If CIPA patients are an extreme case of what’s good about pain, it seems their opposite might be useful for finding what’s bad about it. And indeed, I’d consider patients disabled by chronic pain to be the opposite of patients disabled by a lack of pain. Pain is good when it pushes us to do things which we regard as good for ourselves, such as “go eat a vegetable” or “stop putting weight on that broken limb”. For as much as “good” and “bad” have any meaning, then, isn’t pain “bad” when it pushes us to do things that we regard as bad for ourselves?
For instance, if I get a splinter under my fingernail, the pain from it tells me “don’t touch this area”, when actually the thing that I’d consider “good” for me is to get in there with a pair of tweezers and pull it out. If someone dislocates a joint, pain tells them “don’t let anybody move this”, whereas the intervention likeliest to accomplish the patient’s general goals is to have a medical professional move the joint in the particular (briefly even more painful) way that pops it back into place and makes it stop hurting. And experiencing an excess of mental or emotional pain can deter someone from seeking the sort of emotional assistance or support which would alleviate the pain and improve their life.
All such examples of detrimental pain that I can come up with seem to have the detriment revolving around short-term avoidance of pain inducing greater amounts of pain in the longer term. It seems, then, that the “bad” sort of pain could be framed as a cause of akrasia, in which pain is the force countering “strength of will” and winning.
If CIPA patients are an extreme case of what’s good about pain, it seems their opposite might be useful for finding what’s bad about it. And indeed, I’d consider patients disabled by chronic pain to be the opposite of patients disabled by a lack of pain. Pain is good when it pushes us to do things which we regard as good for ourselves, such as “go eat a vegetable” or “stop putting weight on that broken limb”. For as much as “good” and “bad” have any meaning, then, isn’t pain “bad” when it pushes us to do things that we regard as bad for ourselves?
For instance, if I get a splinter under my fingernail, the pain from it tells me “don’t touch this area”, when actually the thing that I’d consider “good” for me is to get in there with a pair of tweezers and pull it out. If someone dislocates a joint, pain tells them “don’t let anybody move this”, whereas the intervention likeliest to accomplish the patient’s general goals is to have a medical professional move the joint in the particular (briefly even more painful) way that pops it back into place and makes it stop hurting. And experiencing an excess of mental or emotional pain can deter someone from seeking the sort of emotional assistance or support which would alleviate the pain and improve their life.
All such examples of detrimental pain that I can come up with seem to have the detriment revolving around short-term avoidance of pain inducing greater amounts of pain in the longer term. It seems, then, that the “bad” sort of pain could be framed as a cause of akrasia, in which pain is the force countering “strength of will” and winning.