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Limits to Pain, Pleasure, Fear, Love....

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posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 07:41 PM
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Are there any limits to the extent of pain, pleasure, fear, hatred, love, and other physical sensations?

Can you be in such pain that it can get no worse?

Can you be so in love that no further love can be experienced?

Or are physical sensations just an infinite abyss, that you can go deeper and deeper into without ever reaching a blocking point?

I ask, because it relates directly to a theory of consciousness I am working on. My guess: there are no limits to human sensation. (That can be a very bad thing actually.) I am interested in any opinions on this, thanks.



posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 07:50 PM
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reply to post by Buck Division
 


Your avatar is more important than this question.



posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 07:55 PM
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Originally posted by SteveR
reply to post by Buck Division
 

Your avatar is more important than this question.


Okay. I will think about that. Interesting response. Thanks



posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 08:02 PM
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My guess would be that as humans we are somehow tuned to never experiencing more than we can "take".

If we surpass that limit my guess would furthermore be that we die. The body couldnt take it and would just quit functioning.

On a pure consciousness level or "as a spirit" Id guess that there is no limit to the bliss/love that can be experienced. There is however no pain because pain is a trait of the physical body.

Lots of guessing there, I know



posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 08:06 PM
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Originally posted by Buck Division
Are there any limits to the extent of pain, pleasure, fear, hatred, love, and other physical sensations?


If you believe these things are just physical sensations then they do have limits. There's such a pain in the physical sense that the body will give up its soul/spirit upon the next bit of pain. A person can die from pain.

Most disconserning for me is the false assumption that people believe "LOVE" to be a physical sensation. Though I've felt people know nothing of true love in general. This explains alot to me. I'd love to hear more on the assumption of this error.



posted on Jun, 3 2008 @ 08:07 PM
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Interesting question. Certainly we have all heard anecdotal tales of those who have 'died of a broken heart' and thought it to be a metaphor. However I have seen instances of similar occurrences in the animal kingdom. Of course, you would have to accept that 'despair' is amongst the sensations to which you refer.

I suppose the physical sensation limitation may be of a completely different nature, since nerve endings, and brain function are 'measurable' in scientific terms. But how can one measure 'love' or 'grief' or 'anger'?

I will follow this thread with a great deal of interest.



posted on Jun, 4 2008 @ 12:58 AM
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I recall watching a news segment a couple of years ago where a man had been in trapped in his vehicle after an accident. He was alone, and there wasn't anyone around to help. Furthermore, some of the fingers in his hand were caught and he couldn't dislodge them.

Anyway, he managed to cut off two or three of his fingers in order to free himself. I remember he said something to the effect, that his will to live overshadowed his fear of pain.

That said, I imagine everyone has their own personal threshold for pain. At some point perhaps endorphins kick in and places you in a semi-state of shock, or maybe a kind of passiveness to pain.



posted on Jun, 4 2008 @ 11:24 AM
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After further research, it appears there probably are, in fact, physical limits to sensation, controlled and bounded by something known as the Feigenbaum Constant (which appears to have main application in modeling turbulence of water going through a constricted pipe – an aspect of Chaos Theory.)


We conclude that a major function of consciousness may be to transform the nonlinear, irrational and difficult to predict dynamics of unconscious nature into the more linear, rational and predictable psychodynamics that make human experience and social life possible.


See The Feigenbaum Scenario as a Model of the Limits of Conscious Information Processing

The answer to my previous question really is an attempt to answer whether the conscious mind is infinite, or not. My thought was that, if sensations such as pain and pleasure and strong emotion did not have any limits, then that would indicate there existence outside of the human body (which is obviously limited and physical). I was thinking this might be a way to show that human consciousness exists in some other dimension rather than in 3-dimensional space.

This would point to the validity of ghosts, for example.

However, if there are limits and boundaries to sensation, it implies that those boundaries are the physical aspects of our body, of chemistry, of biology – of the tangible world. That doesn't disprove my idea, but it doesn't support it either.

#

I'm still working on it. Thanks for all the thoughtful replies to this thread. (What a team!) I will probably go back to this thread at a later date, after I've thought about this some more.

Edit: Just a postscript. Wouldn't it be really cool if -- you know -- the secrets to the mysterious nature of human consciousness could be uncovered here at ATS? I think there is a reasonable shot at this, actually.


[edit on 4-6-2008 by Buck Division]



posted on Jun, 4 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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In my experience, Buck....Pain can have almost no limit when it comes to conversion of said pain to pleasure and feelings of love...

In my experience, conversions of said pain and attain a certain tolerance to this pain can be dependent on the individual concerned, and how that individual equates pain with pleasure and so forth....

At least that is my personal experience of these things...

As far as love is concerned, I generally have not entangled the physical sensations of pain/pleasure with love...IMHO, this can be a dangerous thing, for many reasons which I wont detail here (U2U me and I might elaborate)..

However, as far as an abyss goes, I am not sure...To give you some background...I have practiced BD/SM for 20 yrs now, on both sides of the fence (give/take)


So my experiences with pleasure/pain and levels and depths people will put themselves thru are wide...

As I said tho, I have, nor do any of the partners I've had ( I think ??) have experience with an "Abyss" where one can go deeper and deeper without suffering ill effects....

Hope this helps...

Feel free to U2U me if you like Buck....This is an amazing thread....Thanks for posting


Peace



posted on Jun, 4 2008 @ 11:44 AM
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Originally posted by Buck Division
Or are physical sensations just an infinite abyss, that you can go deeper and deeper into without ever reaching a blocking point?

My guess: there are no limits to human sensation. (That can be a very bad thing actually.)


Correct in both instances, although everyone needs to come up for air at some point.

Otherwise we'd all be little more than animals.




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