The focus of much recent debate between realists and eliminativists about the propositional attitudes obscures the fact that a spectrum of positions lies between these celebrated extremes. Appealing to an influential theoretical development in cognitive neurobiology, I argue that there is reason to expect such an “intermediate” outcome. The ontology that emerges is a revisionary physicalism. The argument draws lessons about revisionistic reductions from an important historical example, the reduction of equilibrium thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and applies them to the (...) relationship developing between propositional attitude psychology and this potential neuroscientific successor. It predicts enough conceptual change to rule out a straightforward realism about the attitudes; but at the same time it also resists the eliminativist's comparison of the fate awaiting the propositional attitudes to that befalling caloric fluid, phlogiston, and the like. (shrink)

There is a traditional view of pain as a conscious phenomenon which satisfies the following two principles at least: Pain is essentially a belief- or cognition-independent sensation, given for consciousness in an immediate way, and pain′s unitary physical base is responsible for both its phenomenal or felt qualities and it′s functional, causal features. These are "The Raw Feels Principle" and "The Unity of Pain Principle" . Each is shown to be implausible. Evidence comes from recent pain research in a number (...) of dimensions. A further argument against The Unity of Pain Principle is constructed by analogy with facts about blindsight. The consequences of rejecting P or Q are examined in light of the traditional epistemological role of pain as exemplar of sensations thought to be foundational for knowledge, the prospects of a modularity theory of the pain system, recent accounts of pain among contemporary philosophers, a naturalist and realist conception of pain, and views about the status of Folk Psychology. (shrink)

A balanced survey of the most important historical and contemporary topics in the philosophy of mind.

This paper argues that clinicians are sometimes justified in not testing diagnoses or in not subjecting them to a full battery of tests. In deciding whether to conduct a test, a clinician may consider and weigh several different factors, including her confidence in her initial diagnosis, the specificity and sensitivity of the test, the consequences of making a false diagnosis, the pain, harm, and inconvenience caused by the test, and the costs of the test to the patient and society. This (...) view suggests that diagnoses are fundamentally different from scientific hypotheses in that they are not always subjected to the same evidential standards. (shrink)