Do Words Hurt?

reply to post by ottobot


But it is possible to be hungry and not be in pain. If in all instances hunger is not pain, then hunger cannot be pain. Hunger = pain is a false statement. Hunger is a type of physical suffering. Therefore Physical Suffering = pain is also false.

I would argue your example of hunger pains does not prove that hunger = pain, it proves that there is a correlation between hunger and pain in which pain can sometimes result from hunger, but they are two separate feelings.

reply to post by Wang Tang

I agree with you. Never did I state that hunger = pain. Just as I never stated sadness = pain.

However, for some people, both of these statements are true. For some people, these states (hunger and sadness) can be scientifically measured as pain because the neurological response is one of pain.

I posit that all pain (psychological or physiological) is subjective. This has been my stance all along.

Words can wound.
Bully's can just use semantics to claim the insults and hurtful words don't hurt depressed human beings .

Despite the resistance we all know that a thinking feeling depressed person is not the one who should take responsibility for the neural connections we have with bully's insulting hurtful words.

Its wrong to even spread the thought words don't hurt in this place and time. There are so many psychopaths & bullys out there that want to hear what you are telling them.
In the thread the hearer (depressed person) is viewed as responsible for the speakers words, weaker for not eliminating their unconscious (limbic system) connections to the insulting hurtful words.
Insulting others to their hatefulled minds means that they are stronger and superior human beings.

Do some human beings not know what is right anymore.

Actual Psychologically Induced Pain Syndromes

Ulcers used to be the # 1 chronic expression of psychologically induced pain. Medical science now knows that ulcers are caused, or worsened, by emotional stress. Once this fact was accepted by the general public, the frequency of ulcers decreased steadily year by year. Yes, the discovery of the link to H. pylori bacteria does exist, but this is only because the mind creates an environment in which the bacteria can thrive.

Back pain has become the latest, greatest (last 50 years) psychological pain syndrome. The incidence of chronic back pain has reached epidemic proportions. The reason is the success of the disguise. No one suspects that back ache could possibly be the result of a psychological process.

Angina is a common and highly recognized version of stress-related chest and heart pain. Heart palpitations sometimes accompany angina or arrhythmia. This is a particularly dangerous form of PIPS.

Repetitive strain injury is one of the most misdiagnosed and prevalent health crises today.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a psycho-emotional tormentor which enslaves affected patients with all-consuming rituals.

Chronic fatigue syndrome makes even the most basic physical and mental tasks nearly impossible to accomplish. Chronic fatigue is a very profitable niche in the healthcare sector.

Digestive tract sensitivity is an extremely common mindbody pain syndrome. Chronic diarrhea, constipation, gas, heartburn, nauseousness and Irritable bowel syndrome are all common effects. Many back pain sufferers also have one or more of these chronic symptoms that can last for years. Colitis is one of the worst GI disorders which may be linked to psychological issues.


Frequent urination can come from a wide range of psychological issues.

Plantar fasciitis and metatarsalgia are very common causes of foot pain.

Heel spurs are another scapegoat used to explain chronic foot symptoms.

Bruxism is an annoying and sometimes painful teeth grinding nuisance.

Torn rotator cuff is a common shoulder diagnosis which is typically blamed for enacting painful symptoms, when in reality, the condition may be coincidental.

A frozen shoulder is a frightening condition which may be caused by structural or ischemic reasons.

Impingement syndrome can result from physical or mindbody conditions which affect the shoulder joint.

Skin disorders can be mindbody problems. Adult acne, psoriasis, eczema, hives and rashes are all commonly caused by repressed psychological issues.

Sexual dysfunction is a general term for a variety of conditions affecting both men and women. Erectile dysfunction is a particular form of sexual problem affecting a large percentage of men.

Asthma is a condition that may revolve around psychological causation and certainly involves almost universal emotional escalation.

TMJ / temporomandibular joint disorder is an increasingly diagnosed condition that affects the jaw bone, jaw joints and jaw muscles. It has always been linked to stress, but rarely thought to be caused exclusively by a psychological process.

Trigeminal neuralgia is a facial nerve pain syndrome which is often linked to a psychosomatic source.

Carpal tunnel syndrome should be awarded second prize for most creative use of a psychological pain syndrome, right after back pain. People think this condition is common and comes from repetitive use of the hands and wrists (typing). Doctors have jumped all over this condition, especially with pharmaceutical relief and surgery. A majority of diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome cases actually involve a powerful, but harmless form of psychologically induced tendonitis. Read more about PIPS wrist pain.

Source

The actual list of conditions is much longer an above the standard 5000 words allowed for posting.

Any thoughts?

reply to post by BDBinc

Words can wound.
Bully's can just use semantics to claim the insults and hurtful words don't hurt depressed human beings .

Despite the resistance we all know that a thinking feeling depressed person is not the one who should take responsibility for the neural connections we have with bully's insulting hurtful words.

Its wrong to even spread the thought words don't hurt in this place and time. There are so many psychopaths & bullys out there that want to hear what you are telling them.

You're giving power to the bully saying words can hurt. You're making his weapons out to be sharp, when they're as light as a feather.

In the thread the hearer (depressed person) is viewed as responsible for the speakers words, weaker for not eliminating their unconscious (limbic system) connections to the insulting hurtful words.
Insulting others to their hatefulled minds means that they are stronger and superior human beings.

Do some human beings not know what is right anymore.

Malarky. This is a philosophical topic. No one's being hate-filled nor a bully. Remember, you're in a chair staring at a screen absolutely unharmed. Step away for a minute. If you don't wish to discuss this philosophically and with an open-mind, why even bother?

reply to post by ottobot

I posit that all pain (psychological or physiological) is subjective. This has been my stance all along.

I agree here. Could this be the crux of the issue?

Originally posted by BDBinc
Words can wound.
Bully's can just use semantics to claim the insults and hurtful words don't hurt depressed human beings .

Despite the resistance we all know that a thinking feeling depressed person is not the one who should take responsibility for the neural connections we have with bully's insulting hurtful words.

Its wrong to even spread the thought words don't hurt in this place and time. There are so many psychopaths & bullys out there that want to hear what you are telling them.
In the thread the hearer (depressed person) is viewed as responsible for the speakers words, weaker for not eliminating their unconscious (limbic system) connections to the insulting hurtful words.
Insulting others to their hatefulled minds means that they are stronger and superior human beings.

Do some human beings not know what is right anymore.

Not only do your posts contain bad grammar but they also have the highest concentration of logical fallacies I have seen in a very long time.

Bully's can just use semantics to claim the insults and hurtful words don't hurt depressed human beings .

Red Herring (distracting from the argument by bringing up an irrelevant issue): The fact that bullies use semantics is irrelevant to the validity of semantics. Hitler used Nietzsche's philosophy to justify his actions, does that make Nietzsche a Nazi?

Despite the resistance we all know that a thinking feeling depressed person is not the one who should take responsibility for the neural connections we have with bully's insulting hurtful words.

Bandwagon Fallacy (arguing for a point based on popularity rather than merit): You say "we all know that..." which is somehow supposed to make your argument more valid. Did everyone agree with Copernicus when he discovered the earth revolves around the sun?

Its wrong to even spread the thought words don't hurt in this place and time.

Presupposition (an implicit assumption as part of your argument): You baselessly claim the moral high ground saying it's wrong to spread the thought that words don't hurt.

There are so many psychopaths & bullys out there that want to hear what you are telling them.

Red Herring: The audience of my argument is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of my argument, another attempt to bring in irrelevant facts.

Insulting others to their hatefulled minds means that they are stronger and superior human beings.

??? Such bad grammar that I don't even know what you are trying to say.

Do some human beings not know what is right anymore.

Red Herring: Whether human beings know what is right or not is a moral issue, and has nothing to do with what we are arguing about.

Just a little hint in case the rest of this post didn't give you the hint, it is appreciated in the Philosophy/Psychology/Metaphysics forum that you have the ability to put together coherent, logical thoughts. Please look into this.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by ottobot

 

I posit that all pain (psychological or physiological) is subjective. This has been my stance all along.

I agree here. Could this be the crux of the issue?

It may be. I am trying to argue with an objective, scientific definition of pain, yet I also try to establish the limits of this objective definition based on my personal, subjective experiences with pain. The reason for this is science can tell us how pain works scientifically, and it can explain the function of pain, but it cannot tell us what pain feels like.

Part of the issue is no one has come up with a sufficient objective definition for pain, ever. I don't know if it's possible to define it. I do believe pain is an objective concept, but it is impossible to define it objectively unless everyone can agree on what it feels like. It seems we all have grown into different ideas of what pain feels like; some of us have a narrow view of pain (like me) and some of us have a very broad view of what pain is.

So I would argue it is not pain that is subjective, but our interpretations of what pain is that is subjective.

reply to post by Wang Tang

It may be. I am trying to argue with an objective, scientific definition of pain, yet I also try to establish the limits of this objective definition based on my personal, subjective experiences with pain. The reason for this is science can tell us how pain works scientifically, and it can explain the function of pain, but it cannot tell us what pain feels like.

Part of the issue is no one has come up with a sufficient objective definition for pain, ever. I don't know if it's possible to define it. I do believe pain is an objective concept, but it is impossible to define it objectively unless everyone can agree on what it feels like. It seems we all have grown into different ideas of what pain feels like; some of us have a narrow view of pain (like me) and some of us have a very broad view of what pain is.

So I would argue it is not pain that is subjective, but our interpretations of what pain is that is subjective.

Yes. I think you're right. And this heads straight into the problem of consciousness and qualia. The "what it is like" of pain, the "what it is like" to be in pain is a subjective notion. I can't know "what it is like" (Thomas Nagel's definition of consciousness) to be you and how you deal with pain and vice versa. We might even see colours entirely different. It is impossible to know either way. But I think we can all relate to some degree or another. We can all step on a nail and imagine quite reasonably that everyone else feels the same thing, although they might react quite differently.

Stress, worry, depression, fear, jealousy, envy, betrayal, shame—what I would think are examples of emotional or psychological pain—all seem to be the result of the contemplation of a personal situation. When I get stressed or worried, it is usually because I'm thinking about something and considering the implications of that situation. When I feel ashamed or embarrassed, it is because I am thinking about what I've done and how I will be viewed. When I become depressed, it's a combination of all these things combined with lack of sleep, lack of nutrition and lack of physical activity. In all cases, and even in cases of physical pain, it seems that it is the body simply reacting to the situation in more ways than we can capably imagine at this time.

If this is the case, then it would mean the body is one emotion rather than a plethora of different separate emotions. There is no pleasure or pain, but only the body reacting differently to different situations.

There was something I mentioned earlier. It had to do with how the unconscious was related to the parts of the brain that address autonomic functions. In the case of degenerative brain disorders the relevance of these parts of the brain become apparent, say in the case of Alzheimer’s. Once the disease spreads to those parts of the brain organs begin to fail, literally these parts of the brain can cause all kinds of issues to the body.

Further, in an earlier post I discussed. That when it comes to being insulted, the same parts of the brain that react to physical pain reacts to the insult. fMRI while today not necessarily good lie detectors can identify the reaction of the brain an in support of this issue.

Otherwise the issue would not presently be one.

Now with respect to the implied subjective nature of the human condition I would argue that the experience is completely objective.

Any thoughts?

PS:By "argue" I mean philosophically.

Malarky yourself.

Before you run off on yet another tangent you haven’t even bothered to tell us why or how insulting and hurtful words do not hurt the depressed victim of a bully.
You (& wang) now seem to think you are clever for hearing from another member that pain is subjective, BUT you now think it’s the “crux of the issue” (oh dear -here we go again) all the while forgetting that it is completely irrelevant the level of hurt , or that pain is subjective, its just that the words can hurt.
The thread was not how much hurt do words inflict person to person, just that they do.
You obviously don’t have knowledge of neurobiology and think the connections in the brain are just the topic of philosophy!
To support your thought that words don't hurt, I have watched you think about changing the meaning of words, remove the meanings from the words themselves, remove the biological process attached to the word meaning just to hold onto your thinking or your "philosophical" conclusion about neurobiology .
I repeat, understanding never hurts.

Lets be clear here.....

Clinically emotive responses can have physical effects.

Any thoughts?

Words, like anything else, only have as much power upon you as you allow them to have.It's really that simple. One of the biggest problems most people have is that they want to "read between the lines" and "fill in the blanks."

It's unfortunate that our psyches operate as they do. We can be "offended" by that which wasn't meant to offend. The bottom line is that no matter what ones says or does to us, we, individually, are the ones who are ultimately the determiner of how we feel.

reply to post by Kashai

Now with respect to the implied subjective nature of the human condition I would argue that the experience is completely objective.

I would agree that any situation is an objective experience.

Originally posted by Wang Tang
The reason for this is science can tell us how pain works scientifically, and it can explain the function of pain, but it cannot tell us what pain feels like.

When we get into "feel", we get into subjective because "feel" is an experience.

Part of the issue is no one has come up with a sufficient objective definition for pain, ever. I don't know if it's possible to define it. I do believe pain is an objective concept, but it is impossible to define it objectively unless everyone can agree on what it feels like. It seems we all have grown into different ideas of what pain feels like; some of us have a narrow view of pain (like me) and some of us have a very broad view of what pain is.

Well, this is what pain looks like in the brain - the subject claims to feel pain, this is what an objective machine sees as a result (click to enlarge):


That's as close to an objective definition as we're going to get. (Though, check out the Painometer project at Stanford.)

So I would argue it is not pain that is subjective, but our interpretations of what pain is that is subjective.

This is where we get into something called "nociceptive input". Essentially, this is a way to define the factors that cause the brain to process stimuli into pain.

I found an excellent article called Imaging Pain (British Journal of Anaesthesia) that goes into great detail about how the brain processes stimuli as pain. Here's a brief graphical representation:

reply to post by BDBinc

Before you run off on yet another tangent you haven’t even bothered to tell us why or how insulting and hurtful words do not hurt the depressed victim of a bully.

I said it many times, even in the OP. I said words are incapable of causing pain, meaning that they don't have any sort of force or power that can cause pain—no poison, no sharp edges, not blunt force trauma. This why the "insulting and hurtful words" (circular reasoning fallacy) do not hurt. I've offered my argument. You haven't defended against it. Why don't you explain how they do cause pain instead of simply saying "words hurt" over and over and over again.

The thread was not how much hurt do words inflict person to person, just that they do.
You obviously don’t have knowledge of neurobiology and think the connections in the brain are just the topic of philosophy!

You think words are endowed with some sort of supernatural magical property that gives them the power to hurt and physically alter something else. By all means, prove how this works in "neurobiology"...or anywhere outside of superstition for that matter.

To support your thought that words don't hurt, I have watched you think about changing the meaning of words, remove the meanings from the words themselves, remove the biological process attached to the word meaning just to hold onto your thinking or your "philosophical" conclusion about neurobiology .

I've watched you repeat over and over again that "words hurt" without offering anything to support your claim. All you can do is say "you obviously don't know neurobiology", "you're a bully", "you're wrong".

If you believe words don't hurt, why don't you show me how words hurt. It's all I'm asking.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

No, I have told you.
Now you tell all those depressed people who are bullied the children who verbally abused by hateful thoughts how words don't hurt them.
By all means keep using philosophy for the neurobiology of words meanings in the brain .

reply to post by BDBinc

No, I have told you.
Now you tell all those depressed people who are bullied the children who verbally abused by hateful thoughts how words don't hurt them.
By all means keep using philosophy for the neurobiology of words meanings in the brain .

So in other words you cannot prove it. That's all you had to say. Maybe the question should be: why do you believe something that cannot be proven? Superstitious?

reply to post by BDBinc


BDBinc, I have just had a revelation in which I realized the error of my ways... you are right about everything. I am a psychopathic bully and I have no feelings or emotional pain, but I want to become a better person. Please help me to become a good person. Please teach me what's right, I want to be better but I just don't know how.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Words, like anything else, only have as much power upon you as you allow them to have.It's really that simple. One of the biggest problems most people have is that they want to "read between the lines" and "fill in the blanks."It's unfortunate that our psyches operate as they do. We can be "offended" by that which wasn't meant to offend. The bottom line is that no matter what ones says or does to us, we, individually, are the ones who are ultimately the determiner of how we feel.

Self mastery and knowledge of the SELF is the ideal no doubt.
Why should one be suggesting advanced ( including the unconscious memories w neural connections) self mastery for the children and depressed human beings when it is clearly wrong to bully?
How do the children and depressed people get to feel masterful of themselves if the thought/philosophy is spread that bully’s words don’t hurt when they obviously do hurt them.
To me the idea is the opposite of self empowerment, its one of denying the bullys victim’s feelings(OP doesn't accept MRI scans and the victim' words describing their suffering as proof that words hurt them)
One of the biggest problems in bullying is not when people misunderstand one another as it is not misunderstandings when bullys use harmful words to inflict hurt onto the victim and bullying means to offend. In the online suicide cases the things bully's say are appalling.

I am glad you have self mastery of your mind but these bullied vulnerable people and children don’t.
If only 5% of the population had your total control and clean psyche .... but they don't. Knowing the self( then one can't harm oneself) being the obvious solution, but in this world "most of the fruit is not ripe"

So why keep denying the effect of thoughts communicated by words to feeling beings? It only helps the bully, it does not do anything to empower the bully’s victim, it just denys their feelings and makes the wrong the bully is doing seem like it’s the fault of the hearer of their thoughts.