The first thread treats pains as particulars spatially located in body regions, or more generally, as particular conditions of body parts that have spatiotemporal characteristics as well as features such as volume and intensity (among others). This thread manifests itself in common ways of attributing pains to bodily locations, such as the following:
- (1) I have a sharp pain in the back of my right hand
- (2) There is a throbbing pain in my left thigh
- (3) My right shoulder hurts
- (4) My wisdom tooth aches intensely.
According to this thread, pains are like physical objects, or specific conditions of physical objects. We also commonly use the verbs ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ to describe our epistemic relation to pains attributed to body parts:
- (5) I feel a sharp pain in the back of my right hand
- (6) I am experiencing pain in my upper left thigh, etc.
(5) suggests that we stand in some sort of perceptual relation to a spatiotemporal particular. Without an indefinite article, (6) suggests that I perceive some quantifiable feature or condition of my thigh. When we feel pains in bodily locations, our nursing behavior and our attention are directed toward those locations.
Less frequently, we also talk about the same pain returning or lasting intermittently:
- (7) I have been having the same pain in my knee as soon as I start jogging
- (8) My headache returned the moment we started having the same argument again.
So according to this thread when we feel pain in parts of our bodies, we perceive something or some condition in those parts, and when we report them by uttering sentences like (1) through (8), we seem to make perceptual reports. These reports seem on a par with the more straightforward perceptual reports such as:
- (9) I see a dark discoloration on the back of my right hand
- (10) I see the red apple on the table
- (11) I heard a big explosion
- (12) I am smelling the sweet odor coming from the rose garden
- (13) I feel the smooth texture of the surface, etc.
Compare, for instance, (5) and (9): they seem to have the same surface grammar demanding a similar perceptual reading according to which I stand in some sort of perceptual relation to something.
Thus, this thread in our ordinary conception favors an understanding of pains as if they were the objects of our perceptions. When this is combined with our practice of treating pains as having spatiotemporal properties along with other similar features typically attributed to physical objects or quantities, it thus points to an understanding of pains according to which pains might plausibly be identified with physical features or conditions of our body parts, probably with some sort of physical damage or trauma to the tissue. Indeed, when we look at the ways in which we talk about a pain, we seem to be attributing something bad to a bodily location by reporting its somatosensory perception there, just as we report the existence of a red apple on the table by reporting its visual perception.
Nevertheless, the very same common sense, although it points in that direction, resists identifying a pain with any physical feature or condition instantiated in the body. Thus it also seems to resist identifying feeling pain in body regions with perceiving something physical in those regions.
A quick thought experiment should confirm this. Suppose that we do in fact attribute a physical condition, call it PC, when we attribute pain to body parts, and that PC is the perceptual object of such experiences. So, for instance, John’s current excruciating experience (call this E) is caused by and represents a physical condition in his leg (e.g., a tear in his tendon), and our ordinary concept of pain applies in the first instance to this condition in his leg. From this it would follow that
(a) John would not have any pain if he had E, but no PC in his leg
(as in the case of, for instance, phantom limb pains and centrally generated chronic pains),
and, conversely,
(b) John would have pain if he had PC but no E
(as would be the case, for instance, if he had taken absolutely effective painkillers or his leg had been locally anesthetized).
But these statements are intuitively incorrect. They appear to clash with our ordinary or dominant concept of pain, which seems to track the experience rather than the physical condition. This resistance to identifying pains with localizable physical conditions comes from the second thread found in the very same common-sense conception of pain.