Peter Burgess

Much of the focus on pain in the literature is the nature of pain’s badness. This paper addresses the relatively overlooked problem of intensity. I construe intensity as the degree to which pains demand involuntary attention, the degree to which a pain can’t be ignored. I use a global workspace framework to explain intensity, a view that is uniquely situated to explain the relevant empirical evidence. I construe intensity theoretically via a pain’s mode of representation, how pain is represented rather than what is represented. This has the advantage of integrating the major views on pain’s badness. Novel explanations result from intensity as attentional demand and each view’s perspective on badness.

Much of the focus on pain in the literature is the nature of pain’s badness. This paper addresses the relatively overlooked problem of intensity. I construe intensity as the degree to which pains demand involuntary attention, the degree to which a pain can’t be ignored. I use a global workspace framework to explain intensity, a view that is uniquely situated to explain the relevant empirical evidence. I construe intensity theoretically via a pain’s mode of representation, how pain is represented rather than what is represented. This has the advantage of integrating the major views on pain’s badness. Novel explanations result from intensity as attentional demand and each view’s perspective on badness.

Much of the focus on pain in the literature is the nature of pain’s badness. This paper addresses the relatively overlooked problem of intensity. I construe intensity as the degree to which pains demand involuntary attention, the degree to which a pain can’t be ignored. I use a global workspace framework to explain intensity, a view that is uniquely situated to explain the relevant empirical evidence. I construe intensity theoretically via a pain’s mode of representation, how pain is represented rather than what is represented. This has the advantage of integrating the major views on pain’s badness. Novel explanations result from intensity as attentional demand and each view’s perspective on badness.

This paper challenges the conventional methodological tendencies of current monistic treatments of subjective consciousness (SC). I argue that it is highly unlikely that any one position will ‘solve’ the SC problem, as monism supposes. Instead, I argue for treating theories of SC akin to scientific models, that (like models) theories only apply under certain empirical conditions, where each simply explains a necessary aspect of SC. Hence, a pluralistic, rather than monistic, approach is preferable to the literature as a whole. In lieu of conventional metaphysics, I advocate applying a form of scientific realism to models of SC, scientific perspectivism. As authors must rely on some intuitive and/or experiential description of what is problematic about SC, theories are better treated as models deriving from a plurality of interpretive perspectives.