Suffering eliminativism

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Underlying almost everything I write is the idea that pain is very bad. What if I was wrong? What if the pain wasn’t so bad? What if the pain wasn’t so painful? Or at least, not so relevant? What if the pain wasn’t what it seems? Here I will briefly explore these ideas, which I call “suffering eliminativism,” mentioning the best arguments I can find.

I want to gather here the best arguments in favor of the eliminativism of suffering. What do I mean by “eliminativism” of suffering? It is the idea that suffering does not exist (strong or strict version) or at least, it is not what it seems (weak version). In this weak version I also include ideas like “it’s not that relevant” or “it’s not that big of a deal” or “it’s not as bad as it seems.”

But let’s start first with other more intuitive eliminativisms:

• Consciousness eliminativism: consciousness does not exist, or at least, it is not what it seems.
• Identity eliminativism: identity does not exist, or at least, it is not what it seems.
• Sentience eliminativism: sentience does not exist, or at least, it is not what it seems.
• Pleasure eliminativism: pleasure does not exist (strong version), or at least, it is not what it seems (weak version).
• Pain eliminativism / Suffering eliminativism: pain / suffering does not exist (strong or strict version), or at least, it is not what it seems (weak version), or at least, pain is not so painful (pain is not so bad), or it’s not that relevant.

The eliminativism of consciousness and identity are very reasonable, at least in their weak version.

The strong version can also be defended with some ease as long as the difference between “what it seems” and “what it is” is so great that it justifies saying simply “that does not exist”.

For example, a cloud in the sky may look like a dog, but there is such a big difference between what it looks like (a dog) and what it is (a cloud), that it may be more appropriate to say “that dog in the sky does not exist” than to say “that dog in the sky is not what it seems”. Perhaps the most accurate expression in this case was: “it seems like there is a dog in the sky but what is really happening is something totally different”. Analogously:

• Consciousness seems to exist, but what is really happening is something totally different.
• Identity seems to exist, but what is really happening is something totally different.
• Sentience seems to exist, but what is really happening is something totally different.
• Pleasure seems to exist, but what is really happening is something totally different.
• Pain seems to exist, but what is really happening is something totally different.

Identity eliminativism

Identity is not what it seems because surely closed individualism does not exist and instead open and empty individualism does exist.

Consciousness eliminativism

Maybe consciousness is nothing more than recursiveness, and what matters here is sentience: being able to feel positive or negative things. Pleasure and pain. Satisfaction and suffering. Let’s go with it!

Sentience eliminativism

Jacy Reese Anthis from Sentience Institute can be considered a sentience eliminativist. In his opinion, neither pleasure nor pain are what they seem.

Eliezer Yudkowsky mentions (somehow) that pigs don’t feel. I understand (translate) this idea as the idea that pigs do not have a sufficiently developed identity to feel pain beyond Open Individualism. That is, I understand that EY does not deny that there is suffering when a pig is castrated without anesthesia (as 77% of the pigs in the European Union). Instead, what I think EY denies is that this suffering is linked to the pig’s “self” (perhaps, because the pig, in EY’s opinion, is not developed enough to have a “self”). But suffering exists. Since it is not linked to anyone, we could speak of a platonic suffering or that typical of Open Individualism.

Pleasure eliminativism

There are authors who believe that pleasure does not exist, but that there is a wide range of different kind of pains (Jose Antonio Jauregui in “El ordenador Cerebral”).

I consider that pleasure does not exist, at least it is not what it seems, since it is not relevant. This is not a foundational, ontological assertion, but an empirical one. I do not believe that pleasure cannot exist and motivate, but rather that the sentient beings we know have been produced by evolution in such a way that pleasure is irrelevant or almost irrelevant. Suffering may also be motivationally irrelevant.

In my opinion, the eliminativism of pleasure does not impede the project of David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative, since pleasure is not limited by essential but circumstantial conditions. The absence of pleasure is not an ontological or foundational problem but an accidental one, a consequence of the current state of the dominant forces in our universe.

By the way, pleasure eliminativism can help us quit smoking.

Pain eliminativism as “Pain is not that important”

Positive Utilitarians and chronic optimists such as Giego Caleiro or Mati Roy, value the positive in positive experiences, but they do not value (barely) the negative in negative experiences. In a very similar way, the champions of immortality such as the aforementioned Mati Roy, José Cordeiro, David Wood and Anders Sandberg are perfectly aware that in an indefinite period of time the probability of suffering all types of negative experiences increases overwhelmingly and yet they face this expectation with the optimism of a positive utilitarian.

There is a resource we can call “the right attitude on a roller coaster.” Once riding a roller coaster, if the dizzying falls make us panic, it is much worse to lean back trying to avoid the inevitable, trying to stop what we cannot stop. The correct posture while speeding down a roller coaster is leaning forward, as if we wanted to go even faster. In this way, something unpleasant literally becomes pleasant.

This way of approaching the problem of suffering (“the right attitude on a roller coaster”) may be the most successful in the face of what we cannot change and may explain the success of chronic optimism.

Pain eliminativism in the form “Pain is not what it seems”

Robert Anson Heinlein proposes in one of his novels (Time Enough for Love?) an anesthesia that does not eliminate pain, but the memory of pain. Could it always be like this in some way? Is pain always the memory of pain? If that were true, perhaps pain does not exist, or at least, most certainly, pain would not be what it seems.

Paneudaimonia is the idea that the whole universe is absolute pleasure, except in the domain of what we know as sentient beings, in which all experiences imply different types of suffering. This is a very particular interpretation of the nature of suffering. If true, this would change our perception of what pain is and its implications (pain would be identified with life, with identity different from the rest; and pleasure would be identified with death and the absence of identity separate from the rest).

Shinzen Young, considers something like “equanimity allows one to experience even extreme pain without suffering”. Furthermore, Aatu Koskensilta suspects there is a (paradoxical) tendency not to accept pain, as some sort of existential or ethical claim, so that it feels like one is betraying oneself by not being sufficiently upset about it all in a way that is actually harmful.

The most original and brilliant argument I know to defend the eliminativism of suffering was written, as I remember, by Facundo Cesa who wrote (I quote from memory): If you take away […] (and here he mentioned, as I remember, among others, preferences and the impulse to survive)” the pain does not “hurt.”

Unfortunately, that text was lost. What I remember is an explanation in which he said something like the following (I am referring to the underlying idea, not the words nor examples): Pain is a motivation mechanism that arises when faced with the risk of losing a useful or essential functionality for the survival of the individual or for its reproduction. If we could remove all those evolutionarily negative components from the pain of an event, if all those negative future considerations for that individual did not exist, the pain does not “hurt.”

In fact, it could be the other way around: a small “pain” (like the prick of a needle) or even a big pain (like being crushed to death) could be interpreted in a positive, very positive – evolutionary – way. For example, the injection with the very expensive and very exclusive medicine that will save our life, or dying crushed while protecting our children knowing that thanks to our sacrifice, they will surely preserve their lives. These two events could be interpreted in our brain as even pleasurable (evidently, the case of the needle with the miracle medicine will be easier to imagine).

Pain eliminativism as “Pain is not so bad”

The following testimonies refer to intense painful experiences. In all of them, functionality with evolutionary criteria is prioritized before pain relief.

• When I ruptured my eardrum jumping into the pool, my obsession was not to relieve the terrible pain, but to get out of the water as soon as possible, lest the intense pain would cause me to faint and drown.
• When I suffered testicular torsion while driving, I only thought about getting to the hospital as soon as possible, not to relieve the pain, but to fix it. If they had simply offered me an anesthetic, I would have refused it. I think so. With or without anesthesia, what I wanted was to solve that problem.
• The following testimony provides nuances to the idea of ​​”unbearable” suffering. When I said that “the pain in my back was so unbearable that I couldn’t move” I wasn’t referring to the fact that my pain as an experience was especially intense (although it was; it was very acute), but rather that the pain made it impossible for me to make a certain movement. I tried to make the movement (because I was trying to get out of the car), but then a whiplash of pain came, the pain dominated my will, and the movement was inhibited. The only way I could get out of the car was by crawling on the ground. I would have liked to do it in a more dignified way, even with greater pain, but my body simply did not obey. In that sense the pain was “unbearable”: not because it was horrible, but because the body did not obey my orders.
• Many of us may have experienced a small or large trauma when learning about the intense and horrible suffering experienced by someone with whom we empathize, even if we do not know them at all. For example, when reading terrible news. These traumas can affect me a lot and I have not found any really good mechanism to alleviate them, except one, which is terrible and nauseating: every time the knowledge of suffering has come to me, but this time of magnitude greater than the previous one, this New knowledge creates a new trauma for me, yes, but the previous trauma disappears. Somehow, the previous terrible suffering becomes “horrible, yes, but not that bad” when compared to another of greater magnitude. Since there is nothing to ensure that this abhorrent progression cannot continue, any suffering can always be classified as “horrible, yes, but not that bad.”

Pain without risk to survival or reproduction?

It is difficult to find examples of situations in which there is pain or suffering in general, and that does not pose a risk to integrity and, ultimately, to survival or reproduction. Possibly because pain is a mechanism closely associated with maximizing survival and reproduction. As Facundo Cesa mentions in “Why does pain hurt so much?“:

“Our genes do not care about us. They do not want us to be happy, because we are not machines of happiness but machines of replicating genes (the same applies to the acquisition of precise and reliable knowledge, and that is why we need the Scientific Method to be able to acquire knowledge DESPITE the fact that we are irrational monkeys who fall in love with their ideas and don’t want to let go of them even when they don’t fit the facts.) That’s why we are capable of suffering from loneliness, from lack of sex, from lack of status, or from anything that in our evolutionary past was a causal antecedent of reproductive difficulties (in other words, each form of suffering is functional for the replication of the genes that program that form of suffering, since it results in its copy). The same goes for pain (which is a type of suffering, such as sadness, disgust, shame, etc.): it signals things that in our evolutionary past were causal antecedents of reproductive difficulties. For example, ignoring what hurts us (or the wounds themselves) used to be a causal antecedent of fatal infections, and it turns out that dying is generally a serious impediment to reproduction. In this functional light of pain, the reason for the magnitude of the pain caused by a blow to the testicles is very clear.”

That is, the origin of physical pain is closely linked to the interests of genes. If we could remove that negative component from physical pain from the point of view of the evolutionary criterion of survival and reproduction, we might be surprised that said pain “doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”

Other eliminativisms

• Eliminativism of objective reality: objective reality (out there) does not exist, or at least, it is not what it seems.
• Eliminativism of moral reality or moral realism: moral reality (out there) does not exist, or at least, it is not what it seems.