Martian pain

There are, Kim says, two possible responses to the availability problem reduction to a disjunctive property or local reductions. Kim thinks there are reasons for dismissing the disjunctive move. It (or, strictly speaking, a move closely resembling it) is my preferred solution, so I ll defer discussion of Kim s objections until 1 present my own view. 1 want to concentrate at this point on Kim s discussion of local reductions. The idea here, similar to David Lewis s in Mad Pain and Martian Pain, is to eliminate a multiply realizable property in favor of a set of species- or structure-relative properties, each of which can be identified with an appropriate realizer property. Thus, while we can have no reduction of pain, per se, we can reduce pain-for-humans, pain-for-Martians, pain-for-cyborgs, and so forth. 

Since he held that (assuming brain state B has causal role R) M = B, Lewis is often said to be a physicalist — including by Lewis himself (prior to Mad Pain and Martian Pain [1980], which advocates a mixtute of functionalism and physicalism). And since he accepted a priori causal role analyses of mental state terms, he is often considered a functionalist. Some... 

Suppose there could be prosthetic C-fibers, perhaps made of silicon, and that the stimulation of these can realize pain in essentially the same way, whatever that is, that the stimulation of C-fibers can. Stimulation of these would not activate an accurate natural C-fiber-stimulation detector, though it would activate some other sort of device. We can suppose that in a case where pain is realized in natural C-fiber stimulation and in a case where pain is realized in prosthetic C-fiber stimulation, the cores of the pain instance realizers are states of affairs of the same sort. The properties involved in these states of affairs are functional ones shared by natural C fibers and prosthetic ones. This is not, of course, to say that the cores of all pain instance realizers are states of affairs of the same sort. If, as David Lewis imagined, Martian pain is realized in the inflation of tiny cavities in the feet, the cores of Martian pain instance realizers will be very different from the cores of human pain instance realizers. But it is compatible with this that in any particular case of pain instantiation, the instance of pain has a realizer whose core is different from, though part of, the core of the realizer of the instance of the physical property that is the property realizer of the pain. In our case, the core of the realizer of the pain instance is different from, though part of, the core of the realizer of the C-fiber-stimulation instance. 

Lewis, D. (1980). Mad pain and Martian pain. In N. Block, ed., Reading in the Philosophy ofPsycholoQt, Vol. t. Harvard University Press. 

State that occupies the characteristic causal role of pain for the appropriate population. This account leads to problems of a very weird technical sort — for example, what to say about someone who is Mad, Martian, and different from others in the population. But there is no need to go into these issues here. Lewis says that maybe the Madman is in pain in one sense of the term pain, whereas the Martian is in pain in another sense of the term, but he also states unequivocally that the theory is meant to be a theory of the phenomenal character of experience. It is unclear whether what it is like to be the Madman is the same as what it is like to be the Martian. Perhaps Lewis would have rejected interpersonal comparisons of this sort (Stalnaker, 1999). 

Sharp pains administered at random intervals cause anxiety reactions. Suppose this generalization has been well confirmed for humans. Should we expect on that basis that it will hold also for Martians whose psychology is implemented (we assume) by a vastly different physical mechanism ... The reason the law is true for humans is due to the way the human brain is wired the Martians have a brain with a different wiring plan, and we certainly should not expect the regularity to hold for them just because it does for humans. .. Pains cause anxiety reactions may turn out to possess no more unity as a scientific law than does Jade is green. (Kim, 1992, p. 16)... 

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