Online research in philosophy

It is widely held that it is only contingent that the sensation of pain is disliked, and that when pain is not disliked, it is not intrinsically bad. This conjunction of claims has often been taken to support a subjectivist view of pain’s badness on which pain is bad simply because it is the object of a negative attitude and not because of what it feels like. In this paper, I argue that accepting this conjunction of claims does not commit us to this subjectivist view. They are compatible with an objectivist view of pain’s badness, and with thinking that this badness is due to its phenomenal quality. Indeed, I argue that once the full range of options is in view, the most plausible account of pain is incompatible with subjectivism about value.

Michael Tye and I are both Representationalists. Nevertheless, we have managed to disagree about the semantic character of ‘in’ in ‘There is a pain in my fingertip’ (see Noordhof (2001); Tye (2002); Noordhof (2002)). The first section of my commentary will focus on this disagreement. I will then turn to the location of pain. Here, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, there seems to be much more agreement between Tye and me. I restrict myself to three points. First, I argue that Tye has not succeeded in providing a decisive consideration against a related theory which takes pains as representationally unmediated objects of pain experiences. Second, I defend Tye against an objection from Murat Aydede. Third, following on from this, I question whether Tye’s characterisation of the content of pain experience is correct. The fact that there is so much to discuss is a testament to richness, interest and exemplary clarity of Tye’s work.

The pain case can appear to undermine the radically intentionalist view that the phenomenal character of any experience is entirely constituted by its representational content. That appearance is illusory, I argue. After categorising versions of pain intentionalism along two dimensions, I argue that an “objectivist” and “non-mentalist” version is the most promising, provided it can withstand two objections: concerning what we say when in pain, and the distinctiveness of the pain case. I rebut these objections, in a way that’s available to both opponents and adherents of the view that experiential content is entirely conceptual. In doing so I illuminate peculiarities of somatosensory perception that should interest even those who take a different view of pain experiences.

made with any ambitions for ontological reduction (e.g. denying that there are pains but only states of having pain). So I'm afraid that Tye's objections deriving from attributing to me such a view and pointing out that Representationalism is needed to capture, amongst other things, the fact that we experience pains in phantom limbs are all beside the point. Instead, the question is entirely a matter of whether the inferences mentioned in my original paper and Tye's reply fail because, although the 'in'.

As a product of natural selection, pain behavior must serve an adaptive function for the species beyond the accurate portrayal of the pain experience. Pain behavior does not simply refer to the pain experience, but promotes survival of the species in various and complex ways. This means that there is no purely respondent or operant pain behavior found in nature.

In his response, Michael Tye writes as if I reject Representationalism about pain. But in my original paper (Noordhof 2001) I hoped to make clear that I did not. For instance, I remarked that I had sympathy with the position (95) and, on the subsequent page, outlined what I thought the Represen- tationalist should say. My proposal was that when we experience a pain in the finger, the experience is veridical only if the cause of this experience is a disordered state of the finger. My appeal to the notion of a state was not made with any ambitions for ontological reduction (e.g. denying that there are pains but only states of having pain). So I’m afraid that Tye’s objections deriving from attributing to me such a view and pointing out that Repre- sentationalism is needed to capture, amongst other things, the fact that we experience pains in phantom limbs are all beside the point.

Do animals other than humans feel pain? How do we know? Well, how do we know if anyone, human or nonhuman, feels pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from the direct experience of pain that we have when, for instance, somebody presses a lighted cigarette against the back of our hand. But how do we know that anyone else feels pain? We cannot directly experience anyone else's pain, whether that "anyone" is our best friend or a stray dog. Pain is a state of consciousness, a "mental event", and as such it can never be observed. Behavior like writhing, screaming, or drawing one's hand away from the lighted cigarette is not pain itself; nor are the recordings a neurologist might make of activity within the brain observations of pain itself. Pain is something that we feel, and we can only infer that others are feeling it from various external indications.

Pain is a fundamentally subjective experience. We have uniquely direct access to our own pain but can only make rough inferences about the pain of others. Nevertheless, such inferences are made all the time by doctors, insurers, judges, juries, and administrative agencies. Advances in brain imaging may someday improve our pain assessments by bolstering the claims of those genuinely experiencing pain while impugning the claims of those who are faking or exaggerating symptoms. These possibilities raise concerns about the privacy of our pain. I suggest that while the use of neuroimaging to detect pain implicates significant privacy concerns, our interests in keeping pain private are likely to be weaker than our interests in keeping private certain other subjective experiences that permit more intrusive inferences about our thoughts and character.