
Is it accurate to say that you have a pain in your left foot because you feel – perceive – the pain there? Is pain a perception?
Many publications in the scientific pain field say so; e.g.:
The way the sky looks is blue. The colour blue, however, is not an experience. Rather, it is a property of material phenomena. In this case, a property of the sky.
Experiences can be of a blue object, or the colour blue; but to think that experiences can be blue is like thinking that the number two is blue, which is a category mistake.
To make the same point with different examples:
– The white rose I see is white, not my seeing of it.
– The tightness of my new shoes is not tight, the shoes are.
– The bang I hear is loud, not my hearing of it.
The same logic applied to pain experiences:
– The pain I feel is piercing, not my feeling it.
– The burning of my pain does not burn, the pain does.
– The pain I sense is intrusive, not my sensing of it.
I think the view of pain as a perception makes a category mistake: it confuses what is perceived (‘The sky looks blue’; ‘The pain burns’), with a perceiving of it (‘I see the blue sky’; ‘I feel a burning pain’).
The pain is what is painful, not the feeling of it. Therefore, pain is not a perception.
Pain is a material phenomenon of a living organism, a phenomenon characterised by a complex array of distinctive responses and reactions.
Historically, it is correct to deny that pain is a sensation in opposition to the traditional Specificity Theory of Pain. In clinical settings nowadays, it is more accurate to call pain an ‘experience’: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.”
Following Wittgenstein, I propose that to feel pain is to have pain – not to feel pain and, in addition, to perceive it. When I feel a pain, there are not two things involved: the pain, and my feeling the pain. Feeling pain is just being in pain.