Letter to God

The reason it is subjective is the very same nervous system activity that is pain to one is not pain to another. That is not to say that some do not experience pain, all do, but that the perception of what is painful or the pain threshold is different for everyone. Further the scale represents a range between too cold and too hot. Both ends of the extreme spectrum are painful.

There are no idle thoughts.

I ask because the word god, at it's root means, that which is invoked. We seem to have a primary hard wired function to seek or call upon our good, ranging from the instinct for self preservation to the experience of gratitude.

 

Pain can be interpreted differently, making it 'subjective'
But not entirely.
Pain is also measurable. It is a message that is transferred through the body via electrical signals and switched to chemicals in the synapse.

I'm fairly confident that the physical existence of pain means pain could be viewed as an object.

And objects are at least somewhat objective.

Interesting.
Keep in mind I'm addressing the idea of a 'anthropomorphic creator deity',
Whether It's invoked by me, or if it's a concept put forth by others, still has:
metaphysical flaws, (i.e what created God)
Physical flaws (no evidence)
emotional flaws (why create suffering)
Philosophical flaws (Simpler explanations more likely to be true - such as nothing created the universe because there was nothing before the universe began or the universe created itself, and nothing created nothing)

Probably
Though I'm sure this would be a great conversation starter to a Buddhist =)

 

Your mental picture of pain production in the nervous system is mildly askew.
The sensation of pain is produced by the stimulation of certain nerve fibers, not by a specific "pain chemical"

Pain is initiated by stimulation of nociceptors in the peripheral nervous system, or by pathology, damage or malfunction in the peripheral or central nervous systems.

Most pain resolves promptly once the painful stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but sometimes pain persists despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body; and sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or pathology.

In pain science, thresholds are measured by gradually increasing the intensity of a stimulus such as electric current or heat applied to the body. The pain perception threshold is the point at which the stimulus begins to hurt, and the pain tolerance threshold is reached when the subject acts to stop the pain.

Differences in pain perception and tolerance thresholds are associated with, among other factors, ethnicity, genetics, and sex. People of Mediterranean origin report as painful some radiant heat intensities that northern Europeans describe as warmth, and Italian women tolerate less intense electric shock than Jewish or Native American women. Some individuals in all cultures have significantly higher than normal pain perception and tolerance thresholds. For instance, patients who experience painless heart attacks have higher pain thresholds for electric shock, muscle cramp and heat. Women have lower pain perception and tolerance thresholds than men, and this sex difference appears to apply to all ages, including newborn infants.

So, why use a model that has obvious serious flaws.

Every word we use has it's origin in an embodied sensation. In this sense god is an observable phenomena, the good or god leaning impulse of man. We are all inherently devoted to our good.

 

Pain still has an objective status in my mind due to a couple of things.

In this case, the nociceptors still transmit nerve signals whether they are in response to an observable stimuli or not.

We can then say that the nociceptor itself is the observable cause of pain.

I didn't say that. I said it was an electrical signal converted to a chemical signal at the nerve terminal.

In either form, it still has physical status.
meaning pain is really an object, making it objective.

As far as we know, it does have certain levels of subjectivity, I'm not contesting that.

However:
If pain was completely subjective, we could simply make it vanish simply by reinterpreting it as non-existent.
We wouldn't have any compassion or empathy. Those things wouldn't exist without pain, and they probably wouldn't need to.

well, I'm yet to discover a working model. there's even ethical problems, along with emotional, physical, metaphysical, and philosophical ones I mentioned. ----well at least with all models I have been able to conceive off. I'm working on it ^^

 

Okay.

Actually no,
Nociceptive pain is initiated by stimulation of peripheral nerve fibers that respond only to stimuli approaching or exceeding harmful intensity .
There are other types of pain reactions. There is no stimulus called pain.
Pain is a reaction to stimulus. So pain is the name of the reactive phenomena. In this sense only, could you say pain is an object.

An example of classification by cause distinguishes somatogenic pain, arising from a perturbation of the body, from psychogenic pain, arising from a perturbation of the mind: when a thorough physical exam fails to detect the cause of pain, it is assumed to be the product of psychic conflict or psychopathology. Somatogenic pain is divided into nociceptive, caused by activation of nociceptors and neuropathic, caused by pathology, damage or malfunction in the nervous system.

Pain is an important part of physical awareness but it's measure is in degrees of intensity and the same is true for pleasure and there is no difference between the two, save for relative intensity.

A small number of people suffer from congenital analgesia, congenital insensitivity to pain, a genetic disorder that puts these individuals at constant risk from the consequences of unrecognized injury or illness.

I just offered one. If we can identify the pain in us why not the god in us, both are wholly abstract absent their experiential conjugations.

 

Don't be so rude.

If you feel that you are demonstrating superior knowledge by correcting me on the finer details of neuroscience, all you are showing is that you are bad teacher.

All you stated was that nocicerceptors showed activity when pain occurs
(Nice copy and paste from Wikipedia btw)

You didn't mention psychogenic pain or somatogenic pain.

It's not my responsibility go and learn the finer details of neuroscience.

For one thing, it being a science, it depends on the objective nature of that which it studies. Empirical evidence, demonstrable, repeatable experiments, peer review, consensus and verifiable facts.
If pain was completely subjective, neuroscience would have nothing to say on pain at all.

Psychogenic pain could be an example of subjective pain.

I strongly doubt this and I believe you do to.

If someone suffering such pain could simply be told that 'it's in your head and you can stop it if you just intemperate it differently', it would have happened and there would be a cure

To someone experiencing pain, the idea of pain being subjective is nothing but twisting the blade. To suggest a simple reinterpretation could make it go away is rather insulting.
If you said "pain is abstract" to a person in pain, how it would sting them

And no, your model falls over as well.
God is invoked, yet equally as invoked is the idea that God isn't invoked.

 

I didn't mean to appear rude. The little thumbs down signal was inadvertent, I didn't know how to remove it. I can see that you are trying to get to something with the idea that pain is an object, although what that is I don't know.

No it is certainly not your responsibility to go and learn the finer details of neuroscience. I am not trying to trick you or dominate you in any way. I am wondering why you feel that pain being subjective represents some kind of offense to those that are in pain.

This is hardly what I said. To say an experience is subjective does not mean to imply that it is not real, that is a leap you are making all by yourself.

I am such a person, a person in pain, and pain waxes and wanes for variable reasons and something I find painful in one instance may not be painful in another even though it may be exactly the same stimulus. If you do not feel pain is abstract then show it to me. The mind is naturally abstract.

I posit that god is that which is invoked, that is, where our treasure is, there is our heart also. We are devoted to our good. Our good is our god and etymologically speaking, the words god and good are variants of each other.
There is no time that you prefer to invoke your bad.

 

I can get very emotional and aggressive...I'm sorry about that. I like your idea about god. ill have to think about it.

A friend reminded me the other day that universe means 'one-song'..
And I also like the saying 'the Aion is a child at play with colored balls'