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Is Pain Necessary?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roland Puccetti
Roland Puccetti
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Extract

Many writers have been struck by what Ronald Melzack, a leading investigator of pain mechanisms, calls the ‘puzzle’ of pain. Thus the surgeon Leriche, often quoted in this connection, says:

Defence reaction? Fortunate warning? But as a matter of fact the majority of illnesses, even the most serious, attack us without warning. Sickness is nearly always a drama in two acts, of which the first takes place, cunningly enough, in the dim silence of bur tissues, with the lights out, before the candles have been lit. When pain makes its appearance, we are almost in the second act…… Pain merely makes more distressing and sad a situation already long lost…… In fact, pain is always a baleful gift, which reduces the subject of it, and makes him more ill than he would be without it (pp. 22–23).

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 193 , July 1975 , pp. 259 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1975

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References

1 Melzack, R., The Puzzle of Pain (Penguin Science of Behaviour Series, 1973), Ch. 1.Google Scholar See also Sternbach, R. A., Pain: A Psychophysiological Analysis (N.Y.: Academic Press, 1968), Ch. VIII.Google Scholar

2 Leriche, R., The Surgery of Pain (Young, A., trans, and ed.) (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939).Google Scholar

3 Buytendijk, F. J. J., Pain: Its Modesand Functions (O'Shiel, E., trans.) (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1961).Google Scholar

4 See the review in Jewsbury, E. C. O., ‘Insensitivity to Pain’, Brain, 74, 1951, pp. 336–359.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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8 See Melzack, , op. cit, Ch. 3, for a review of pathological pain.Google Scholar

9 See, e.g., Melzack, R. and Wall, P. D. ‘Pain Mechanisms: a New Theory’, Science, 150, 1965, pp. 971–979CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Perl, E. R., ‘Is Pain a Specific Sensation?’, Journal of Psychiatric Research, 8, 1971, pp. 273–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 In their report Baxter, and Olszewski, , op. cit.Google Scholar, finding no abnormalities in the neuropathological material relating to Miss C., cautiously add: ‘We cannot, however, exclude the possibility that [her] defect is an anatomical one, but either submicroscopic or in terms of organization rather than structure’ (p. 392).

11 Feyerabend, P., ‘Mental Events and the Brain’, Journal of Philosophy, 60, 1963CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Borst, C. V. (ed.), The Mind-Brain Identity Theory (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 140–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Rorty, R., ‘Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories’, Review of Metaphysics, 19, 1965Google Scholar reprinted in Borst, , op. cit., pp. 182–213.Google Scholar

13 Armstrong, D. M., ‘Epistemological Foundations for a Materialist Theory of Mind’, Philosophy of Science, 40, 1973, pp. 178–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Perl, E. R., op. cit., 1971.Google Scholar

15 Jerison, N. J., Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence (New York and London: Academic Press, 1973), Chapters 1, 12 and 17.Google Scholar