What Makes Pains Unpleasant?
Philosophical Studies (forthcoming)
| Abstract | The unpleasantness of pain motivates action. Hence many philosophers have doubted that it can be accounted for purely in terms of pain’s possession of indicative representational content. Instead, they have explained it in terms of subjects’ inclinations to stop their pains, or in terms of pains being constituted by experiential commands. I claim that such “noncognitivist” accounts fail to accommodate unpleasant pain’s reason-giving force. What I argue is needed is a view on which pains are unpleasant, motivate, and provide reasons in virtue of possessing content that is indeed indicative, but also, crucially, evaluative. | |||||||||
| Keywords | pain sensations philosophy of mind hedonic reasons motivation evaluation imperatives | |||||||||
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