Everyday Thinking about Bodily Sensations

Abstract

In the opening section of this paper we spell out an account of our naïve view of bodily sensations that is of historical and philosophical significance. This account of our shared view of bodily sensations captures common ground between Descartes, who endorses an error theory regarding our everyday thinking about bodily sensations, and Berkeley, who is more sympathetic with common sense. In the second part of the paper we develop an alternative to this account and discuss what is at stake in deciding between these two ways of understanding our everyday view. In the third and final part of the paper we offer an argument in favour of our alternative.

Notes

²Of course, a pain will have extrinsic features that the subject of the pain does not feel. For example, someone else's pain might have the property of being simultaneous with your act of reading this sentence. This property of the pain will not be felt by the subject.

¹The phrase ‘mere feel’ is to be distinguished from the more familiar phrase ‘raw feel’. A mere feel is to be understood as something that enjoys features (1) – (4). A raw feel is a non-intentional mental state.

³It is doubtful that Descartes' view of common sense is so fully worked out. Thomas Reid was perhaps the first to distinguish features (1) – (5) and explicitly attribute them to sensations. See Ganson [2008].

⁴We assume (without argument) that Descartes is a pluralist about pains and colours. He distinguishes two types of colours (colours-as we-experience-them and colours-in-bodies) and two types of pains (pains-as-we-experience-them and pains-in-our-bodies). For a reading of Descartes as a pluralist about colour, see Maund [1995]. On our interpretation of Descartes, colours-as-we-experience-them and pains-as-we-experience-them are mere feels; colours-in-bodies and pains-in-our-bodies are not.

⁵One need not embrace idealism in order to make sense of the idea that (1) – (6) all belong to the same thing. For a different strategy, see Jackson [1977: 80–4]. Jackson underestimates the difficulty of finding a theoretically plausible view of sensations that accommodates all of (1) – (6). Jackson's own view is that pains (understood as sense-data) are located just where their causes (bodily disturbances) are. This view is quite odd. In the usual case causes have distinct spatial locations from their effects: typically they are contiguous with one another.

⁶Of course, Kripke [1980: 144–55] employs this strategy in his celebrated attack on the identity theory.

⁷We are assuming that perception sometimes involves bodily action (moving one's eyes, turning one's head, drawing in breath …) and that it sometimes involves mental action (actively attending). Our claim in the argument at hand is that, in the usual case, bodily action is no part of feeling pain in the way that bodily action can be part of seeing a scene before the eyes. One might go even further and deny that there is anything like active attending involved in feeling pain. We distinguish hearing from listening, and seeing from looking, on the grounds that listening and looking involve actively attending, while hearing and seeing need not. Given how forcefully pains demand our attention, there may be no room for a distinction akin to that between hearing and listening. However, since we can sometimes actively divert attention from pain, presumably active attention to pain is possible as well. (We are following O'Shaughnessy [2000: 379–80] in using the phrase ‘active attending’ to describe the difference between mere hearing and listening).

⁸Although he does not distinguish (2) and (2′), Langsam [1995] offers an explanation of our hesitation to speak of unfelt pains that fits well with the idea that we are committed merely to (2′). According to Langsam, we generally suppose that pains do not exist unfelt because we do not have anything plausible to say about why we fail to perceive them. This suggestion is promising, but Langsam's defence of it is incomplete. Langsam is relying here on the general claim

that, if we think of objects of some kind as continuing to exist even when we are not experiencing them, it is because we have something plausible to say about why we experience these objects only at certain times, despite their continuing existence.

[Langsam 1995: 308]

Langsam fails to consider the possibility that we might have good reason to think of a certain item as continuing to exist, even though we are no longer able to perceive it and even though we as yet have nothing plausible to say about why we are unable to perceive it. (Perhaps a trustworthy scientist or oracle has assured us that the item still exists.) He should not assume, without argument, that cases of this sort are impossible.

⁹Our claim here is not that a passive individual incapable of any spatial actions would be unable to distinguish these differences in sensory inputs. We are making the more modest claim that such an individual will not have the same need for such a distinction.

¹⁰We are, of course, able to bring about new pains and sometimes we can make pains go away, but we are interested here in the felt character of our pains. On occasion we can alter the intensity of an existing pain by, say, increasing or reducing pressure to the disturbed area, but generally speaking there is very little we can do to affect the felt character of our pains.

¹¹Although we have been focusing on the Cartesian critique of common sense, worries about our everyday concept of pain are pervasive and they typically presuppose something like the Traditional Account. For a helpful survey of the topic, see Aydede [2005: 1–58].

¹²One might suggest that this objection to the Traditional Account fails because what is felt is not the swelling or muscle contraction. The subject of phantom-limb sensations is feeling something, but she is not feeling swelling or pressure of the limb. There is no limb! Surely ordinary bodily sensations work the same way: what we immediately feel is something other than conditions of the flesh. This response on behalf of the Traditional Account is inadequate. What we have here is a philosophical argument and no part of common sense. Indeed, the conclusion of the argument seems to be at odds with our naïve, common-sense view that we are immediately aware of states of the body.

¹³We suspect that the line of reasoning here has played a significant role in convincing philosophers that the Traditional Account succeeds in capturing what the common-sense view is: they suppose typical responses to phantom-limb patients are best explained on the assumption that people are thinking of bodily sensations as trustworthy (in the sense defined above). Our alternative suggestion, developed below, is that people react the way they do to phantom-limb pains largely because they lack clarity regarding the nature of pain.

¹⁴Special thanks to three anonymous referees for valuable written comments. Thanks also to Murat Aydede and Colin Klein for discussion of the issues.