Saturday, May 3, 2008

Elizabeth Rhein-The Problem of Pain-Reading

In one section of this book by C. S. Lewis, he discusses the “pain” that animals feel. Lewis begins this section by saying that since animal pain is not in our realm of knowledge or understanding, we cannot assume that they actually do feel pain the way we would expect. This is an interesting idea because it seems that animals do feel pain, but I guess that since we are not exactly animals like that of a dog or gorilla, we do not completely know what pain is like for them. Lewis discusses this by saying that we are able to understand what the process of pain is. We understand that A will lead to B and then to C. This succession of known and expected events brings us to the understanding that we have a soul. It seems that animals unlike us do not have such abilities to understand the process of pain and therefore do not have souls like us. I guess it’s like saying I know what you’re going through to a friend when what they’re going through is something that you yourself has never experienced. I thought Lewis’ statement that we cannot understand animal pain because they are unable to deduct and do not have souls like humans was interesting and something I had never really even thought of before. I hope that they do understand pain, but more so, pleasure. I think that hearing a dog yelping means he is feeling pain, we just don’t understand how he is feeling the pain.

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