Tracking Representationalism and the Painfulness of Pain (Philosophical Issues, 2011) (original) (raw)

Representationalism is the thesis that the phenomenal character of an experience supervenes on its representational content. Tracking representationalism is the conjunction of representationalism with a “tracking” or causal-covariation account of the content of experience. Several philosophers have maintained that the experience of pain poses a serious challenge to tracking representationalism. In particular, tracking representationalism is thought to be unable to account for the negative affective quality or “painfulness” of pain. In this paper we defend tracking representationalism against this challenge. We argue that pain has both descriptive and evaluative content and that pain has its negative affective quality in virtue of its (negative) evaluative content. We then show how a tracking theory of experiential content can accommodate this view of the content of pain. We conclude by noting some advantages of our account over a rival representationalist account, which explains the negative affective quality of pain in terms of imperative content rather than evaluative content.