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The badness of pain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2020

Gwen Bradford Open the ORCID record for Gwen Bradford [Opens in a new window]
Gwen Bradford*
Affiliation:
Rice University
*
E-mail: gwen.bradford@rice.edu
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Abstract

Why is pain bad? The most straightforward theory of pain's badness, dolorism, appeals to the phenomenal quality of displeasure. In spite of its explanatory appeal, the view is too straightforward to capture two central puzzles, namely pain that is enjoyed and pain that is not painful (e.g. pain asymbolia). These cases can be captured by conditionalism, which makes the badness of displeasure conditional on an agent's attitude. But conditionalism fails where dolorism succeeds with explanatory appeal. A new approach is proposed, reverse conditionalism, which maintains the explanatory appeal of dolorism, but gives attitudes a value-defeating role. It is argued that this view does best in fulfilling the desiderata and capturing the cases.

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Utilitas , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 236 - 252
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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