Bad by Nature. An Axiological Theory of Pain

This chapter introduces two standard assumptions about pain that the axiological theory constitutively rejects: that pains are essentially tied to consciousness and that pains are not essentially tied to badness. It traces the paradox of pain and argues that since the axiological theory takes the location of pain at face value, it needs to grapple with the privacy, self-intimacy and incorrigibility of pain. The Axiological Theory of Disagreeable Sensation maintains by contrast that disagreeableness is a negative value, so that being bad is part of what it is to be a disagreeable sensation. To get an axiological account of pains from such an axiological account of disagreeable sensations, one simply needs to specify further the way in which bodily episodes are bad. The Axiological Theory of Pain (ATP) is a version of anti-psychologism about pain. Pains, as the ATP understands them, share many features with reflections–e.g., the reflection of the moon on the sea.