Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Peter Alward (2004). Mad, Martian, but Not Mad Martian Pain. Sorites 15 (December):73-75.Functionalism cannot accommodate the possibility of mad pain—pain whose causes and effects diverge from those of the pain causal role. This is because what it is to be in pain according to functionalism is simply to be in a state that occupies the pain role. And the identity theory cannot accommodate the possibility of Martian pain—pain whose physical realization is foot-cavity inflation rather than C-fibre activation (or whatever physiological state occupies the pain-role in normal humans). After all, what it is to be in pain according to the identity theory is to be in whatever state that occupies the pain role for us.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Scholar
Discussion of Peter Alward, Mad, Martian, but not mad Martian pain
Nothing in this forum yet.
Similar books and articles
In my reading list
| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: springerlink.com | Scholar | More.. The only sensible solution to the mind-body problem is a type-type identity theory. I wish to argue for a version of Type-Type identity theory that withstands the usual seemingly fatal objections, which I call ‘R-Type Identity Theory’ and which has three claims. First, an identity theory does not entail ‘reducing’ or ‘eliminating’ one set of things to or in favor of another set of things and introduces epidentity (treating identified relata as distinct). Secondly, pain and what-it-is-like to be in pain (...)
No categories
The functionalist view of the nature of the mind is now widely accepted. Like behaviorism and physicalism, functionalism seeks to answer the question "What are mental states?" I shall be concerned with identity thesis formulations of functionalism. They say, for example, that pain is a functional state, just as identity thesis formulations of physicalism say that pain is a physical state.
In my reading list
| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: portal.acm.org books.google.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: portal.acm.org books.google.com | Scholar | More.. What follows raises objections to some arguments that claimthat a principle of applicability of ordinary pain talkconstrains developments in the pain sciences. A more apt pictureof lay use of pain language shows its non-theoretic character.Since instrumentalism and eliminativism are philosophical viewsabout the status of theories of pain, neither is a threatto clinical use of standard pain lingo. Perfected pain theoryis likely to enhance and improve pain language in clinicalsettings, should such theory find its way into popular ideasand talk of pain.
In my reading list
| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: kluweronline.com springerlink.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: kluweronline.com springerlink.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. In my reading list
| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: taylorandfrancis.metapress.com informaworld.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: taylorandfrancis.metapress.com informaworld.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. 
