[ExI] Circumcision

[William Flynn Wallace]

> Pain and suffering are different things: one is a sensory stimulus, the
> other is the aversive emotional reaction (which can be triggered by
non-pain
> stimuli too). anders

There are pain clinics that specialize in intractable pain.  They do not
use drugs, which of course have already been tried.  What they do is to
convince the person off the above - that they can feel the pain but not
suffer - a dissociation if you will.  The correlation between pain and
suffering is far from linear.

Most of you will be familiar with Lazarus Long of Heinlein fame.  When he
went in for rejuvenation they considered whether to remove certain
memories, so this idea is relatively old.

anders, as a consequentialist, I think you must argue that pain never
remembered and never causing any future harm is not per se wrong.  In fact,
pain now can mean learning to avoid dangerous things and so is a good
thing. A 'life of amnesiac bliss' would mean that a person would never
learn to avoid painful situations.  Surely circumcision has always been
done with a good result in mind, though intentions are irrelevant to some..

Now this may be more debatable:  should a person be subjected to capricious
pain and humiliation just because it has always been done that way?  I am
thinking of fraternity initiations.  I experienced it directly.  When the
national organization of lambda chi came down with instructions to
eliminate hazing, some ot the brothers objected strongly.  They thought
that if the new group did not go through what they went through that they
were not fully brothers in the frat.  I have seen informal initiations and
they were at times vicious.

bill w

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 4:54 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14 June 2016 at 21:25, Anders wrote:
> > Pain and suffering are different things: one is a sensory stimulus, the
> > other is the aversive emotional reaction (which can be triggered by
> non-pain
> > stimuli too). Pain is not bad in itself, but one can make a case that
> > suffering is something that is inherently bad.
> >
> > If one argues suffering is inherently bad, then even forgotten suffering
> is
> > a bad thing. At least it made the world worse when it was occurring.
> >
> > Remembered suffering is not obviously as bad as experiencing suffering:
> at
> > least pain cannot be remembered vividly (you don't flinch from
> remembering a
> > bad toothache or an injury, even though it is still unpleasant to
> remember -
> > compare that to remembering something truly disgusting: you feel similar
> > disgust again). Suffering, being a strong inducer of neural plasticity,
> can
> > of course change behavior and outlook in important ways. But not all such
> > changes are bad ones.
> >
> > So I would argue that instantaneous suffering matters morally. Just as
> > instantaneous pleasure does. However, the time-bound forms of suffering
> or
> > happiness have potential for *meaning*. That adds another dimension that
> can
> > be far more important. Living a life of amnesiac bliss might not be as
> good
> > as a long dramatic struggle to make the world better.
> >
>
>
> Remembered suffering = PTSD and that ruins lives.
>
> PTSD victims would welcome amnesia.
>
> BillK
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