Philosophy Now Forum

This is an amazing phenomena. Suppose that you burn your finger. Your nerves in your finger send signals to your brain. Your brain process the signals and produce feeling of pain in your finger. The interesting question is that your experience of pain is local. How such a thing is possible?

Of course it's local (confined to me)...you describe how it's local in your post (simply, I apprehend the world and I respond to the world).

I'd not be able to make any sense out of the idea that it could NOT be local. Even if something occurred everywhere, it would have location, first off--it would have every location, of course. Obviously, though, someone burning their finger doesn't occur everywhere. And it certainly doesn't occur nowhere. That would be incoherent, because after all, well, we're positing someone having an experience of burning their finger.

bahman wrote:This is an amazing phenomena. Suppose that you burn your finger. Your nerves in your finger send signals to your brain. Your brain process the signals and produce feeling of pain in your finger. The interesting question is that your experience of pain is local. How such a thing is possible?

Not sure I understand what the issue is? The nerves in your finger are your brain, it's all one CNS. The signal sent contains the location data which is why when fully processed the sensation of a pain is that of a pain in the finger.

bahman wrote:This is an amazing phenomena. Suppose that you burn your finger. Your nerves in your finger send signals to your brain. Your brain process the signals and produce feeling of pain in your finger. The interesting question is that your experience of pain is local. How such a thing is possible?

I used to have a great technique, of convincing myself that a burn in the finger has nothing to do with me because it is way over there in my finger and not where I am, in my head.
Try it some time. Pain is only a quale.

The brain signals where the injury location is. Phantom pain is still possible if the same nerve pathway is firing, though the limb is gone.

The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

bahman wrote:The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

The experience isn't located at your finger, but the injury is.

the event, the perception of said event, the interpretation of the perception of said event...

all that remains is a rapidly fading memory...

locality is merely another event

-Imp

bahman wrote:The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. ...

Then how do you know where the pain is?

Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

Pain is an interesting phenomenon but I think you should stop thinking of a 'brain' and more of a CNS.

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote: The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

The experience isn't located at your finger, but the injury is.

I know that. The brain fantastically simulate the pain such that it seems that pain is in the place of the injury. That is an amazing phenomena to me. Isn't it to you?

Arising_uk wrote:

bahman wrote: The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. ...

Then how do you know where the pain is?

The brain process the signals which receive from the finger such that so it seems that there is a pain in the place of injury.

"it's all one CNS"

Exactly. An organism, a whole, not a collection of parts.

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote: The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

The experience isn't located at your finger, but the injury is.

I know that. The brain fantastically simulate the pain such that it seems that pain is in the place of the injury. That is an amazing phenomena to me. Isn't it to you?

It's certainly handy that it works so well.

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote: The interesting point is that there is not any pain in finger. Pain is the result of process of signal received from the finger.

The experience isn't located at your finger, but the injury is.

I know that. The brain fantastically simulate the pain such that it seems that pain is in the place of the injury. That is an amazing phenomena to me. Isn't it to you?

To me it would be fantastic and a bit absurd if the brain located the pain anywhere other than at the injury. Of course that could be useful in public, if the injury was to the groin, and the person grabbed their head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zkIz6qLPwc