UC San Diego

In this project, I have two aims. First, I take seriously the imperativist idea that pain commands its audience and the potential normative implications this idea can have for the clinic. More specifically, I appeal to the nature of pain to determine what it is we are doing when we communicate our pains to others. I characterize pain utterances as having both indicative and imperative content, in virtue of expressing pain beliefs and the pain experience, respectively. I contend that, be concerned!, is the imperative issued by both felt pains and pain utterances. I refer to a notion of concern that configures itself to comply with pain’s demand for (1) attention, (2) a beholdenness towards restoring well-being, and (3) action when otherwise appropriate. The second aim of this project is to explain the societal mechanisms that can cause the sharing of one's pain to fail to motivate. My thesis considers how ideologies can distort features of the speaker, i.e., the body, or distort the kind of pain expressed, i.e., menstrual pain, such that a pain-related motivational deficit occurs. A pain-related motivational deficit occurs when ideology systematically distorts certain pain utterances such that there is a defective uptake of the pain utterance's motivational contribution, or imperative content, without disturbing the proper uptake of its epistemic contribution, or indicative content. As a result, a pain utterance that would otherwise motivate concern is believed but is responded to with a lack of concern.