather, when our bodies and minds are functioning properly, pain serves as a mechanism by which we are alerted to genuinely harmful conditions. Pain is, as it were, an alarm system that alerts us to the presence of harm, but does not itself constitute harm. To think otherwise is to mistake the menu for the meal. In fact, one might argue, in the ordinary case, the occurrence of pain is beneficial– it alerts us to genuine harm and makes it difficult for us to do anything else until we attend to and eliminate that harm. However, in some circumstances, our alarm system can get out of wack (as, for example, in the case of depression) and it can alert us to problems that don’t exist and prevent us from doing things that are genuinely beneficial to us.

So, to answer your question. On the understanding of pain that I describe above, pain does really affect us in the sense that it alerts us to harm, motivates us to action, and prevents us from doing other things until we respond to its demands. And in the ordinary case, it’s not simply an illusion or a trick. Rather it is a fairly reliable mechanism by which the mind helps to protect us against harm.

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