Most of my philosophy posts reside on my other blog. But I am very excited to announce – to anyone who might stop by this more-tech-oriented blog – that I have completed my master’s thesis and DEGREE in philosophy from Georgia State University. Yea!

I can now definitely say that I know pain. I’ve studied it, and I understand a bit more about the brain states involved with pain. Reallly, I swear! I know pain. You don’t believe me, do you? Well, if you are thinking that I am simply Mary the scientist, who has studied pain her entire life, but never experienced real pain, then you need to read my thesis.

One common element of Kripke’s and Chalmers’ reactions to physicalist theories of mind is their reliance upon the intuition that the concept of conscious experience is essentially identified by the “immediate phenomenal quality” of conscious experience or how an experience feels. I examine how Kripke’s and Chalmers’ critiques require that the concept of conscious experience be identified by how it feels and then move on to provide some ways in which this intuition about the concept of conscious experience could be wrong. Specifically, the intuition is not consistent with our intuitions about unusual cases in pain science and does not take such cases to be genuine cases of pain. These inconsistencies weaken the intuition, making it difficult for any critique of identity theory or physicalism to rely heavily upon it.

Its title is Kripke, Chalmers and the Immediate Phenomenal Quality of Pain.