The notorious neurophilosophy of pain: A family resemblance approach to idiosyncrasy and generalizability

Abstract

Pain continues to be one of the most controversial subjects in neurophilosophy. One focus of current debates is the apparent absence of an ideal brain-based biomarker that could function as a coherent and distinct indicator for pain. One prominent reaction to this in the philosophical literature is scientific pain eliminativism. In this article, I argue for a non-eliminative alternative that builds on family resemblances and provides a useful heuristic in the tradeoff between the idiosyncrasy of the neural processes corresponding to different pain cases and the demand for generalizability in pain research.