Conjoined twins and pain

Wittgenstein once said that it may be possible for two different people to feel numerically the same pain. His example is that of conjoined twins (PI, SS 253). Consider two attached at the hip. They share a piece flesh joining their hips and associated nerve endings in that region of their bodies. A painful jab in that region should be felt by both twins since the associated nerve endings are shared. W uses this example to show that even something as private as pain is not inherently so. Many philosophers think that pain and other phenomenological experiences are by their very nature private but does W's example prove this view wrong?

It doesn't seem so if reductionism is true. For if pain is just some neuro-chemical activity in a region of the brain, say C1 of the somatosensory cortex, then since the twins have their own brains, they would experience their own pains. Even if reductionism is false, if mental properties like pain supervenes on physical properties such as brain regions and their associated neuro-chemical activities or those of entire neural networks, W's counter example still seems to fail. Consider a neural network composed of the nerve endings both twins share in the flesh connecting their hips together which we'll call N. N is attached to two different peripheral and central nervous systems. Each network only shares one region of overlap, namely, N, but are two different systems because they comprise different parts other than N. Overall activity in both systems would also be different.

So if pain is either reducible or supervenes on these different physical systems, they are not identical to each other.

To my mind, W does not deny the truth of either reductionism or mind-body supervenience. The only way to save W's "counter example" as far as I can see is if pain is severely localized to a single region of the body (where it is actually felt) but that seems highly implausible. Consider phantom limb pain where people feel pain where they once had limbs. People who experience this kind of pain experience it in their "phantom" limbs. The pain is thus "all in their heads." Alternatively, pain for these conjoined twins may be reduced or supervened on both their networks together. But that also seems unlikely.

My review of Epistemic Injustice

By Miranda Fricker here.

Beliefs and Aliefs

In this video between Eric Schwitzgebel and Tamar Gendler, we have Gendler arguing for her famed distinction between beliefs and aliefs. Schwitzgebel argues that the distinction if a false dichotomy and that real beliefs are too complex, nuanced, and that there are too many gray areas between Gendler's beliefs and her aliefs to be so analysed. I am convinced that Gendler's analysis is insightful and useful to epistemology. But Schwitzgebel does make some interesting points. One thought experiment that I thought up that may help his case is the following:

Regina is a scientist who knows all about zombies in her post apocalyptic zombie infested world. She has a sister whom she loves dearly called Clair. Clair is bitten by a zombie and will turn into one herself soon (as the virus causing zombihood is highly contagious). Regina knows all about this and knows (a fortiori believes) that Clair will turn to a zombie. Clair does and Regina is faced with a harrowing moment where her sister is coming after her to eat her brains. Regina can either shoot the zombie that was at one time her sister knowing full well that that is not her sister but a zombie. She is not not under a delusion nor is she suffering from any other form of psychological pathology but she can not shoot the zombie because of the zombies likeness to her sister. The zombie kills and eats Regina's brain.

When a dramatic example like this is given, it would seem to my intuitions (and I would imagine many others) that it is indeterminate whether Regina believes in a robust sense of the word whether her sister is a zombie even though Regina is a scientist of zombies and knows all about them.

Though Gendler's examples are cherry-picked or "idealized" in her own words (and this example does seem to show a cherry-picked example on the other extreme), I still think that the belief-alief distinction is insightful.

My review of In Praise of Blame

By George Sher here.

Here's a quick read: The Semantics of Murder

A murder mystery novel by Aifric Campbell loosely based on the life and death of Richard Montague famed for his Montague grammar. It's probably a weekend read. It isn't very deep but it's entertainment and a distraction if you need one.

Does backward time travel violate the conservation of energy?

The law of conservation of energy basically states:

the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time).

Now imagine that a time traveler, Welles, goes into his time machine at time t` in order to go back 50 years to time t. We can think of Welles as a bundle of particles with mass, or its equivalent, packet of energy, as special relativity suggests with a inertial reference frame. What happens to that energy packet after t`? The state of the universe before t` had a constant amount of energy but after t`, its total energy is less by the amount composed of Welles. The inertial reference frame which traced his path through spacetime simply ends (where it goes backward in time, perhaps "doubling back") before that time. Thus the total energy of the isolated system (the universe) after t` is less than the time before making the total energy of the universe not constant over time.

Now when Welles appears at t, the total energy of the universe would appear to be increased after t (but before t`) by the amount composing of Welles.

Angels and Demons

Imagine if a nation of psychopaths were to appear on some land. These people are anti-social to the extreme and are out to destroy the rest of the human race. They have no higher goal and they seem to be no convincing them against their evil ways. There may be ways of convincing them to renounce those ways but no one has yet to find a way to convince them. They have developed sophisticated war technologies and are about to wage war on the rest of Mankind. Mankind seems to have adequate ground to kill many of them in self-defense or to incapacitate or incarcerate the rest. They would have no justified moral grounds to complain against such treatment.

Now imagine a nation of angels, of perfectly moral beings that were to appear on some land. They have also developed very sophisticated war technologies but their reasoning for doing so is to protect themselves from attack from the rest of Mankind. What principled, non hypocritical grounds would we have against a proposal by them to kill and/or capture and incapacitate us?