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On The Content and Character of Pain Experience
Author(s) -
Gray Richard
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12261
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , direct and indirect realism , action (physics) , representation (politics) , psychology , relation (database) , tracking (education) , content (measure theory) , epistemology , philosophy , cognitive psychology , perception , computer science , neuroscience , mathematics , political science , politics , physics , data mining , geometry , mathematical analysis , quantum mechanics , law , pedagogy
Tracking representationalism explains the negative affective character of pain, and its capacity to motivate action, by reference to the representation of the badness for us of bodily damage. I argue that there is a more fitting instantiation of the tracking relation – the badness for us of extremely intense stimuli – and use this to motivate a non‐reductive approach to the negative affective character of pain. The view of pain proposed here is supported by consideration of three related topics: the pain caused when the body is damaged, reparative pain and the messenger‐shooting objection to tracking representationalism.