On Oct 5, 2008, at 12:43 PM, GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
The point is in the phenomenology of pain - that it is experienced, possibly in the head (say if a tooth is being drilled) or it may be located elsewhere in the body - and for these purposes, being Cartesian or philosophical is not the point.
You're using "experienced" in a multivalent way. Do you intend to make me think that the pain *occurs* outside the brain (in the tooth or leg, e.g.)? Or do you mean to say that the experience of pain occurs by way of how the brain processes the sensory signals? You know, you cut your finger with a knife. Immediately, your finger sends *really urgent* neural signals to the brains saying "Alert. Dermis breached. Bleeding occurring," which your brain processes as "Kee-rist, that hurts!" and tells your eyes to look at your finger, tells your arm to flap back and forth, etc.
As I understand how anaesthesia (pain amelioratives) works, the medications work on the nervous system or brain to alter the responses to pain, either by altering or diminishing the neural signals or by changing the brain reactions (endorphins, serotonin uptake receptions, etc.).
