The Function of Pain

ABSTRACT

Various prominent theories of pain assume that it is pain’s biological function to inform organisms about damage to their bodies. I argue that this is a mistake. First, there is no biological evidence to support the notion that pain was originally selected for its informative capacities, nor that it currently contributes to the fitness of organisms in this specific capacity. Second, neurological evidence indicates that modulating mechanisms in the nociceptive system systematically prevent pain from serving a primarily informative role. These considerations threaten to undermine standard perceptual and representational accounts of pain.

KEYWORDS:

• pain
• biological functions
• modulation
• perception
• representationalism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Imperatival accounts of pain are exceptions to this generalisation. Unlike other representational theories, imperativism considers pain experiences to have imperatival (rather than indicative) content, and is therefore assumed not to rely on an information-gathering function of pain. See Martínez [2011], Klein [2015], and Barlassina and Hayward [2019].

2 Some have argued that there are more ways in which function statements can be understood (e.g. Wouters [2003]). However, the two-fold distinction on which I am relying is sufficient for the issue at hand.

3 I speak of the ‘interest of organisms’ in a very broad sense, allowing for more specific notions, such as survival or fitness.

4 https://www.iasp-pain.org/terminology?navItemNumber=576#Pain

5 See Pitcher [1970] and Corns [2014] for discussions of this sort of challenge to perceptualism.

6 Of course, one has ways of preventing the registration of information of one’s senses by other means. One can close one’s eyes to stop seeing, or can put one’s fingers in one’s ears to stop hearing. However, such ways of controlling the flow of information are importantly different since they are external to the system that is aiming to inform.

7 Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at UT Austin, The University of Rijeka, and the Eastern APA 2020 in Philadelphia. I am very grateful to all audiences for their comments, as well as to Murat Aydede, Tudor Baetu, Sam Clarke, Bryce Dalbey, Josh Dever, James DiFrisco, Jon Litland, M.G.F. Martin, Michelle Montague, Jake Quilty-Dunn, Mark Sainsbury, Sahotra Sarkar, Hans-Georg Schaible, Michael Tye, two anonymous referees, and the editor of this journal for helpful feedback on earlier drafts. Special thanks to Julia Driver, Caleb Layton, and Carolin Casser.