What is the representational view of pain? Critically discuss one argument EITHER in favour of OR against the view.
There are many different cases in which we speak of pain. A wrenching pain from a sprained ankle, toothache, heartache, a burning pain from a hot bath, freezing pain from cold weather. The list is endless. However what is it truly for you to be in pain, and what do all pains have in common? Pain consists of two senses; narrow and broader. With regards to the narrow sense we sometimes use pain to refer to some feeling or phenomenal character shared by all the painful experiences previously mentioned, despite the varying diversity. Crucially we must highlight that the feeling is not unpleasantness itself, as this is not what sets apart pain from the likes of itches and grief, which can also be unpleasant. In contrast the broader sense of pain actually refers to unpleasantness. For clarity this essay will focus on the narrow sense of pain.
One important question that must be addressed is what is it for you to be in pain? One popular answer is that pain is to undergo an experience with the right feel or phenomenal character. Let us call that phenomenal character 'paininess' and the experiences with it 'pain experiences'. So pain experiences are experiences with a phenomenal character or 'paininess', such that undergoing them means that one is in pain. Another question we must consider is what is it to undergo an experience with that phenomenal character? There are several competing answers to this question. All agree that pain is a phenomenal character but all disagree when it comes to explaining what that phenomenal character is exactly. The representational view of pain is one of those answers. The representational view of pain attempts to answer what it is for us to undergo an experience with phenomenal character by explaining their view of visual experiences and putting it into the context of pain. By focusing on the representational view of pain this essay will critically discuss and argue against the representational view, critically discussing one of the objections and why the representational view fails to give a useful account of what it is for us to be in pain.
Representational theorists agree that it is right to model pain experiences on visual experiences. However our visual experiences are not based upon sense data or the adverbialist conception but a representational view. For us to say that a mental state has representational content is to say that it is about something, and in particular that it is itself true or false. Consider for instance I believe that Hitler acted alone. This statement has representational content. It points beyond itself and is either true or false. Its content is that Hitler acted alone. Consider another statement – I have size four feet. The size stated does not have representational content. It does not point beyond itself; it is not about anything and it is not true or false. To say that visual experiences have representational content is not to say that they are beliefs, surely we know that they are not. But again, we might yet say that a visual experience has representational content as it allows us to avoid sense-data and to fit visual experiences into a general representationalism about the phenomenal character of experiences.
However why should pain be viewed as representational? To answer this we must consider what sort of perception and what representational content is involved in pain. Let us not forget about interoception. That is, in addition to our traditional five senses there are other senses that exist. There exists interoceptive, proprioceptive, or somatosensory senses by which we are aware of and find out about our own bodies. When we wake we have a sense of the location of our limbs without having to find them. Perhaps pain experiences belong to such an interoceptive sense model. Consider the representational view that being in pain consists of undergoing an interoceptive experience that represents truly or falsely that a given part of your body is damaged. This view allows us to avoid the idea that pains are infallibly accessible and that pains are non physical mental objects dotted mysteriously about the body. It allows us to put even pain experiences into a general representationalist approach to the phenomenal character of experience thus strengthening the general representationalist view that for you to undergo an interoceptive experience that represents either truly or falsely that a given part of your body is damaged.
However the representationalist view has it's limitations. One important thing to consider is that the ideas on pain and damage are very loose. What about examples where the damage and pain are not located in the same place, or for example when there is pain but no damage, or even damage elsewhere? Theses are referred pains. For instance myocardial ischaemia involves a shortage of blood to the heart muscle which can cause pain in the left arm or hand. Or Sciatica; when lumbar vertebrae compress sciatic nerve, a result can be a pain in the legs. Then there are pains where there is no damage at all. Take for instance phantom limb cases, where the relevant bodily location doesn't even exist, yet pain is still experienced. For example Admiral Lord Nelson undergoing an experience of pain in his right arm after it was amputated. In these cases we understand that we are in pain but we cannot find the location of the pain and there is no damage, so how can pain involve perceiving damage as the representational view seems to say? For instance with regards to the heart, the condition of your heart causes you to interceptively perceive your left hand as damaged. That is it causes you to perceive it via an experience representing that it is damaged even when it is not. You interoceptively perceive your left hand inaccurately or illusorily, or you misperceive it.
The representational view can also respond to phantom cases, claiming them cases of perceptual hallucination. Take Admiral Lord Nelson. The story goes the condition of his nervous system and stump caused him to undergo an hallucinatory interoceptive experience of a right arm of his being damaged, even though he had no right arm to be perceived or to be damaged. The experience was hallucinatory in the sense that it was not involved in the perceiving of anything: a right arm, stump, or anything else. There was no arm to be damaged, but the pain caused by his nervous system was real. While you can misperceive damage, you can not do the same for pains. Pain is different from ordinary physical objects precisely in that you cannot misperceive or hallucinate them. If you are aware of a mental object as a pain, then the object is a pain. And necessarily, if you undergo a sensing as of a pain, then there really exists a pain you are sensing. For the phantom limb case, we acknowledge that there exists a pain, it cannot just be a hallucinatory interoceptive experience.
However even if the representational view can say something sensible about what is going on in referred and phantom cases it remains the case that the correlation between pain and bodily damage, if there is one, is simply too loose for the representational view to be plausible. Is it then right to reject representational thought altogether, or just this version? Maybe it doesn't represent bodily damage but something else altogether. How loose is this correlation between pain and damage? Jennifer Corns posits that that even in quite ordinary cases pain often precedes or outlasts damage or occurs entirely without damage. For example chronic damage, or even examples where the damage has healed but pain may still be experienced. In addition severe damage can also occur with no pain at all, such as where adrenaline stops you from experiencing the pain, even when there is significant damage like the soldier at war.
So why continue to think this threatens the representational view, when the representationalist can continue to respond that these are illusions and hallucinations? While the representationalist could persistently suggest that these cases are illusions and hallucinations it is more plausible to hold that pain experiences do not represent damage than to say they do but get it wrong on several occasions. Perhaps pains represent something other than damage, such as nociceptor activity, something Armstong argues. The looseness of the pain and damage correlation is a central part to Colin Klein’s argument that pain's evolutionary role is not to inform subjects of damage to their bodies but rather to motivate them to do something to act in such a way as to enable a body part to recuperate from damage. Maybe the link between pain and damage is so loose is because its in the context of representationalism.
To correct these problems maybe the representationalist should allow the following; if it seems to you as though you are in pain, then you are. In contrast Murat Aydede defends the definition of pain proposed by the International Association for the study of Pain (IASP). For them pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience (a) associated with actual or potential tissue damage or (b) described in terms of such damage. Maybe this view allows us to believe that for us to undergo a pain experience with phenomenal character is for us to undergo an interoceptive experience that represents either truly or falsely that a given part of your body is damaged. However this view includes an emotional aspect of pain. However still there is still too loose a connection between pain and damage within the representational view. The representational view does not explain the view of pain in a convincing way. Their response to cases where either damage exists but pain does not, or where pains exists and damage does not is inadequate. Our folk psychology encompasses the idea that we can have pains with damage, and we understand it as not a misrepresentation, not an illusion, and not a hallucination.