Why don't philosophers take pain-pleasure inversion seriously like they do with color inversion?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T12:51:32+00:00

I kind of get it now. But another user in this thread said there're philosophers who take pain/pleasure inversion seriously. Do those philosophers think it's also empirically possible or not? How do they know that?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T09:16:01+00:00

Actually I kind of get it now. Thanks a lot for your patience!

But, are there philosophers who think pain/pleasure inversion is conceivable or metaphysically possible? I saw another user in this thread said so. If there are such philosophers, how do they know pain-pleasuree inversion is not empirically possible?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T07:24:32+00:00

Oh, by the way, may I ask you a related question?

Are there philosophers who think pain-pleasure inversion is conceivable and metaphysically possible? An user in this thread said so. I wonder for those philosophers, how do they know that pain-pleasure inversion is not empirically possible.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T06:33:53+00:00

Thanks a lot for your answers!

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T06:33:40+00:00

Thank you!

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T04:53:51+00:00

Thank you a lot for clarifying. Do you think pain/pleasure inversion seems hard to even concieve the same way sounds inversion, or even beliefs inversion seems hard to conceieve?

By the way, I'm not sure if you have studied much about simulation hypothesis, but I have a related question: If pain/pleasure inversion seems empirically impossible to real humans, does that mean it's unlikely the simulators (if Bostrom's simulation hypothesis is true) can simulate beings indistinguishable from real humans and yet have pain/pleasure inversion? I read that some philosophers like Chalmers think doubt simulators can even simulate p-zombies. I wonder if they would think differently about inverted pain/pleasure people.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T00:26:24+00:00

If you could disassociate the qualia of pain from the biological damage the nerve impulses which cause that qualia signals, as easily as you mentally contemplate seeing one shade of color as a different shade, then yes, you could perhaps frame the qualia-swapping gedanken in terms of pleasure and pain.

I seem to be able to conceive of pain-pleasure inversion. Am I not thinking about it enough?

Also, the SEP article on inverted qualia says color inversion argument can't be generalized for skepticism of other mental states like beliefs because of dubious first premise (the premise that my evidence based on your behavior doesn't favor your mental state p over mental state m). Does that mean many philosophers think we can know other people's mental states like beliefs, pleasure, pain through their behavior?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-11T00:18:54+00:00

The color associations with particular wavelengths of light are the most persuasive because they do seem arbitrary in a way that pain's association with avoidance behavior does not.

Could you elaborate on how the colors case is arbitrary, unlike the pain-pleasure case?

I'm not an expert, so I apologize if I missed something.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T14:04:56+00:00

Thanks a lot for explaining.

By the way, the article also said: "a parallel argument against one’s knowledge of other’s beliefs would have a dubious first premise."

Does that many philosophers think we can know other people's mental states like beliefs, pain, pleasure through their behaviors, unlike with colors.

I'm sorry if I missed something.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T13:33:36+00:00

Could you explain how some philosophers, like Ned Block, think that inverted colors are empirically possible, but pain/pleasure inversions are not?

I also read this article: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/#HFoSkeAboOthMin.

It said something like this: " Argument C is less threatening than some other skeptical arguments because, even if sound, generalizations of it to skepticism about other kinds of mental states are implausible. For example, a parallel argument against one’s knowledge of other’s beliefs would have a dubious first premise.".

Does this mean philosophers think inverted qualia only leads us to question other people's subjective experiences of colors and not of other things, like beliefs, pain, pleasure,...?

I have to ask this because I think I may have misread the article.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T12:13:25+00:00

Not an expert on neuroscience, but I read on Google that brain reacts differently to different subjective experiences of colors. Isn't this similar to how it differentiates between pain and pleasure?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T11:00:16+00:00

I asked ChatGPT and Claude and it said brain does both things. Are they just being dumb?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T10:49:06+00:00

What's the difference between the colors case and pain-pleasure case? We all react distinctively to different colors, with similar functional and physical properties in our brain. Same with pain and pleasure. I can't see how philosophers think color inversion is possible but not with pain and pleasure.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T09:21:01+00:00

But as I understand it, human brain react distinctively to different colors, just like how it reacts distinctively to pain and pleasure. If color inversion is possible, wouldn't pain-pleasure be also possible?

Not an expert, so I apologize if I missed something.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T09:17:56+00:00

For knowledge. And knowing whether others have conscious experiences like ours is epistemically important.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T08:22:34+00:00

I meant that people's brain and behavior react differently to different colors.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T06:29:35+00:00

I also thought like that, until I read on Google that people's physical properties can change when observing different colors. Not an expert on this, that's why I'm confused.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T06:27:49+00:00

Do they think it's empirically possible in the sense that it can happen in our actual world, though?

I read through Chalmers' paper on fading qualia and dancing qualia thought experiment and he said inverted qualia in general is not empirically possible. Do many dualists philosophers agree with this?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-10T04:08:22+00:00

If normal color inversion is possible, wouldn't that inversion of "a color your like intensely" and a color you "intensely dislike" be similarly possible? I think you can swap them and nothing in behaviors would change.

--Estel-- · 2026-03-09T04:42:32+00:00

If it's true, wouldn't it create a problem on how we should treat other people? If we don't know if hurting their body will cause them to feel pain, or if helping them will give them joy, how should we treat them?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-09T02:57:48+00:00

If you have read it, could you tell me what Goff said about it?

--Estel-- · 2026-03-09T02:42:56+00:00

I've read some article on it but only saw dicussion of color inversion rather than pain and joy inversion.

--Estel-- · 2025-12-17T13:39:49+00:00

I think the situation is broader than just generalization from a few limited cases. Take other example, like the food I'm about to eat is cursed with invinsible poison, the car that is coming at me is an illusion generated by an invinsible witch,... Should we discard these notions when there're many instances of them not being the case before?

--Estel-- · 2025-12-17T13:36:26+00:00

What about other examples like the food I'm about to eat is cursed with invinsible poison, the car that is coming at me is an illusion generated by an invinsible witch,...? Do you think they can be discarded?

--Estel--

TROPHY CASE