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It's not just memory, the physical body also encodes trauma and stress (The Body Keeps the Score is a book that touches on this). I would argue that if a human

• JoshTriplett 12d ago
  > I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering. Just because you don't remember the suffering doesn't mean you didn't experience it in the moment. Suffering does not suddenly become okay if your mind and body are going to forget it. "It's okay to torture someone if their mind and body both won't remember it afterwards" sure is a take.
  • fwip 12d ago
    Perhaps off-topic, but there's some people who believe that this can be what happens during surgery under anesthesia, if the dosage is off. From what I understand, there's 3 parts to modern anesthesia: Blocking pain signals, preventing the formation of memories, and inducing paralysis of the major muscle groups. If the former is dialed in too weakly, it's possible that the patient is feeling pain, unable to do anything about it, but won't remember it at all when they wake up. (Looking it up now, it seems that making the patient unconscious is perhaps the same drug that prevents memory formation... I realize now I understand this less well than I thought I did.)
    • JoshTriplett 12d ago
      Relatedly, look at the concept of "twilight anesthesia".
    • pixl97 12d ago
      Low blood sugar will also do this. The record button just stops working even though your physical body can and will still do things. A common issue with diabetics with hypoglycemia.
• qarl 12d ago
  > I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering. That's an interesting point... but I'd argue it falls into the same category as qualia. It's basically this: if there is no state change, the qualia did not exist. And so is probably unanswerable. Qualia is a bitch to reason about.