09 December 2006

What this is all about

Welcome to my pain for philosophers blog. Here's a bit about what you're looking at:

I'm a philosopher working on issues involving pain. That requires knowing quite a bit about what pains are. I thus try to keep up with the pain science literature, and created this blog to collect excerpts of articles relevant to philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, cognitive science, value-theory, and applied ethics. I'm particularly keen on studies concerning the relationships between gender and pain; the role of depression, anxiety, and other affective disorders in pain; and the ways caregivers' attitudes influence their patients' pain and recovery.

After I started the site, I noticed that many of you find your way here from Google searches on pain and palliative medicine. And several websites geared toward pain patients and their families occasionally link here. Thus I've expanded my focus to include information about advances in pain care and in the understanding of common chronic pain conditions.

I hope you'll find this material helpful, if a bit technical. Please email me if you see something you'd like translated into English. Of course, I'm neither a doctor nor a lawyer, so I'm not offering anything here as medical or legal advice.

I'd greatly appreciate your bringing anything pain-related you may happen across to my attention. Also, if there is some topic or issue which especially interests you, please let me know. I'll try to do some digging.

You can email me at doloric@gmail.com

--Adam

*You'll notice that posting here comes in fits and starts. I try to survey the journals at least once a month, but that unfortunately doesn't happen in extremely busy months. You might therefore find it useful to subscribe to the XML feed to be updated when I post.

Back to the site.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Adam!

I just found your blog. Here are some questions I have long wondered about, but never asked an expert:

Why did Buddha say that "life is suffering?"

Do you suppose that he meant the same thing as "pain"?

Do you think that there might be three categories of pain: physical, psychological, and spiritual?

I read somewhere that pain is a disorder in the brain. Would that make pain a cognitive function? If so, is pain something that can be "controlled" by one's will through cognitive functions?

wjk
wjkellpro@aol.com

Anonymous said...

Dear Adam
I've been blogging about pain and pain management for a year now, and don't know how I missed your blog in my trawls through the interweb... anyway, I just thought I'd let you know I've linked through - and hope you'll find something of interest on my site.
cheers
Bronnie