tension between something in a body part and subjective experience

Now that the two threads in our ordinary conception of pain are in full view, we can better appreciate why they are in tension. Experiences are in the head, if they are anywhere. Indeed, for most physicalists, they are in the head by being realized in the brain or in the central nervous system. So we can’t be locating pains qua experiences (or qua sensations, for that matter) in body parts when we correctly utter sentences such as (1) through (6) — discounting headaches perhaps. But then what are we locating when we seem to attribute pains to body parts? Recall that, although the first thread in our common-sense conception treats pains as spatiotemporally locatable particulars or particular conditions of body parts, it does not identify pains with them — it only exerts pressure towards such an identification in the light of the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any other credible alternative (but see below). We have already conducted a little thought-experiment to bring this out in Section 1.1. Comparing the following two sentences will help us understand the tension better:

(5) I feel a sharp pain in the back of my right hand
(9) I see a dark discoloration on the back of my right hand.

It is reasonably clear that for (9) to be true, I have to stand in the seeing (perceiving) relation to a dark discoloration in the back of my right hand, i.e., to a certain surface region on the back of my hand marked by a darker shade of the usual color of my skin, a certain region that can be seen by others possibly in the same way in which I see it. Note that if I am hallucinating a dark discoloration on the back of my hand, then (9) is simply false. Also note that although the truth of (9) doesn’t require the possession of any concept by me expressed by the words making up the sentence, my uttering of (9) to make a report typically does — if we take such utterances as expressions of one’s thoughts and take thoughts to be composed of concepts. So my seeing would typically induce me to conceptually identify something on the back of my hand as a dark discoloration. This is a typical case of categorization of something extramental under a concept induced by an exteroceptive experience. Of course, my uttering of (9) does more than attribute a physical property to a bodily region, it also reports that I am seeing it.

What has to be the case for (5) to be true? Whatever the complete analysis of sentences like (5) turns out to be, one thing seems reasonably clear: the truth-conditions of (5) put no constraints whatsoever on how things physically are with my hand. Anyone who has a sufficient mastery of our ordinary concept of pain has no difficulty in understanding how (5) could still be true even though there is nothing physically wrong with my hand, which is typically the case in centrally caused chronic pain syndromes.^[2]

So we standardly use sentences like (5) to make correct statements about a pain felt in a bodily location even when there is nothing wrong with that location. In other words, when we make claims about where it hurts (attribute pain to bodily locations), strictly speaking we in fact rescind from logically committing ourselves to there being anything physically wrong in those locations — even though we normally expect to find some physical disorder in them. Compare this to my uttering (9) on the basis of my having a very vivid visual hallucination of a discoloration on the back of my hand. In such a case, my utterance would be incorrect, because in uttering (9) I commit myself to finding some physical condition (namely, a dark discoloration) on the back of my hand. If and when I realize that I have hallucinated, then I correct myself and revert to introspective mode by saying things like “I seemed to see a discoloration on the back of my hand” or “it appeared to me that there was a discoloration,” etc. Nothing of this sort happens when I realize or am told that there is nothing physically wrong with my hand: I still correctly continue to report the pain I feel there by uttering the very same sentence, (5), or its equivalents. I don’t need to make any correction in my pain report. This shows that despite the pressure exerted by the first thread, it is the second thread that seems to capture the dominant common-sense conception of pain — as indeed the IASP definition above indicates.

Still the puzzle remains: what is it that I am doing when I appear to be attributing something to the back of my hand by correctly uttering (5) — if, as agreed, I am not attributing a mental experience or a physical condition there? It is not clear whether there is a common-sense answer to this question. Just as the scientific definition doesn’t touch on the issue of our common practice of correctly locating pains in healthy body parts, the common sense would probably draw a blank if the problem were articulated explicitly and the question is pressed really hard.

Or maybe not. Intuitively and somewhat naively, what common sense would drive us to say when pressed hard might be something like the following.^[3] Granted, by uttering (5) I am not attributing any sort of physical thing or condition to the back of my hand, nor am I locating a mental experience there — experiences and sensations are strictly speaking in the head if they are anywhere. But when I attend to my hand with my mind’s inner eye, so to speak, I clearly feel something there. I can introspectively examine different qualities of that thing such as its sharpness, volume, intensity, unpleasantness, burning quality, etc. I can in real time follow the changes in it: it is now somewhat less intense and unpleasant, now more; it is getting duller now, it was sharper and brighter a moment ago; it seems to be moving toward my fingers, etc. Clearly, I seem to be confronted or acquainted with something that I can introspectively examine carefully in real time and report on its various qualities. It is this thing, the object of my inner attention, which is located in the back of my hand, which seems essentially private, subjective, and about which I can’t be wrong.

If this is what one might like to say intuitively and naívely, one should be prepared to swallow its strange consequences: this object of my inner attention is both located in public space and logically private, i.e., only I can have epistemic access to it despite its being spatiotemporally located. Also, the existence of this object seems to literally depend on my epistemic/mental access to it: it seems to go out of existence when I cease to feel it (perceive it). In addition, if it is the object of my attention (separate from my attention), how could it be the case that I cannot be wrong about it? And importantly, if this object is not physical, what sort of thing could it be? A ghostly mental particular that I can introspectively attend to which is nevertheless spatiotemporally located beyond my head?

The act-object duality embedded in our ordinary concept of pain yields strange results when followed intuitively and naively to its logical end. But perhaps this duality is a robust symptom of a deeper truth underlying all perception and introspection. Perhaps pain is simply the most paradigmatic example of a broad range of perceptual experiences where this deep underlying iceberg shows it tip most prominently and revealingly — albeit confusedly. Indeed this is exactly the case according to so-called sense-datum theories, or more broadly, indirect realism.