It's
also said that pain is “not dependent for its existence on anyone
else”.
So
where do we go from there?
If we
communicate our pain to others, then we'll use a public language to
do so. That language may well colour the experience of pain itself.
And, as Wittgenstein argued (I think), even the private experience
will be coloured by public language to some extent. Yes, there is a
sensory and experiential basis to the experience of pain. Though that
can't be communicated in its purity (as it were) to another or even
to oneself. And it certainly isn't an “objective fact”.
So
what is it?
The
sensory experience is an x (“I know not what”) which
grounds public- and self-talk about it.
Another
argument for the particularity - and therefore non-scientific or even
non-naturalistic nature - of pain is summed up by this sentence: “No one
else could have that particular pain.”
Is
that any more strange than no other brick can be like that brick over
there? Even public utterances are singular in the sense that each one
will be unique in some way. The colour of that bee is unique. So I'm
not sure that pains are anymore particular than other things.
In
addition, it's said that no one else can feel my particular pain in
the way I feel my particular pain.
Ditto.
One brick can replicate another brick. Still, it's not the same
brick.
Pain
as an Objective Fact
Some
people have talked about a person's pain being an “objective fact”:
as being as objective as anything else.
Yes,
it's real and part of reality; though is it objective?
There
is indeed “something it's like” to be stung by a bee; though to
call it an “objective fact” doesn't seem to correct.
However,
none of this is a complete denial of the private nature of experience
or pain.
Having
said that, since we take a very circuitous route to the physical
reality of DNA, atoms and electrons, perhaps we can do the same for
pains; though it's true that they are not like-for-like cases.
Nonetheless, being “externally identifiable” may still not be a
necessary criterion for something's being physical.
Just
as we can't perceive the atom, so we can't perceive another person's
pain except through their behaviour. We believe in the existence of
atoms because of a lot of theory, models and, yes, observable
phenomena (in cloud chambers, etc.). Then again, the clues we have
for another person's pain don't necessarily mean that the pain is
physical. The clues (behaviour) are physical; though their causes may
be non-physical. (Human behaviour being equivalent to the "traces" of
atoms in a cloud chamber.)
Much
of the behaviourist school, Wittgenstein, functionalism, etc. was but
a way to make the mental (or pain) externally identifiable and
thus scientifically kosher. Nonetheless, it can be said that pain and
other mental phenomena still underpinned behaviour and language-use;
as well as mental functions (as they are expressed by “overt
behaviour”). Thus the problem wasn't really solved.
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