1 Introduction: A Critical and Quasi-Historical Essay on Theories of Pain

Consider the ordinary situations where we perceptually interact with our immediate environment. We identify and recognize objects and their sensible features by perceiving them. Our immediate focus and interest are normally the objects of our perception , understood in the broadest possible way (states, events, processes, conditions or their sensible features, etc.). We see the apple on the table; we see its color, size, and shape, we reach and hold it, we feel its surface, we smell it, and as we bite it we taste it. In all this, our perceptual interaction with the apple is geared toward or ensues in conceptually identifying or recognizing the apple and its sensible features. Perception typically results, in other words, in deploying concepts that apply in the first instance to the objects of our perception and their sensible qualities. We perceptually categorize the apple as an apple, its color as red, its shape as roughly spherical by mobilizing (consciously or not) the relevant concepts. In short, the locus of immediate identification or recognition, that is, immediate concept application, in perception is the perceptual object and its sensible qualities. Call this kind of situation the Normal Situation (NS). 1 Now consider situations in which we feel pain. I reach down to pick up the pencil that I accidentally dropped on the floor behind the desk. In trying to reach the pencil behind the desk, I twist my arm and orient my hand uncomfortably, and then suddenly I feel a sharp jabbing pain in the back of my hand. In frustration, I pull back and start rubbing my hand thinking that I probably got a muscle cramp or pulled a muscle fiber. I feel pain in the back of my right hand, and I think and say so. How do situations like this compare with Normal Situations? Of course, I recognize that it is my hand, in particular the back of my hand, that hurts. I realize that the pain started at the moment I twisted my arm in that way. I also realize that something bad must have happened, physically, at the location I feel pain, though I am not sure what: my guess is that it is a small muscle cramp, and I hope that I didn't pull a muscle string because I know this takes more time to heal and is more painful overall. But what is it that I felt in …