My Mind is Made Up

I wrote last week about the conception of pain found in David Chalmers’s “Perception and the Fall from Eden” (2006). In particular, he writes:

Can one conceive of one’s ankle being in perfect pain without anyone experiencing the pain? It is not clear that we can. In this respect the phenomenology of pain is quite different from the phenomenology of color, where we have no trouble conceiving of an object being perfectly colored even though no one ever experiences its color. (114)

Of course, Chalmers is not alone in holding that the intuitive or commonsense view of pain (or other bodily sensations) is that pains cannot be divorced from the perception of pains. In his excellent article on “The Transparency of Experience” (2002), for example, M. G. F. Martin writes similarly about itches:

Normally we think of feeling an itch to be a necessary condition of the existence of an itch (note, the claim is only that one should feel the itch, not that one should attend to or not notice it), and we are also inclined to think that the feeling of an itch is sufficient for the existence of an itch. (406)

While I am primarily concerned, here, with the first clause, it is worth noting that the second clause (the sufficiency condition) also suggests the view that unfelt itches cannot exist. In the case of color vision, for example, it seems that we would want to phrase this condition in terms of evidence: Seeing a patch of color is evidence that the patch of color exists. But, if itches cannot exist unfelt – if the feeling of an itch just is the itch – then the feeling of an itch is not just evidence for the existence of an itch, but is itself the existence of an itch. (With regard to the necessity condition, I am not sure how to understand the note: Can you feel an itch without attending to it or noticing it? Why would we want to say this as opposed to saying that you just didn’t feel it, or didn’t consciously feel it?)

Or, consider Michael Tye’s (Consciousness, Color, and Content 2000) assertion that “there is a clear range of commonsense facts that any theory of phenomenal consciousness needs to explain – for example… the fact that pains, itches, tickles cannot exist unowned” (35). Presumably “unowned,” here, reflects a view that pains (and other bodily sensations) cannot exist unfelt: If I have a pain in my toe, and then have that leg amputated, I would no longer feel the pain in my toe; but couldn’t there still be a pain in the now unowned toe? Not if pains cannot exist unfelt.

Likewise, in his famous article “Brains and Behaviour” (1963; reprinted in Chalmers 2002), Hilary Putnam writes that “a man may have a severe case of polio and not know it, even if he knows the word ‘polio,’ but one cannot have a severe pain and not know it” (48). Or, again:

One can have a ‘pink elephant hallucination,’ but one cannot have a ‘pain hallucination,’ or an ‘absence of pain hallucination,’ simply because any situation that the person cannot discriminate from a situation in which he himself has a pain counts as a situation in which he has a pain, whereas a situation that a person cannot distinguish from one in which a pink elephant is present does not necessarily count as the presence of a pink elephant (48).

I take it that it is in part for this reason that Putnam takes ‘pain’ as his “stock example of a mind word” (46). His goal is to debunk logical behaviorism, and the behaviorist line is then given that pain is not like red – “one can point to a standard red thing, but one cannot point to a standard pain” (46). But, pointing is a way to direct someone’s visual attention to something and red is something that is seen. We do not teach somebody the meaning of “red” by having them feel red things. Pains (as bodily sensations) are not seen, however, but felt. As such, an inability to point to them does not serve to set them apart from colors. The real problem is that while we take it that different people can see the same colored object, in the normal course of things we only feel our own bodies. This fact does not imply that pains cannot exist unfelt, however.

For colors, a natural view is to say that when they are seen, the seeing is a mental event while what is seen is not. Alternatively, one can hold that in seeing one has a phenomenal experience that is mental and that the colors in some way attach to. I won’t go into this, here. But, note that some work must be done to show that in cases of normal visual perception the colors that are seen (rather than experiences of colors) are mental. Why is the analogous point for pains so often taken for granted? Is it really so obvious that pains, as opposed to feelings of pain, are mental?

I wrote a bit two weeks ago about David Chalmers’s notion of Eden in Perception and the Fall from Eden (2006). He primarily focuses on visual experiences, but also has something to say about other sensory modalities as well as bodily sensations. I am especially curious about his thoughts on pains. In particular, it appears that Chalmers finds the idea of an unfelt pain to be inconceivable. He writes:

What are perfect pains like, in Eden? That is, what sort of properties need to be instantiated in one’s body in order for a painful experience to be perfectly veridical? Here there are conflicting requirements. First, the properties seem to be intrinsic properties whose nature we grasp in experience. The phenomenology of pain in one’s ankle seems to attribute a quality that is intrinsic to one’s ankle. But second, the properties seem to have a strong connection to experience itself. Can one conceive of one’s ankle being in perfect pain without anyone experiencing the pain? It is not clear that we can. In this respect the phenomenology of pain is quite different from the phenomenology of color, where we have no trouble conceiving of an object being perfectly colored even though no one ever experiences its color. (114)

I am not sure what fuels Chalmers’s intuition that pain is not like color in this regard. I find it readily conceivable that pains are properties of parts of certain bodies and that my ankle, for example, might have such a property even though nobody was feeling it at a given moment.

Consider the following relatively common sort of example. I recently injured my lower back. I have an ongoing throb, predominantly localized to the right side. But up until I got to this paragraph, I have been wrapped up in what I have been writing and was temporarily unaware of the pain (although, now that I am writing about it, I am very much aware that my back hurts). I find it perfectly natural to think of the pain as a property of my injured back that I generally feel, but that under the right circumstances I might not feel.

The larger question is, How do we decide between conflicting phenomenology-backed claims? Chalmers holds that something in the phenomenology of pain is such that inexperienced perfect pain is inconceivable. He writes: “We do not seem to have a grip on any relevant intrinsic quality here that we can conceive instantiated in the absence of a painful experience.” (114). Or, again: “But it is not conceivable or possible that there is perfect pain without pain experience.” (114). On the other hand, I hold that the phenomenology of pain lends itself to the view that pains are properties of body parts that one typically feels, but occasionally might not feel. I find it perfectly conceivable for there to be a pain without any pain experience at that moment. So, how do we decide?

This strikes me as one place where some empirical testing of folk intuitions might shed some light. If a significant proportion of people hold that there can be pains without pain experiences, then this would seem to count against the claim that such a state of affairs is inconceivable. I suspect that a prominent folk view of pains today holds exactly this, treating pains as inhering in bodies, where they are felt through the mediation of pain fibers, and can exist while unfelt (just as I think it is a prominent folk view of colors that they inhere in objects, are seen through the mediation of light, and can exist while unseen). This is a testable empirical claim that I am currently investigating as part of a larger study on folk views about pain. Unfortunately, it is likely to be a few months before I have results to report.