Pain Without Power

Abstract

Some theories of consciousness emphasize its relationship to language, its emergent quality, and its causal role. Prominent among these theories is the one that Dennett has been developing for nearly four decades. According to Dennett’s most recent version, consciousness is a kind of cerebral clout. But consideration of examples of pain—arguably the best candidate on offer for a paradigm of consciousness—reveals that clout is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness. Moreover, pain doesn’t necessarily have the aftermath that is predicted by Dennett’s Clout Theory (CT); pain cannot always be accommodated by Dennett’s methodology; and, pain does not always conform to Dennett’s proposed ontology. Dennett might wish to substitute episodic memory as a preferred paradigm for consciousness, but episodic memory is shown to be non-essential. And, were it to be treated as a paradigm of consciousness, it would create new explanatory problems for CT. Rather than abandoning CT, because it does seem to help explain some pain phenomena and because it does comport well with certain views of language, I propose that some of its more intriguing proposals be retained and treated as hypotheses to guide further empirical inquiry. Finally, I recommend some specific empirical cases wherein relevant research might be pursued.

一些有關意識的理論強調其與語言的關係、其突然冒出的性質、以及其做為原因的地位，其中最著名的是丹奈特（Daniel Dennett）發展了近四十年的理論。根據其最新的版本，意識是一種腦的「力量」。但是考慮疼痛──可說是意識的最佳典範──的情形，可知「力量」對意識而言既非必要亦非充分因素。此外，痛不一定產生丹奈特的「力量理論」（Clout Theory，CT）所預測的後果；痛並不總是適用於丹奈特的方法；痛也不見得與丹奈特提出的本體論相一致。丹奈特或許希望換用場景記憶做為意識的更佳典範，但研究顯示場景記憶並非必要，且若以其為意識的典範，將衍生出解釋CT時的新問題。我不擬捨棄CT，因其對解釋若干痛的現象似有幫助，且因其與某些語言觀點相當符合。我建議保留其中一些妙思，做為指引進一步經驗性研究的假說。最後，我推薦一些具體的經驗案例，也許值得做進一步的研究。