Discover

'Mad Pain and Martian Pain' is a philosophical article written by David Lewis. The piece proposes the existence of two beings both in pain - one whose physical explanation of pain differs from ours and one whose reaction to pain differs from ours. Lewis implies that any complete theory of the mind should be able to explain how each being is in pain.
The being with "mad pain" is human like us. The primary difference is that when he is in pain, his mind turns to mathematics and he begins to snap his fingers. He is not at all inclined to prevent the pain from occurring. Lewis ultimately goes on to explain that pain is relative to a species, implying that the man who exhibits mad pain is essentially an exception.
A being with "martian pain" is one who subject to pain will react in the same way that we do. He is strongly inclined to prevent whatever stimulus is causing discomfort. However, the physical explanation to martian pain is different. He has a "hydraulic mind" and pain causes inflation of cavities in his feet.

Contents

Objections

See also

References

Objections

Some readers have a hard time visualizing mad pain as actual pain. What we perceive to be pain is far different from mad pain. There is no inclination to prevent mad pain from occurring, and to some, this proves that mad pain is actually not pain at all.

See also

★ Pain

★ Philosophy of the mind

★ David Kellogg Lewis

References

★ http://people.uleth.ca/~peter.alward/papers/MadMartianLewis.htm

★ Lewis, David. 1980. 'Mad pain and Martian pain', in ''Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology'', Vol. I. N. Block, ed., Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 216-222.