Abstract
The last ten years have seen a steady increase in vignette-based research investigating the folk concept of pain. That research challenges the standard view of pain, according to which pains are unpleasant feelings. However, the results of these studies also suggest that the concept of pain is ambiguous and difficult to pin down. This paper approaches the topic from a new angle, using linguistic tests to decipher what people communicate when making statements such as ‘I have a pain in my arm’. The results suggest that first-person pain reports semantically entail information about both an unpleasant feeling and a disruptive bodily state. This speaks in favor of a pluralist view on the semantic meaning of pain.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |
| Subtitle of host publication | Cognitive Diversity |
| Publisher | Cognitive Science Society |
| Pages | 388-394 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
| Event | Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Cognitive Diversity - Metro Toronto Conference Centre , Toronto, Canada Duration: 27 Jul 2022 → 30 Jul 2022 Conference number: 44th https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2022/ |
Conference
| Conference | Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Canada |
| City | Toronto |
| Period | 27/07/22 → 30/07/22 |
| Internet address |
Keywords
- folk concept of pain
- projection test
- deniability test
- pluralist view
- bodily states
- feeling pain