What a Pain

Shanahan (p. 228-229) disagrees with Lamme’s suggestion that recurrent processing is sufficient for phenomenal consciousness and introduces an interesting thought experiment to support the view that introspective reporting is very important. Suppose, he suggests, that a company develops a drug to relieve pain only at stage 4. In clinical trials patients report that the medication relieves pain. The FDA, however, refuses to license the drug because it does not affect level 3 processing which means that “pain is still present” (p. 229). This seems absurd. The point is fairly clear—the only relevant form of consciousness is found at stage 4.

Lamme’s reply to this is not very helpful. He wonders how much can be taken away from pain before it is no longer pain (p. 235). He suggests that we could take away the fear associated with pain, or the memories that accompany it, but, he says, “wouldn’t it still be pain?” (p. 235). He allows that when “enough has been stripped away, pain may turn into something categorically different, like an itch” (p. 235). He adds that this will go along with a change in the stage 3 representation (p. 235). He concludes that it is “all about context, about perceptual organization, about combining information” (p. 235). He compares it to viewing 600nm as either orange or red, noting that which color we see is a matter of lighting (p. 235).

This thought experiment is provocative and I do not think that Lamme’s reply fully addresses it. Are you still phenomenally experiencing pain if you are not aware of it? To me, this seems ridiculous. I asked several other people (very scientific methodology) and some of them suggested that, when one is taking a pain killer or Novocain, one is still in pain—it just can’t be felt while the medication is working. This sounds similar to Lamme’s claim. Indeed, anyone who has had dental work knows that one minute you may feel fine and the next you can be in agony which suggests the underlying pain cause is still present. This, to me, does not mean, however, that you are in pain. Pain is a potent phenomenal state that may or may not be causally linked to an underlying pathology. In many cases, the pain can be masked by a drug while the underlying pathology remains. If one is not actually experiencing the pain, though, it would be nonsensical to say one is in pain. In summary, if stage 3 processes register pain but one does not feel it, (this has not been shown but would be an interesting experiment) then it decisively shows that stage 3 processing is not relevant to phenomenal awareness. To suggest that one is in pain without feeling it, I believe, is certainly a case of philosophical chicanery.*


*Lamme could cite the Vuilleumier et al. (2001) experiment to show that in some cases of neglect, visual illusions “coming from the neglected hemifield still “work” to influence the percepts that are reported by the patient from the intact hemifield” (p. 211). This would support the claim that one can have phenomenology without access or reportability. It could be replied,