A foundational assumption of contemporary cognitive science is that perceptual processing involves inferential transitions between representational states. However, it remains controversial whether accounts of this kind extend to modalities whose perceptual status is a matter of debate. In particular, it remains controversial whether we should attribute inferential mechanisms to the sensory processing underpinning (human) pain experiences. This paper argues that, contrary to recent proposals in the philosophy and science of pain, pain processing is not mediated by inferential transitions. To this end, I show that standard motivations for inferentialism—including appeal to underdetermination, illusion, cue combination, cognitive penetration, perceptual constancy, and invariance—do not carry over to pain. Instead, I suggest that pain's sensory processing may be better characterised as an idiosyncratic form of transduction, distinguishing it both from paradigmatic perceptual modalities and canonical transducers.

中文翻译：

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 没有推断的痛苦


当代认知科学的一个基本假设是，知觉加工涉及表征状态之间的推理转换。然而，这种解释是否延伸到其感知状态是一个有争议的问题的模式，仍然存在争议。特别是，我们是否应该将推理机制归因于支撑（人类）疼痛体验的感觉处理仍然存在争议。本文认为，与疼痛哲学和科学中最近的提议相反，疼痛处理不是由推理转换介导的。为此，我表明推理主义的标准动机——包括诉诸不确定、幻觉、线索组合、认知渗透、知觉恒定性和不变性——并不适用于痛苦。相反，我认为疼痛的感觉处理可能更好地被描述为一种特殊的转导形式，将其与范式知觉模式和规范传感器区分开来。