Single Idea 2584

[catalogued under 15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia]

Full Idea

After frontal lobotomies, patients typically report that they still have pains, though the pains no longer bother them.

Gist of Idea

Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain

Source

Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 83)

Book Reference

'The Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Beakley,B /Ludlow P [MIT 1992], p.83


A Reaction

I take this to be an endorsement of reductive physicalism, because what matters about pains is that they bother us, not how they feel, so frog pain could do the job, if it felt different from ours, but was disliked by the frog.

Related Idea

Idea 3360 Are pains pure qualia, or do they motivate? [Kim]