3 - Pains

Summary

Analyses of pain have played a large role in the history of philosophy. Sometimes pain is taken as the paradigm of sensory, and perceptual, experience. Sometimes it is taken to be quite different from other sensory states, not being a perceptual state at all. Most of the time, it is taken as a paradigm of conscious states.

In any event, many would argue that the case made in the first two chapters, on behalf of the claim that phenomena play a lesser role in our lives than we have thought, cannot be extended to pain, because phenomena are essential to pain. And since pain plays an important role in our lives, phenomena must also. And for those who take pain to be the paradigm of sensory – and perceptual – states, phenomena, if central to pain, are most probably central to those other states, whatever my arguments to the contrary have been. And if, as so many think, pain is also the paradigm of conscious states, then phenomena are central to consciousness as well.

Pain is a perceptual state; but it is by no means the paradigm of sensory, or perceptual, states. In fact, there is something quite odd and uncharacteristic about states like pain that distinguishes them from other sensory states. Similarly, while pains are conscious states, they are quite uncharacteristic conscious states.

The arguments for this last claim are presented, not in this chapter, but in Part Two.