Pain: Mind, Meaning, and Medicine

Despite recent progress in the brain sciences, pain remains something of an enigma. In many ways the problem of pain reflects the hard questions that surround the nature of consciousness, the mind, and the meaning of the self, sentience and suffering — both for individuals and for society at large. But, while neuroscientific discoveries have shed new light on pain as sensation and experience, the potential and limitations of scientific inquiry compel renewed interest in durable philosophical and ethical questions about the role and conduct of pain research, as well as the profession and practices of pain care.

In Pain: Mind, Meaning and Medicine, neuroscientist and neuroethicist James Giordano provides a fundamental construct of pain as a neural event of the embodied brain and mind — embedded and nested within biological, psychological and social environments. He posits that this core construct of pain — as disorder and phenomenal illness — establishes contingencies that should shape and guide the practical and ethical conduct of research and clinical care. Taking the stance that scientific information, moral precepts, responsibilities, and medicine are inextricably related, he proposes an ethics of pain medicine — including relative moral obligations of the scientist, clinician, and patient — that addresses the effects of the current market mentalities upon research, development, and use of new and novel therapeutics; and affords insight to the problems and potential of pain care — both at present and in the future.