Liberal states calibrate allowable pain by objective means rather than felt suffering

Evidence

My point is only that when pain is a constitutive part of birthing it is not simply the negative experience of a patient, as biomedicine tends to regard it, but an aspect of a distinctive social act in which others assist. What I want to emphasize is that in the cases Klassen describes, pain is not the isolable condition of an individual body to be finally eliminated by chemical or surgical intervention. It is integral to an activity that reproduces and sustains human relationships. For how pain is felt is in some measure dependent on how it is expressed, and how it is expressed is dependent on social relationships. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 429 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Liberal states rationalize torture by calibrating pain to legal necessity thresholds. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 557; Progress discourse divides suffering into punishable gratuitous pain and necessary pain; Penalty operates through the idea of pain, not pain itself — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 155 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The feeling of pain depends on how it is socially expressed #complicates (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 429
• Pain can be embraced as passionate engagement rather than calculated means #complicates (0.74)