Topics Mind

Question In reference to question 1655: "How come pain is in the hand, an arm distance away, but the pain processing is in the brain? I don't feel my hand in the brain, I feel it at 40cms away from my eyes, on the keyboard." I'd have thought that there might have been some consideration in the response to the location of nerves in hand. We can have cuts, say, on parts of the body that are low in nerve density and have no feeling of pain at all. Or if the nerves are severed somehow, then there is no sensation or "projection by the brain" of the pain. Is not the nervous system an extension of the brain? It's made of the same material. Pain and throbbing in the hand is then located in the hand and of course acknowledged by and registered in the cortex for any subsequent actions that may be required. Would this mean a redefinition of "brain"? Perhaps some brain processing is more "distributed" in nature and an end to the "brains in a vat" models...

Accepted:
April 4, 2008

Comments

In some sense of course the nervous system is an extension of the brain, and precisely where one sets the boundary of the brain is somewhat arbitrary. However there is a point to distinguishing the function of the nerves in the hand that detect the damage in question - say, a cut - from the function of higher-level centers in the cortex that process the information and mediate responses (such as grabbing the hand, putting pressure on the cut, etc.). Rather than speak of "projection of the pain" by the brain, I would describe what's going on as the brain representing damage in the hand (that's the pain - it's represented as located in the hand) based upon the inputs received from the nerves in the hand. So long as the best explanation of cognitive and perceptual activity requires describing the mind/brain in terms of distinct faculties with distinct functions - and this is of course an empirical question, but I believe there is good reason to accept it - it would only undermine the explanatory project to treat all nervous tissue as just "part of the brain". The fact that the tissue is made of the same stuff doesn't automatically entail that it performs the same function.