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"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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/philosophyresearch/grantsprojects/headline_217060_en.html">http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/philosophyresearch/grantsprojects/headline_217060_en.html</a>
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In the ASH Lobby. Light lunch is provided at noon.<br>
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Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant <br>
<div class="moz-signature"><small> School of Cognitive Science <br>
Hampshire College<br>
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002 <br>
phone: 413.559.5502 <br>
fax: 413.559.5438 <br>
<a href="http://cs.hampshire.edu">http://cs.hampshire.edu</a></small>
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