Reducing pain: New approaches, new possibilities, and new ways of understanding the brain

Abstract

In 2020, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) changed its definition of pain to just an "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. " Since then, several philosophers have attempted to reaffirm the impossibility of reducing pain to neurobiology from a variety of approaches, including eliminativism, multiple realizability, and intersubjectivity. All of their arguments assume that there are no specific biomarkers for pain. I adumbrate a more ecumenical path: that while these approaches have some merit, they also misstate how brains function. Once we shift our view regarding how brains operate, then pain processing is just as "mysterious" as other types of complex brain processes.

Keywords

• pain
• brain
• reduction
• eliminativism
• multiple realizability
• intersubjectivity