How far can one ascribe a spatial meaning to pain? When I have a pain, for instance, in my leg, how should one understand the “in” in the “pain in my leg”? I argue (contrary to Noordhof) that pain does have a spatial meaning, but (contrary to Tye) that the spatiality of pain is not to be understood in the standard sense of spatial enclosure. Instead, spatiality has a special meaning with regard to pain. By defining pain in phenomenological terms (...) as a disturbed form of bodily perception, I contend that the “in” in “pain in my body” has a dual spatial meaning: firstly, it signifies my internal perceptual relation to a disturbing part of my body; secondly, it denotes the external perceptual relation to my environment that the disturbance forces me to take. Once the spatiality of pain is understood in terms of such a perceptual relation, it is not restricted to localisable hurts, but pertains to all forms of pain, such as affliction and agony. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25 (4) 2006: pp. 336-349. (shrink)

How far can one ascribe a spatial meaning to pain? When I have a pain, for instance, in my leg, how should one understand the “in” in the “pain in my leg”? I argue (contrary to Noordhof) that pain does have a spatial meaning, but (contrary to Tye) that the spatiality of pain is not to be understood in the standard sense of spatial enclosure. Instead, spatiality has a special meaning with regard to pain. By defining pain in phenomenological terms (...) as a disturbed form of bodily perception, I contend that the “in” in “pain in my body” has a dual spatial meaning: firstly, it signifies my internal perceptual relation to a disturbing part of my body; secondly, it denotes the external perceptual relation to my environment that the disturbance forces me to take. Once the spatiality of pain is understood in terms of such a perceptual relation, it is not restricted to localisable hurts, but pertains to all forms of pain, such as affliction and agony. (shrink)

According to much recent work in metaethics, we have a perceptual access to normative properties and relations. On a common approach, this access has a presentational character. Here, ‘presentational’ specifies a characteristic feature of the way aspects of the environment are apprehended in sensory experience. While many authors have argued that we enjoy presentations of value properties, thus far comparatively less effort has been invested into developing a presentational view of the apprehension of normative reasons. Since it appears that this (...) view would offer much the same theoretical benefits as presentational views of the apprehension of value, it seems worthwhile redressing this imbalance. My paper aims at doing so, focusing on concern-dependent practical reasons. After clarifying the central commitment of this view, I assess a recent proposal by Dancy :787-812, 2014) which provides a detailed characterization of the relevant type of cognition. I argue that Dancy ignores one of the central features of a presentational access to normative reasons and therefore misidentifies which actual psychological phenomena are apt to play this role. In this context, I also assess and reject further candidates that might seem fitting for this purpose. In the remainder of the paper, I then offer a more adequate account which specifies an actual form of presentational access to concern-dependent practical reasons and provide the contours of a more substantive account of its nature. (shrink)

Adverbialism, broadly construed, is the thesis that pains (and other sensations) are modes of awareness, and objectualism, broadly construed, is the thesis that pains are objects of awareness. Why are we inclined to say that pains are modes of awareness and yet also inclined to say that they are objects of awareness? Each inclination leads to an account of pain that seems to be incompatible with the other. If adverbialism is correct, it would seem that objectualism is mistaken (and vice (...) versa). And yet each inclination is sufficiently well grounded that neither seems reasonably rejectable. It will not do to present each theory with greater and greater sophistication on the assumption that if it is correct the other must be mistaken. What we must do is give an account of pain that shows how it is possible to retain the central insights of both adverbialism and objectualism. I propose to do that in this paper, mounting a case for the claim that the most plausible view of pain is one that combines adverbialism and objectualism. (shrink)

Pain is the most prominent member of a class of sensations known as bodily sensations, which includes itches, tickles, tingles, orgasms, and so on. Bodily sensations are typically attributed to bodily locations and appear to have features such as volume, intensity, duration, and so on, that are ordinarily attributed to physical objects or quantities. Yet these sensations are often thought to be logically private, subjective, self-intimating, and the source of incorrigible knowledge for those who have them. Hence there appear to (...) be reasons both for thinking that pains (along with other similar bodily sensations) are physical objects or conditions that we perceive in body parts, and for thinking that they are not. This apparent paradox is one of the main reasons why philosophers are especially interested in pain. One increasingly popular but still controversial way to deal with this apparent paradox is to defend a perceptual or representational view of pain, according to which feeling pain is in principle no different from undergoing other standard perceptual processes like seeing, hearing, touching, etc. But there are many who think that pains are not amenable to such a treatment. Although it was the treatment of pain as a sensory-discriminative experience that had dominated the philosophical discussions throughout most of the twentieth century, attention to pains’ affective-motivational dimension has gained prominence in recent years. (shrink)

Empirical arguments for materialism are highly circumstantial—based, as they are, upon inductions from our knowledge of the physical and upon the fact that mental phenomena have physical correlates, causes and effects. However, the qualitative characteristics of first-person conscious experience are empirically distinct from uncontroversially physical phenomena in being—at least on our present knowledge—thoroughly resistant to the kind of abstract, formal description to which the latter are always, to some degree, readily amenable. The prima facie inference that phenomenal qualities are, most (...) probably, non-physical may be resisted either by denying their existence altogether or by proposing that they are properties of some peculiar sort of mysterious physical complexity, located, for example, within the functioning of the brain. It is argued here, however, that the first, eliminative hypothesis is empirically absurd—while the second is extravagant, vague, ad hoc and (for various additional reasons) profoundly implausible. Taken together, these considerations provide a compelling empirical case against materialism—yet its converse, mentalism, is usually regarded as subject to serious difficulties of its own. I conclude by suggesting empirical and theoretical desiderata, respectively, for the vindication of materialism and alternatively, for the development and defense of a potentially robust and viable mentalist theory of consciousness. (shrink)

In this chapter, I outline dynamic models of motivation and emotion. These turn out not to be autonomous subsystems, but, instead, are deeply integrated in the basic interactive dynamic character of living systems. Motivation is a crucial aspect of particular kinds of interactive systems -- systems for which representation is a sister aspect. Emotion is a special kind of partially reflective interaction process, and yields its own emergent motivational aspects. In addition, the overall model accounts for some of the crucial (...) properties of consciousness. (shrink)