Pleasure and Pain According to Samuel Guttenplan
Pleasure and Pain According to Samuel Guttenplan
Pleasure and pain are usually thought of as contrasting pairs. They are opposites of each other because one is considered to be good and the other bad. They are a pair because they represent two extremes on the same scale. Samuel Guttenplan speaks of pain as being an unpleasant sensation that is felt in a particular location within the body. He makes no definition for pleasure, but he agrees that the two are compared to one another. Nevertheless, in his classification, Guttenplan places pain and pleasure differently along the five dimensions of accessibility, observability, expressibility, directionality, and theoreticity he identifies. I advocate that there should be no such differences in the classification of pleasure and pain. They need to be placed in the exact same area on the map of the mind.
Guttenplan states that pleasure is an emotion because it is not as close to a bodily sensation as pain is. By the same reasoning he classifies pain as an experience. However, he does make it clear that he does not mean that pleasure can never describe bodily sensations or that pain is never a sorrowful emotion. His placement decision comes from the idea that pain is normally considered to be a sensation, and pleasure is normally thought of in terms of emotions. I feel that the difference depends only on whether or not pain and pleasure are mental or physical. For instance, mental pain or pleasure are emotional because they happen in the mind usually with due cause from an external force. They are easily considered emotions because they deal with feelings. Likewise, physical pain and pleasures are bodily sensations because they happen to the outside of the body. These sensations are also due to external forces.
For example, when a person falls down they feel pain and may cry. When this same person is pleased by food they feel pleasure and will probably smile. The physical actions put pressure on the outside of the body, and cause them to feel and appear physically altered. The feelings of physical pleasure or pain come during the action, and may last longer, but they never come before it. In contrast, when a person feels emotional pain and pleasure they often times do so before hand. Usually their feelings are hurt or they are very excited about something. This mental sensation is one that can also be felt during or after the causal factor. It is true that physical pain or pleasure could lead to emotional turmoil, but just because something causes something else it does not mean those two things are equal.
Mental traits are categorized by Guttenplan according to five characteristic qualities. These qualities weigh differently on the different traits of the mind. The accessibility of a trait depends upon whether or not it can be noticed only by the person having the trait. Observability is related to how well people outside can see, or otherwise perceive, the trait. The expressibility of a trait is totally dependent on whether or not the trait can be conveyed in words to another. The directionality of something depends on whether or not it is about or for some