1st Edition

The Complex Reality of Pain

By Jennifer Corns Copyright 2020
232 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

230 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

230 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel... Read more
 

1. Introduction: Pain in Life, Science, and Medicine

2. The Need for Complexity: Rejecting the Orthodoxy of Simplicity

3. Mechanistic Explanations: How Complex Idiosyncrasy Undermines Them

4. Adopting Scientific Eliminativism: How Complex Idiosyncrasy Undermines Scientific Utility

5. Rejecting Traditional Elimniativism: Why Pain is Still Real

6. Conclusion: Living with the Complex Reality of Pain

Biography

Jennifer Corns is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, UK. Her research focuses on pain, affect, suffering, and death. She is the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain (Routledge, 2017), and co-editor of Philosophy of Pain: Unpleasantness, Emotion, and Deviance (Routledge, 2018) and Philosophy of Suffering: Metaphysics, Value, and Normativity (Routledge, forthcoming).