[CS] CS Wednesday Noon Talk on March 7: "Pain and Idiosyncrasy, " by Jennifer Corns. At Noon, in the ASH Lobby

[Paula Harmon]

"Pain and Idiosyncrasy" by Jennifer Corns, Ph.D., Five College Fellow at 
Mount Holyoke College and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with The Pain 
Project at the University of Glasgow.

Abstract: The last 30 years of pain research has resulted in the 
increased complexity and generality of the dominant models of pain. 
Correspondingly, the traditional medical model of pain that seeks to 
eliminate pain by eliminating a presumed underlying pathology has come 
in for scrutiny. Antagonists advocate a mechanism-based classification 
approach, sometimes dubbed "pain analysis." The goal of this approach is 
to categorize pain, by types, as a function of correlations between 
symptoms and signs and the activity of underlying mechanisms. The 
problem is that the hoped-for correlations are not forthcoming. What we 
are finding instead is that each token pain involves the activity of 
multiple mechanisms, no one of which is reliably correlated with pain or 
any pain "type." Moreover, the convergence of the activity of these 
multiple mechanisms is idiosyncratic. In this talk, I'll present reasons 
for thinking that each token pain is explained by an idiosyncratic 
convergence of activity across multiple mechanisms and argue that this 
idiosyncrasy undermines the reliability of generalizations about both 
pain and pain "types" for treatment purposes. I'll conclude by exploring 
the implications of idiosyncrasy for understanding the relationship 
between everyday, folk types and mechanistic explanations in cognitive 
science more generally.

Brief Bio: Jennifer Corns specializes in the philosophy of mind and 
cognitive science. She is interested in understanding how everyday, 
folk-psychological categories can be appropriately employed in ethics 
and scientific inquiry. Her PhD dissertation, Pain is Not a Natural 
Kind, was completed under the supervision of Jesse Prinz at the City 
University of New York Graduate Center. She is currently a Five College 
Fellow at Mount Holyoke College and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with 
The Pain Project at the University of Glasgow.  
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/philosophyresearch/grantsprojects/headline_217060_en.html 


In the ASH Lobby. Light lunch is provided at noon.

-- 
Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant
School of Cognitive Science
Hampshire College
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002
phone: 413.559.5502
fax: 413.559.5438
http://cs.hampshire.edu
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