Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-vfh8q Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-24T16:31:34.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The badness of pain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2020

Gwen Bradford Open the ORCID record for Gwen Bradford [Opens in a new window]
Gwen Bradford*
Affiliation:
Rice University
*
E-mail: gwen.bradford@rice.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why is pain bad? The most straightforward theory of pain's badness, dolorism, appeals to the phenomenal quality of displeasure. In spite of its explanatory appeal, the view is too straightforward to capture two central puzzles, namely pain that is enjoyed and pain that is not painful (e.g. pain asymbolia). These cases can be captured by conditionalism, which makes the badness of displeasure conditional on an agent's attitude. But conditionalism fails where dolorism succeeds with explanatory appeal. A new approach is proposed, reverse conditionalism, which maintains the explanatory appeal of dolorism, but gives attitudes a value-defeating role. It is argued that this view does best in fulfilling the desiderata and capturing the cases.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 236 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aydede, Murat. 2000. An Analysis of Pleasure Vis-à-Vis Pain. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61(3): 537–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aydede, Murat. 2014. How to Unify Theories of Sensory Pleasure: An Adverbialist Proposal. Review of Philosophy and Psychology (5): 119–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aydede, Murat and Fulkerson, Matthew. 2019. Reasons and Theories of Sensory Affect. In Philosophy of Pain, ed. Bain, David, Brady, Michael, and Corns, Jennifer (London: Routledge), pp. 37–69.Google ScholarPubMed
Bain, David. 2013. What Makes Pains Unpleasant? Philosophical Studies 166 (Supplement 1): 69–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bain, David. 2014. Pains that Don't Hurt. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92(2): 305–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bain, David. 2017. Why Take Painkillers? Noûs: 1–29.Google Scholar
Berthier, Marcelo, Sergio, Starkstein, and Ramon, Leiguarda. 1988. Asymbolia for Pain: A Sensory-Limbic Disconnection Syndrome. Annals of Neurology 24(1): 41–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradley, Ben. 2002. Is Intrinsic Value Conditional? Philosophical Studies 107(1): 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bramble, Ben. 2013. The Distinctive Feeling Theory of Pleasure. Philosophical Studies 162(2): 201–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandt, Richard B. 1979. A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon.)Google Scholar
Chisholm, R. M. 1968. Defeat of Good and Evil. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 42: 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chisholm, R. M. 1986. Brentano and Intrinsic Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Crisp, Roger. 2006. Reasons and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Fred. 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Irwin. 1989. Pleasure and Pain: Unconditional, Intrinsic Values. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50(2): 255–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Joshua, A, Courtemanch, Jérôme, and Rainville, Pierre. 2011. A Non-elaborative Mental Stance and Decoupling of Executive and Pain-Related Cortices Predicts Low Pain Sensitivity in Zen Meditators. Pain 152: 150–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grahek, Nikola. 2007. Feeling Pain and Being in Pain (Cambridge: MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heathwood, Chris. 2007. The Reduction of Sensory Pleasure to Desires. Philosophical Studies 133: 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helm, Bennett W. 2002. Felt Evaluations: A Theory of Pleasure and Pain. American Philosophical Quarterly 39(1): 13–30.Google Scholar
Hurka, Thomas. 1998. Two Kinds of Organic Unity. The Journal of Ethics 2: 299–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, Hilla. 2013. Killing the Messenger: Representationalism and the Painfulness of Pain. Philosophical Quarterly 63 (252): 509–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kabat-Zinn, Jon. 1982. An Outpatient Program in Behavioral Medicine for Chronic Pain Patients Based on the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation: Theoretical Considerations and Preliminary Results. General Hospital Psychiatry 4: 33–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kabat-Zinn, Jon, Leslie, Lipworth, and Robert, Burney. 1985. The Clinical Use of Mindfulness Meditation for the Self-Regulation of Chronic Pain. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 8(2): 163–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kagan, Shelly. 1992. The Limits of Well-Being. Social Philosophy & Policy 9(2): 169–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahane, Guy. 2009. Pain, Dislike, and Experience. Utilitas 21(3): 327–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, Shelly. 2014. An Introduction to Ill-Being. In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 4, ed. Timmons, Mark (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 261–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahane, Guy. 2016. Pain, Experience, and Well-Being. The Routledge Handbook for the Philosophy of Well-Being, ed. Fletcher, Guy (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Klein, Colin. 2007. An Imperative Theory of Pain. Journal of Philosophy 104(10): 517–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Colin. 2015. What Pain Asymbolia Really Means. Mind 124: 494–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Eden. 2017. Against Welfare Subjectivism. Noûs 51(2): 354–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martínez, Manolo. 2015. Pains as Reasons. Philosophical Studies 172(9): 2261–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 2001 [1861]. Utilitarianism, ed. Sher, George (Indianapolis: Hackett)Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. 1962 [1903]. Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Pötzl, Otto and Erwin, Stengel. 1937. Über das Syndrom Leitungsaphasie-Schmerzasymbolie. Jahrbuch der Psychiatrie 53: 174–207.Google Scholar
Rachels, Stuart. 2000. Is Unpleasantness Intrinsic to Unpleasant Experiences? Philosophical Studies 99: 187–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schilder, Paul and Erwin, Stengel. 1928. Schmerzasymbolie. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 113(1): 143–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schilder, Paul and Erwin, Stengel. 1931. Asymbolia for Pain. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 25(3): 598–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidgwick, Henry. 1981 [1907]. The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett).Google Scholar
Singer, Tania, Ben, Seymour, John, O'Doherty, Holger, Kraube, Dolan, R. J., and Frith, C. D.. 2004. Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain. Science 303(5661): 1157–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smuts, Aaron. 2009. Art and Negative Affect. Philosophy Compass 4(1): 39–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sumner, Wayne. 1996. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Tye, Michael. 1995. Ten Problems of Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Tye, Michael. 2006. Another look at Representationalism about Pain. In Pain: New Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology of Its Study, ed. Aydede, Murat (Cambridge: MIT Press), pp. 99–120.Google Scholar