(March 14, 2013 at 1:46 pm)ronedee Wrote: Does anyone here feel there is any value to Pain & Suffering?
I suppose a case can be made for their being beneficial. Physical pain can help us to determine that we are injured and force us to seek medical attention. Other types of pain and suffering (emotional, mental, psychological) may be ways of coping with trauma that we might not otherwise be able to process all at once. Or it may be a teacher for future reference (ie, the emotional pain that results from not taking action when we should have; perhaps to end a bad relationship, for example).
By the same token, pain and suffering can have no intrinsic value. A person who suffers for years at the hands of a sadistic caretaker may turn the experience into something valuable (sharing the experiences in order to help others cope or resolve similar circumstances) but I wouldn't say that this makes the suffering valuable. It shows the value in human resilience, perhaps.
And that is also aside from pain or suffering that ends in death. The sufferer never sees a valuable consequence of their experience, even if one happens to result.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
