Pain

Abstract

Abstract The debates among the intrinsic-feeling, value-representing, and imperative accounts of valence considered in Chapters 5 and 6 also play out (albeit somewhat differently) in theories of the nature of sensory pain. Indeed, pain (and to a lesser extent other sensory pleasures and displeasures) has been thought to provide a decisive counter-example to representational theories of consciousness, thus purporting to under-cut one of the arguments favoring representational accounts of valence. Moreover, one major objection to value-representing theories of pain is that pain and painfulness seem to lack correctness conditions. To feel pain is to be in pain. There seems to be no possibility of error. Even phantom-limb pain is real pain. It has also been objected that awareness of pain is not transparent in the manner required by the value-representing account, and that the latter cannot explain the reason-giving nature of painful experiences. This chapter confronts these objections, while at the same time defending a value-representing account of painfulness.