Transduction, calibration, and the cognitive penetration of pain

Colin Klein (Australian National University)

Pains are subject to obvious, well-documented, and striking top-down influences. This is in stark contrast to visual perception, where the debate over cognitive penetrability tends to revolve around fairly subtle experimental effects. Several authors have recently taken up the question of whether top-down effects on pain count as cognitive penetrability, and what that might show us about traditional debates. I review some of the known mechanisms for top-down modulation of pain, and suggest that it reveals an issue with a relatively neglected part of the cognitive penetrability literature. Much of the debate inherits Pylyshyn’s stark contrast between transducers and cognition proper. His distinction grew out of his running fight with the Gibsonians, and is far too strong to be defensible. I suggest that we might therefore view top-down influences on pain as a species of transducer calibration. This resolves few questions, supports nobody’s position, and makes the whole debate even messier than it was before---though hopefully in a fruitful way.