How a Pain is Felt Does not Depend on Bodily Damage

Abstract

The experience of pain is usually characterized by its location, intensity, temporality, unpleasantness, and sensory qualities (such as “hot”, “like a lash”, “deep” or “tingling”). Here I focus on the thesis according to which pain sensory qualities are identical with mental representations of bodily damage. I develop two arguments against this, one based on cases of pain absence and another based on pain variability. In the absence argument, I discuss clinical evidence on episodic analgesia, where individuals experience a painless period of time after being injured. In the variability argument, I discuss the “McGill Pain Questionnaire”, evidence in clinical settings which shows how variable the relation between pain and the nature of the injury actually is. I conclude that pain sensory qualities and physical damage do not covary, as the strong representationalism supposes.