Physical Pleasure And Pain: The Centrality Of Consciousness

A non-rationalist could go their entire life without ever realizing that consciousness is epistemologically more foundational than anything having to do with the body because, even if it is brought into existence by neurological phenomena, it is directly experienced.  The mind is the seat of experience, without which there is no grasping of logical truths, no recollection, no visualization, no emotion, no desire, and no sensory perception.  These experiences could all be hypothetically had without a body.  The other way around is inherently impossible!   Mind is what allows for pleasure and pain.  The body can bring pleasures and pains of its own, yet these things are universally dependent on consciousness to exist in the first place.

Psychological pain can be so great that a person develops a headache, experiences muscle tension, and so on.  The former kind of pain is not the latter.  In this case, it can only lead to the latter, while the first could be present totally independent of the second.  One does not need to have any bodily injuries or sickness, internal or external, in order to feel pain of the mind.  Physical pain, such as that from a cut on a finger or a chronic condition like sciatica, can also lead to additional psychological pain in the form of something like emotional distress.  There are many possible kinds of pain that can be experienced, and pain of the body can incite pain of the mind and vice versa.  In each case, there is by necessity a mental component.

Pleasure of the body and mind have a similar relationship.  Physical pleasure such as that of a massage can lead to mental pleasure--for instance, a state of happiness that is deeply appealing.  There is, for those who actually choose to dwell on it, the more distinctively existential pleasure that something like sex can bring.  Nevertheless, pleasure can be experienced on a strictly mental level with no connected or causally central physical pleasure.  That which can come from embracing the intrinsic necessity of reason, the depths of introspection, or nostalgic memories is mental only.  A physical pleasure like comfortable clothing or a sensual kiss has bodily aspects and still could not be experienced except on a mental level.

All pleasure and pain are ultimately mental, while they sometimes have or could have physical factors that contributed.  A consciousness can experience either kind of mental state without any correlating or causally related state of the body, but nothing about the body, even a neutral condition featuring neither pleasure nor pain of any kind, can be perceived at all without the mind.  Furthermore, a nonexistent or blank, dreamless mind can partake in no pleasure or pain.  Consciousness is plainly more central than the body here. The only way to have the capacity for any experience at all is to exist as a consciousness and thus experience at least this much.  In these matters, it is the mind and not the body that is obviously most central.

Metaphysical idealism--where conscious existence and perception literally causes the presence of matter holds it in place--is at best unprovable, but there are objectively demonstrable ways that certain basic experiences like pleasure and pain all reduce down to the mind even if the body is secondarily involved.  Pleasure and pain cannot be illusions.  The simple perception of their presence, even if they seem to be triggered by a bodily state, would still be experienced no matter its true causal origin.  So much of the external world could be or could have been illusory, but one's own mental states cannot be misperceived as long as one makes no assumptions; they are directly experienced.  The likes of pleasure and pain always require a mind and not causal origination in the body, without the reverse being true.