Jean Didier Vincent, THE BIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS. Page 171 "We cannot follow the biological track and pass from physical to moral pain without uttering cretinous generalities."

GARY. C. MOORE:
I think ‘pain’ is an extremely key issue in Eliminatism, relevant no matter what you feel about eliminatism whatsoever. This quote shows the PRINCIPLE crux. The point of this article is that, in some fashion, pain is MOTIVATED by the afflicted person. But that it is somehow a ‘choice’ does not at all seem justified to state. Rather, it strikes at the very heart of the meaning of ‘motivation’ itself. How could ‘infallibility and intrinsic awfulness’ [Daniel Dennett] be . . . ‘motivated’? Is there a desire or need for ‘intrinsic awfulness’? What kind of need? Is it the same as the survival response to pain? But pain in both humans and animals can be shown abundantly to be motivationally adverse to survival. Let us go on.

JOHN:
At the link below I read some interesting material regarding pain experience in humans.

GARY.C. MOORE:
I could not pull up this website.

(This draft paper is mostly about philosophical arguments re the ontology of pain, it took some reading to find something neurological.) Some patients who have a frontal lobotomy report a different type of pain sensation. Intensity, the "hurtfulness" of the sensation appears to largely subside, even though perceptual acuity remains apparently fully intact. Patients with this operation report differing types of pain (throbbing, stabbing, etc,) but more as a sensation than distressful experience. Similiar to the other senses perhaps, although I feel there must be some distinguishing factor here.

The primary perceptual experience of pain undergoes a substantial affective change through the agency of the frontal lobes. Some paraplegics report, when feeling very angry, they did not have the normal accompanying 'visceral'responses and this changed the nature of their anger. No adrenalin I suppose.

GARY.C. MOORE:
Anyone know about adrenalin and paraplegics?

JOHN:
Affect then may be the effect of the whole of neural activity, not just some specific brain regions.

GARY.C. MOORE:
This is because of adrenalin/epinephrine?

JOHN:
I do not think that the above experience of pain is confined to such patients. In some circumstances it is possible for some people to not be overly bothered by intense pain and push on regardless, probably arising from a highly motivated state (frontal again) causing strong inhibition of distracting cues.

Is it an evolutionary accident that the frontal lobes are involved in pain 'management'?

GARY.C. MOORE:
That has to be soundly established first.

JOHN:
Perhaps evolutionary immaturity, our fresh young frontal lobes have not had enough time to deal with all this 'emotional stuff' that forms the foundations of our lives.

GARY.C. MOORE:
That would imply a foundation in language more than physiology.

JOHN:
So many suicides, so much emotional pain (often crying over spilt milk), rising depression. I have read of studies showing that people from differing cultures can have differing responses to painful incidents and events. How we deal with pain at the personal level is not entirely fixed and probably, at a young age anyway, there does exist considerable malleability in this regard.

GARY.C. MOORE:
From my experience it takes 4 to 8 times, or more, as much morphine/demerol to relax a tough 16 year old football player than a 40 year old ‘whinny’, ‘whimpy’ person who flinches at every prick or even pull or touch. Whether this supports his thesis or not though . . .

JOHN:
What is it the frontal lobes 'do' to this sensory information that makes it so distinctive from other sensory information and give it such urgency? After all, other senses can warn us of danger but do not create such internal distress in the process. Can other senses overwhelm us in like fashion(no evolutionary logic here)?

GARY.C. MOORE:
These are very interesting points.

John:
What of a possible association between the frontal lobes inability to correctly interpret or deal with pain and sociopathology? Is there any evidence suggesting that sociopaths have a differing pain mechanism? Do they as a rule have higher pain tolerance? Are they fascinated by pain because they do not experience and understand it the way most do?

From: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/archives/phil/papers/199807/199807018/doc.html/ pain. html

Draft paper by Murat Aydede, "Naturalism, Qualia, and Pain"

How can this theory [Gate Control Theory] explain reactive disassociation? Even on the basis of this rough and ready picture, it seems clear that, in reactive disassociation, the motivational-affective system somehow is not working properly -- it is impeded -- while the activity in the perceptual system remains intact.

GARY.C. MOORE:
This becomes here a question of what is health and what is disease. Is it beneficial to feel pain when one can do nothing about it? Does being able to do something about it change pain’s nature?

JOHN:
Although the incoming signals from the periphery are processed and properly registered as pain in the perceptual system, they either do not reach the motivational system or they do not produce their normal effects to activate it in the appropriate way. Indeed, during the 1970's as the effects of many different addictive drugs on brain structures were discovered, it became clear that most opium derivatives have direct effects on different structures of the limbic system and the midbrain with little or no effects on the cortex.[23] A bit later, it was also discovered the brain has its own opium-like substances (endorphins) and they are found mostly in the same structures (as well as in SG).

The case of lobotomy seems to be a little different: the operation is not performed directly on the limbic system. Instead, by cutting the connections between the limbic structures and the frontal lobes, the limbic system is deprived of a very rich source of input from the lobes. With the discovery of the unique role of the limbic system in emotional experiences, it has become possible to explain why seriously depressive patients do not care about their physical pains, if they happen to experience any. Similarly, in some cases of congenital insensitivity to pain, there is strong evidence that there is something wrong in the limbic systems of the patients.

GARY.C. MOORE:
Again these are very interesting points.

JOHN:
We need to delineate clearly what is suggested at the personal level by the account that the gate control theory gives for reactive disassociation, and make some consequences explicit. The literal interpretation of what is reported at the personal level by patients in disassociation cases, combined with its explanation at the sub-personal level by the best scientific theory of pain we have got so far, strongly suggests what I have said earlier; that the inner phenomenology of pain experiences is, contrary to what has been traditionally thought by folk psychology and by philosophers alike, we can distinguish at least two qualitative components of this complex phenomenology. What makes pain experiences hurt phenomenologically, that is, what makes them "disliked," is the working of the motivational system.

GARY.C. MOORE:
This is an extremely interesting point.

JOHN:
When in presence of noxious stimuli, it is deactivated by certain drugs or when it is isolated surgically from the perceptual or other higher systems as in the case of successful frontal lobotomy, the awful or hurtful qualitative aspect of pain seems to disappear. This is what is reported by morphine patients or by people who have undergone frontal lobotomy. These patients, however, often insist that what they feel is pain and that it is there as intensely as ever. This suggests that the inner identification and individuation of what is felt as pain and the perception of its intensity are components of the complex phenomenology of pain that should be kept distinct from the awful, hurting, or "disliked" character of pain (which seems to be what makes pains morally relevant). THE INNER IDENTIFICATION OF PAIN AND THE REGISTRATION OF ITS INTENSITY SEEM TO BE THE JOB OF THE PERCEPTUAL SYSTEM.

As in the case of other sensory modalities, the site of sensory processing of the noxious stimuli is in the cerebral cortex, namely in the area called somato-sensory cortex.
(Indeed, morphine and lobotomy patients seem to have no difficulty detecting and conceptually distinguishing between shooting and throbbing pains, between burning and pricking pains, and so on.)

GARY.C. MOORE:
This is an EXTREMELY important point establishing qualitative differences that physicians go by to diagnose.