Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T08:14:38.329Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Neurophilosophy of Pain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

G. R. Gillett
G. R. Gillett
Affiliation:
University of Otago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 66 , Issue 256 , April 1991 , pp. 191 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kripke, S., ‘Identity and necessity’, in Philosophy as it is, Honderich, T. & Burnyeat, M. (eds) Penguin, 1979.Google Scholar

2 Dennett, D. C., Brainstorms (Brighton: Harvester, 1981), 225.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 226.

4 A ‘mentalist’ holds that we can tell a coherent and genuinely explanatory mental story about mental phenomena.

5 Mountcastle, V. B., Medical Physiology (12th ed.) St Louis: Mosby, 1968, 1425.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 1444.

7 I have attacked this dogma in ‘Consciousness and Brain Function’, Philosophical Psychology (1988), 1 325–339.Google Scholar

8 Mountcastle, V. B., Medical Physiology, 1445.Google Scholar

9 Truex, R. and Carpenter, M., Human Neuroanatomy (6th ed.), (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1969), 588.Google Scholar

10 ‘Pain and Mood’, in Brain and Mind, Wolstenholme, G. (ed.) (Amsterdam: CIBA, 1979), 327.Google Scholar

11 Melzack, R., ‘The Perception of Pain’, in Physiological Psychology, Thompson, R. F. (ed.) (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).Google Scholar

12 Dr Robert Twycross, Michael Sobell House, personal communication.

13 Wall, P., ‘The Three Phases of Evil: The Relation of Injury to Pain’, in Brain and Mind, op. cit., 300.Google Scholar

14 Crow, T. J., in ‘Pain and Mood’, op. cit., 327.Google Scholar

15 Melzack, R., op. cit., 223.Google Scholar

16 Melzack, R., op. cit., 223.Google Scholar

17 ‘Pain and Mood’, op. cit., 325.Google Scholar

18 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Tr. Anscombe, G. E. M.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), No. 257.Google Scholar

19 Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., No. 244.

20 Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., No. 257.

21 Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., No. 258.

22 Wall, P. D., op. cit., 301.Google Scholar

23 Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., No. 281.

24 Hamlyn, D. W., ‘Behaviour’, Philosophy, 27 (1953).Google Scholar

25 I have discussed the theory of action underlying these remarks in ‘Actions, Causes and Mental Ascriptions’, in Objections to Physicalism, Robinson, H. (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

26 ‘Representations and Cognitive Science’, Inquiry 32 (1989), 261–277.Google Scholar

27 I have used ‘information’ in an undefined way here but there are important distinctions to be made when one is looking at the nature of representation in epistemology and cognitive science. On this see op. cit. note 25.

28 ‘Perception and Neuroscience’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 40 (1989) 83–103.Google Scholar Also, Churchland, P., Neurophilosophy (Cambridge (Mass.): M.I.T. Press, 1986).Google Scholar

29 Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., No. 580.