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Zeraph · 12-16-2005, 02:16 PM

I was thinking we could come up with more words for feelings and I decided to think about pain and in effect pleasure because of its seemingly false face.

By that I mean that pleasure and pain normally seem like a dichotomy, but I think it's a continous scale, or maybe not even that and not even a scale at all. Maybe there's just one or the other, if there's only pain, then less pain would seem like pleasure. How can we tell?

Off the top of my head I can think of several different kinds of pain, all distinct from each other. One is the type of pain you get with a headache, which is much different than a "sharp" pain from getting cut. One that seems even more different is the type of pain you get when you are normally active, but have been unable to exercise recently, and then the pain of exercising itself that still feels good in some way and then again after that, the pain of exhaustion where your joints and muscles ache but it feels so good.

A really really funny moment or joke can almost be described as a pain as well considering you feel the need to (laugh) repeatedly bellow until youre gasping for air, something that would be more akin to choking. You want to laugh so bad it hurts.

Or what about the pain that comes when you love someone so much?

Could pain and pleasure be the same, just in slightly different masks? Or are they completly seperate and not even on the same scale, both equally necessary for happiness?

If all of life is pain, how could we tell if we have no base to compare non pain to? What about other emotions like fear and anger? Can those be reduced to a certain type of pain? Can we reduce all of life's emotions to one thing...either lack of pain and pain, or pleasure and lack of pleasure? Do we need more words for unique emotions or less words to see the truth, that we really only feel one thing and it only varies in intensity?

For instance, perhaps all those emotions not normally directly associated with pain or pleasure are really cognitive devices that produce behavior. So you feel pain in one situation and become angry because the circumstances trigger a primal response that is what we think of as anger. But really you are just feeling pain in the category of anger which could just as easily be fear except for the situation.

12-16-2005, 02:16 PM	#1 (permalink)
Zeraph Banned Location: The Cosmos	On the nature of pain and emotions I was thinking we could come up with more words for feelings and I decided to think about pain and in effect pleasure because of its seemingly false face. By that I mean that pleasure and pain normally seem like a dichotomy, but I think it's a continous scale, or maybe not even that and not even a scale at all. Maybe there's just one or the other, if there's only pain, then less pain would seem like pleasure. How can we tell? Off the top of my head I can think of several different kinds of pain, all distinct from each other. One is the type of pain you get with a headache, which is much different than a "sharp" pain from getting cut. One that seems even more different is the type of pain you get when you are normally active, but have been unable to exercise recently, and then the pain of exercising itself that still feels good in some way and then again after that, the pain of exhaustion where your joints and muscles ache but it feels so good. A really really funny moment or joke can almost be described as a pain as well considering you feel the need to (laugh) repeatedly bellow until youre gasping for air, something that would be more akin to choking. You want to laugh so bad it hurts. Or what about the pain that comes when you love someone so much? Could pain and pleasure be the same, just in slightly different masks? Or are they completly seperate and not even on the same scale, both equally necessary for happiness? If all of life is pain, how could we tell if we have no base to compare non pain to? What about other emotions like fear and anger? Can those be reduced to a certain type of pain? Can we reduce all of life's emotions to one thing...either lack of pain and pain, or pleasure and lack of pleasure? Do we need more words for unique emotions or less words to see the truth, that we really only feel one thing and it only varies in intensity? For instance, perhaps all those emotions not normally directly associated with pain or pleasure are really cognitive devices that produce behavior. So you feel pain in one situation and become angry because the circumstances trigger a primal response that is what we think of as anger. But really you are just feeling pain in the category of anger which could just as easily be fear except for the situation.