Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Many philosophers take pain as the paradigmatic example of an unpleasant experience and think it is a *necessary* feature: if it isn't unpleasant, it cannot be a pain. I will take several empirical cases and analyze if they show that pain is not unpleasnt. Most philosophers are now convinced that there are examples where, in fact, people experience pains that are not unpleasant. I will show that, contrary to the contemporary philosohical consensus, all the empirical cases can be explained while maintaining that pain is, in fact, unpleasant.