Types of suffering based on their uncertainty

Versión en Español

The following is a list of types of suffering organized according to their uncertainty.

1. Suffering well reported.

In this case, the suffering being is typically an adult human who survives to the negative experience and can describe it.

• Large burned; suffering by fires, plane crashes, explosions, bombings… (suffering by hot)
• Individuals suffering cold and freezing.
• Experimentation with human beings.
• Partial drowning.
• Physical torture.
• Psychological torture.
• Rape in adults.
• Irukandji jellyfish sting.
• Cluster headache.
• Trigeminal neuralgia.
• Conscious agony without palliative care (cancer, degenerative diseases…)
• Heart attacks and cardiovascular accidents.
• Depression.
• Psychological suffering due to the loss of a loved one.
• Psychological suffering of abandonment and separation type (emotional break in couples or between parents and children)
• Psychological suffering due to feeling guilty for having caused or not having been able to avoid the damage to a loved one.
• Another psychological suffering.
• Birth pain.

2. Suffering difficult to survey.

It is the case of suffering in non-human animals, very young humans, humans in oppressive situations, humans with some cognitive impairment, and humans who do not survive the experience of suffering, or for any other reason they cannot communicate it.

• Experimentation with non human animals.
• Suffering in fetuses, newborns and small kids.
• Suffering in girls and woman in cultures where they are almost properties.
• Suffering in young boys in some complicated family environments.
• Rape in small kids (not easy to survey)
• People being tortured and then killed.
• Individuals with cognitive impairment or dementia (not easy to survey)
• Individuals dying without palliative care.
• Individuals who die drowned.
• Individuals starved to death.
• Individuals who die burned.
• Individuals who die frozen.

3. Controversial suffering

It is about that suffering on which there is an important debate about whether or not it occurs, and if so, in what degree.

• Suffering in simple animals
  • Suffering in insects
  • Suffering in embryos
• Suffering in natural non-animal biological entities
  • Suffering in plants
• Suffering in artificial / manipulated biological substrates
  • Suffering in “Organoids” (small ball of cells grown in cell culture from stem cells; human stem cells for human organoids)
  • Suffering in “Chimeras” (creatures with some human brain cells and some non-human brain cells)
  • Suffering in “Ex vivo tissues” (for instance, human brain tissue kept alive outside the body). It’s not only about keeping just flat sheets of human brain cells alive in a dish, but keeping alive and studying larger and larger chunks of human brains, taken from neurosurgical discards or from the recently dead. There are even some efforts, so far only in non-humans, to keep whole brains from dead animals “alive” apart from their bodies (Antonio Regalado, Researchers Are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body, Technology Review (April 25, 2018)).
• Suffering on non-biological substrates
  • Suffering in machines (suffering in hardware)
  • Digital suffering (suffering in software) and in beings with diffuse or not well-defined boundaries, for those it is not very clear where each being begins and ends (in time as in space).

4. Speculative suffering

Possible suffering about which there is little evidence (usually, neither in favor nor against).

• Suffering on non-biological substrates
  • Suffering in atoms
• Suffering in abstractions or concepts
  • Suffering in systems (like ant hills or countries)
  • Suffering in ideas
• Other types of suffering according to other philosophical paradigms
  • Platonic suffering
  • Suffering according to Open Individualism and Empty Individualism.

 

Suggested further readings:

• Algonomy (or algoscience) is the name of a discipline for the systematic study of suffering, proposed by Robert Daoust. The Algosphere Alliance, launched by Robert and others in 2011 is an open and transparent global network of individuals and organizations, dedicated to alleviating suffering. The Algosphere has proposed several classification schemes for suffering. The website includes some interesting biographical notes about, among other things, the foundation of the Algosphere.

 

Suggested further actions:

• We are founding The Institute of Algonomy. Please contact us in you are interested.

 

Acknowledgments

• Thanks Michael D. Plant whose works motivated me to write this.