Pains You Can't Ignore: Attentional Demand and the Problem of Intensity

Much of the focus on pain in the literature is the nature of pain's badness. This paper addresses the relatively overlooked problem of intensity. I construe intensity as the degree to which pains demand involuntary attention, the degree to which a pain can't be ignored. I use a global workspace framework to explain intensity, a view that is uniquely situated to explain the relevant empirical evidence. I construe intensity theoretically via a pain's mode of representation, how pain is represented rather than what is represented. This has the advantage of integrating the major views on pain's badness. Novel explanations result from intensity as attentional demand and each view's perspective on badness.