About Kai Schreiber Expertise Mostly questions specific to vision science and eye movements, with some expertise in general neuroscience and cognitive science. Strongest background in mathematical theory, modelling and the theory of perception, but I will try to answer anything that comes my way.
Experience Postdoc in Vision/Oculomotor research.
Organizations UC Berkeley
Publications Journal of Vision, Nature, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Enginerring
Education/Credentials Dipl Phys (Universtität Tübingen), PhD (Physiology, Univeristy of Toronto), Graduate Program in Neuroscience (University of Toronto)
Expert: Kai Schreiber Date: 11/24/2007 Subject: brain and physical stress
Question Hi Dr. Schreiber, do you think that a mind is a necessary prerequisite to experiencing all pains? Because it seems to me that feeling "physical" pain (a wound, nausea, etc.) may be possible without a consciousness like when an organism detects an injury and tries to cope with it. I would tend to think that a consciousness is needed to feel things such as anxiety or terror but that feeling physical pain may be experienced by any kind of organism because all do react to damage.
Another question: would you tend to think that the concept of pain is more related to "an unpleasant experience" or "the detection of threat and the reaction to it"? Thank you and take your time :).
Regards.
Answer Hi Jack,
I'd say that it does depend on your defintion of what exactly pain is, whether or not it requires a conscious mind to exist. If by pain you mean noxious stimuli that an agent will try to escape, then I don't think a mind is needed. In fact, under that definition, a thermostat could be said to feel pain when the sensed temperature is too far off its target.
If pain, on the other hand, includes the sensation of it, as we know it, the unpleasantness, the loss of focus that goes along with it, the feeling of a strong urge to evade, and all the conscious phenomena we know to accompany it, then pretty clearly a mind capable of sensing and processing these is necessary. There might be more rudimentary versions of the pain percept, and certainly there will be a gradual increase from the thermostat, single cell organisms, small animals up to us humans.
The question of what an animal feels, and whether it is similar to what we feel, is currently not open to being asked in science. We know too little about how these feelings come about to actually know what we would need to look for in the animal. And any outward sign of discomfort and suffering could, at least in theory, be caused without any conscious sensation at all.
Which is not to say that I believe that at all. I think it's wise to err in the other direction, and assume conscious suffering even in cases where it might be less than likely to occur. But that is a question that leaves neuroscience and moves us into moral philosophy.
