I argue that we should ameliorate the concept of pain. In philosophy, healthcare, and pain research, treatment has become the purpose that shapes the concept of pain, and the resulting concept is too narrow to accommodate pain's complexity. The narrow concept causes epistemic harms to people whose pain it excludes. These harms fall disproportionately on marginalised groups, even where the perceiver holds no identity prejudice. Treatment should therefore not be the purpose that shapes the concept…
Read moreI argue that we should ameliorate the concept of pain. In philosophy, healthcare, and pain research, treatment has become the purpose that shapes the concept of pain, and the resulting concept is too narrow to accommodate pain's complexity. The narrow concept causes epistemic harms to people whose pain it excludes. These harms fall disproportionately on marginalised groups, even where the perceiver holds no identity prejudice. Treatment should therefore not be the purpose that shapes the concept. An important and overlooked purpose is recognition. To recognise someone in pain is to treat them as the primary epistemic authority on their pain experience and, sometimes, to be moved by that experience. Letting recognition shape the concept allows us to count as pain the complex and untreatable presentations that treatment-shaped criteria exclude, and addresses the epistemic injustices the narrow concept causes.
