A plank across the explanatory gap: The case of pain.
Consciousness and cognition – July 01, 2025
Source: PubMed
Summary
Scientists have challenged the notion that conscious experiences like pain can't be explained by brain mechanisms. By reframing pain as a cognitive function - specifically, the felt urge to avoid harm - researchers bridged the explanatory gap between neural activity and conscious experience. Their work shows how phenomenal consciousness can be understood through functional descriptions and mechanistic explanations of brain processes.
Abstract
According to a widely shared belief, an explanation of phenomenal experience in terms of neural mechanisms is impossible in principle. The reason for this "Explanatory Gap" is supposed to be a basic incompatibility between phenomenal and neuroscientific knowledge: while the latter is framed in terms of functional relationships, it is impossible to capture phenomenal experience in functional terms. Here, we will take three steps to avert this conclusion and show what an explanation of the qualitative character of phenomenal experience might look like. In Step I, we show that two pivotal assumptions underlying the "Explanatory Gap" argument are unfounded. This means that the problem of phenomenal experience can be solved with the familiar methods of hypothesis development and testing. In Step II, we hypothesize that paradigmatic sorts of phenomenal experience like affective pain can be captured in functional terms, provided the function is framed in cognitive rather than behavioral terms: feeling affective pain is feeling an urge to avoid. In Step III, we will present empirical evidence corroborating this claim. We will also indicate how this functional description can help to identify the neural mechanisms underlying affective pain experience. We take this as a proof of principle showing that the qualitative character of phenomenal experience can be explained in objective neuroscientific terms. We will conclude with some remarks on how our approach might contribute to future progress in our understanding of consciousness in general.