The History of Pain without Lesion in Mid- to Late-Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter aims to articulate and defends John Searle's account of consciousness, which prominently features an irreducible, unquantifable subjectivity. Such an account eschews mind-body dualism, accepting neither that consciousness is reducible to neurophysiological substrate nor that consciousness is possible in the absence of such substrate. Moreover, virtually all English-language ethnographies of pain among Western populations state or imply that mind-body dualism is a primary schema for interpreting and understanding pain for illness sufferers, providers, and caregivers alike. While Searle is concerned primarily with the role of subjectivity in consciousness, it is no accident that so many of his examples and arguments reference pain. The experience of pain features so prominently in Searle's account of consciousness precisely because pain is the quintessentially subjective phenomenon. Consciousness is emergent, arising from biochemical, physiological, and environmental (social and cultural) interactions and pathways, but reducible to none of these constituent parts.