Objective Suffering: What Is It? What Could It Be?
Tyler Tate, MD, MA, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
There is an ongoing conversation in medicine and medical ethics regarding the nature of suffering. This conversation revolves around the following question: what kind of thing, exactly, is suffering? Specifically, is suffering a subjective phenomenon—intrinsically linked to personhood, personal values, and lived experience—or an objective affair, amenable to universal criteria and existing as a mind-independent feature of the natural world? Notably, the implications of this determination are significant. If suffering is subjective, and therefore defined as an agent-dependent, 1st-person experience (potentially comparable to experiences like guilt or humiliation, which have both affective and cognitive dimensions) the kinds of creatures who can suffer are delimited. For example, worms probably cannot suffer, and neither can people who are sedated or in a coma. In addition, if suffering is subjective, no one can tell a person that they are suffering, or have special knowledge about the suffering of another individual. Indeed, within the subjective frame, challenges to 1st-person reports of suffering do not really make sense at all, since the buck of suffering stops with the experience of suffering (and attendant claim) itself. However, if suffering is an objective reality, and therefore not essentially tied to 1st-person experience or feelings, it changes the dynamic. If suffering is objective, then individuals can be deceived about their own suffering, just like someone can be deceived that they have a serious illness, are being slighted by a friend, or are the best painter in the art school. In addition, if suffering is objective, the proper modes of measurement and response to suffering change. If objective, suffering does not “resist articulation” as Arthur Frank has claimed.[i] In the objective frame, suffering is out “in the world.” Hence, objective suffering could, ostensibly, be studied empirically and addressed directly in the same way that a broken bone can be directly examined and fixed, a starving animal directly fed, or an unjust housing policy directly studied and remediated.
In this talk I will outline a method for constructing a theory of objective suffering. In so doing, I will also discuss why the ideas of pure subjective OR pure objective suffering are fundamentally incoherent (and point to other sources that argue this point at length). Moreover, I will attempt to show why any viable theory of suffering must, in fact, move beyond the confining dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity. This dichotomy is confining—as I will explore in the talk—insofar as it perpetuates a form of alienation between people who are suffering, and the world in which sufferers live, breath, and have their being. Notably, to accomplish these tasks I will draw heavily on Gustavo Gutiérrez's work on suffering in the book of Job , as well as the Buddhist concept of dukkah, i.e. "The Truth of Suffering," which is the first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths.
[i] Frank AW. Can we research suffering?. Qualitative Health Research. 2001;11(3):353-362, at 353. doi:10.1177/104973201129119154
In this talk I will outline a method for constructing a theory of objective suffering. In so doing, I will also discuss why the ideas of pure subjective OR pure objective suffering are fundamentally incoherent (and point to other sources that argue this point at length). Moreover, I will attempt to show why any viable theory of suffering must, in fact, move beyond the confining dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity. This dichotomy is confining—as I will explore in the talk—insofar as it perpetuates a form of alienation between people who are suffering, and the world in which sufferers live, breath, and have their being. Notably, to accomplish these tasks I will draw heavily on Gustavo Gutiérrez's work on suffering in the book of Job , as well as the Buddhist concept of dukkah, i.e. "The Truth of Suffering," which is the first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths.
[i] Frank AW. Can we research suffering?. Qualitative Health Research. 2001;11(3):353-362, at 353. doi:10.1177/104973201129119154