[CS] CS Wednesday Noon Talk on March 7: "Pain and Idiosyncrasy, " by Jennifer Corns, in the ASH Lobby
Paula Harmon
pharmon at hampshire.edu
Tue Mar 6 11:24:32 EST 2012
"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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