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    “The Tyrant’s Headache” in Sci Phi Journal

    by Eric Schwitzgebel

    According to a broad class of materialist views, conscious experiences — such as the experience of pain — do not supervene on the local physical state of the being who is having those conscious experiences. Rather, they depend in part on the past evolutionary or learning history of the organism (Fred Dretske) or on what is “normal” for members of its group (David Lewis). These dependencies are not just causal but metaphysical: The very same (locally defined) brain state might be experienced as pain by one organism as as non-pain by another organism, in virtue of differences in the organisms’ past history or group membership, even if the two organisms are molecule-for-molecule identical at the moment in question.

    Donald Davidson’s Swampman example is typically used to make this point vivid: You visit a swamp. Lightning strikes, killing you. Simultaneously, through incredibly-low-odds freak quantum chance, a being who is molecule-for-molecule identical to you emerges from the swamp. Does this randomly-congealed Swampman, who lacks any learning history or evolutionary history, experience pain when it stubs its toe? Many people seem to have the hunch or intuition, that yes, it would; but any externalist who thinks that consciousness requires a history will have to say no. Dretske makes clear in his 1995 book that he is quite willing to accept this consequence. Swampman feels no pain.

    But Swampman cases are only the start of it!


    If pain depends, for example, on what is normal for your species, then one ought to be able to relieve a headache by altering your conspecifics — for example, by killing enough of them to change what is “normal” for your species: anaesthesia by genocide. And in general, any view that denies local supervenience while allowing the presence or absence of pain to depend on other currently ongoing events (rather than only on events in the past) should allow that there will be conditions under which one can end one’s own pain by changing other people even without any changes in one’s own locally-defined material configuration.

    To explore this issue further, I invented a tyrant with the headache, who will do anything to other people to end his headache, without changing any of his own relevant internally-defined brain states.

    “The Tyrant’s Headache” is a hybrid between a science fiction story and an extended philosophical thought experiment. It has just come out in Sci Phi Journal — a new journal that publishes both science fiction stories and philosophical essays about science fiction. The story/essay is behind a paywall for now ($3.99 at Amazon or Castalia House). But consider buying! Your $3.99 will support a very cool new journal, and it will get you, in addition to my chronicle of the Tyrant’s efforts to end his headache (also featuring David K. Lewis in magician’s robes), three philosophical essays about science fiction, eight science fiction stories that explore other philosophical themes, part of a continuing serial, and a review. $3.99 well spent, I hope, and dedicated to strengthening the bridge between science fiction and philosophy.

    [Cross-posted at The Splintered Mind]

    [See also Anaesthesia by Genocide, David Lewis, and a Materialistic Trilemma]

    (image source)

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    8 responses to ““The Tyrant’s Headache” in Sci Phi Journal”

    1. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      I guess I should pony up for the journal and read the story/article. But off the top of my head I’m not seeing how the dictator can help himself. Even if Lewis is right, and he manages to kill enough people so that the state he is in is no longer PAIN it will still be a state that has the same functional role as PAIN did before he killed everyone. He cant change the functional role of the state he has by killing other people. In fact, arguably he will be worse off, because now he will have a state that is just as unpleasant to him as PAIN was but it will be an instance of THE TENDENCY TO DO MATH PROBLEMS, and everyone will call him a madman and wonder why he kvetches so much about his TENDENCY TO DO MATH PROBLEMS.

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    2. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Ah, but he won’t kvetch, will he? And whether the experience would continue to be unpleasant is difficult to assess, if there really is no kvetching. I’m not sure Lewis’s view is detailed enough to have a specific commitment on that. Part of my project in the piece is to push on the view enough to make vivid how strange and sketchy it really is (which doesn’t imply false).

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    3. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      Hmmm. I dont see why he woudn’t kvetch. According to Lewis, the “madman” in present society has PAIN despite the fact that his behavior is a tendency to do math problems. I’m assuming what the dictator does is to kill everyone but the “madmen” in his society so that C-fiber stimulation (or whatever) becomes TENDENCY TO DO MATH PROBLEMS. But just as the madman used to exhibit their PAIN by doing math problems, the dictator will now exhibit his TENDENCY TO DO MATH PROBLEMS by kvetching. What am I missing?

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    4. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      As I read it, kvetching is part of the typical causal role of pain. Why wouldn’t it be? And the madman’s brain state does not at all occupy the typical causal role of pain. Lewis says that pain has no tendency to make the madman groan or writhe, and that he is not in the least motivated to prevent pain or get rid of it. Kvetching isn’t specifically mentioned, but I read the case as excluding it. Do you see something in the set-up that suggests otherwise?

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    5. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      OK. I can see that I really should have read the piece. The Tyrant IS a madman. I was assuming that the Tyrant was a “normal” person, and killed all the non-madmen so that his pain would become non-pain, while still having the causal role of what WE call pain. But now I gather that the Tyrant kills all the non-madmen so that his pain becomes non-pain, all the while maintaining whatever “nonstandard” causal role it had all along. That all makes sense. I had it backwards.
      But now the question is: why would the tyrant want to get rid of his pain if he was never kvetching about it? Wouldn’t wanting to get rid of it also be part of the typical causal role of pain? As much as kvetching is?

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    6. Charles Wolverton Avatar
      Charles Wolverton

      Hi, Eric (S) –
      Davidson describes the difference between his pre-lightning strike self and Swamp-Davidson as “psychological”. You seem to suggest that Dretske and Lewis might describe it as “metaphysical” and that some externalists attribute the difference to “consciousness”, The obvious problem is that those words aren’t defined precisely enough to allow one to immediately see how the difference might be explained in some detail. If one assumes – as I do – that history affects an organism only by contributing to the formation of context-dependent behavioral dispositions implemented as sensorimotor neuronal structures consequent to learning experiences (I assume Eric W’s “tendencies” refer to some similar concept), then I don’t see how there can be a difference since by hypothesis such structures that are present in Davidson are present in Swamp-Davidson as well. It seems that those who argue that there is a difference owe a similar speculation on how absence of a history gives rise to the difference they claim exists.
      I’m not sure I understand the scenario in your tyrant thought experiment. I assume that at some point the tyrant learns that he can get relief from his headaches by responding to them with some social context-altering action. In my preferred vocabulary, he forms a new behavioral disposition. (a change in brain state). But described like that, it seems just as reasonable to assume that once the disposition is in place, the relief is due to some emotional release attendant to executing the action as it is to assume that the relief is due to the altered social context consequent to the action. Am I missing something?

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    7. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Eric W., I’ve emailed you to continue discussion. The Tyrant starts out normal (at least on the effects-of-pain side), but there’s at least one phase in which he is “mad”. I can see now that my post was too brief and unclear for this complex story and set of issues — though hopefully the basic idea still comes through that if part of pain’s supervenience is current but non-local events, they some Tyrranical strategy for pain-relief ought to work.

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    8. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Charles: That seems right. I don’t think Lewis’s view fits those criteria, however. And Dretske’s view certainly does not. In his 1995 book, he gives exactly the kind of explanation you ask for at the end of the first paragraph (how successfully is another question). Basically: representational content depends on learning history and evolutionary history; consciousness depends on representational content. The kind of “dependence” here is not causal but metaphysical. Hence the Swampcases. On your second paragraph: Of course what you say is more intuitively reasonable. But the point of the example is to display that on Lewis’s and maybe Dretske’s views there would be pain relief even without such an intuitively reasonable mechanism for it.

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