pains and reasons: why it is rational to kill the messenger

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The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 00, No. 0 ISSN 0031-8094 doi: 10.1093/pq/pqu025 PAINS AND REASONS: WHY IT IS RATIONAL TO KILL THE MESSENGER By Brian Cutter and Michael T ye In this paper, we defend the representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness against a recent objection due to Hilla Jacobson, who charges representationalism with a failure to explain the role of pain in rationalizing certain forms of behaviour. In rough outline, her objection is that the representationalist is unable to account for the rationality of certain acts, such as the act of taking pain killers, which are aimed at getting rid of the experience of pain rather than its intentional object. If representationalism were true, then the act of taking pain killers would be just as irrational as the act of a ruler who responds to bad tidings by killing the messenger. This paper aims to show that these charges are mistaken. Keywords: pain, representationalism, reasons, bodily sensations, consciousness, Humeanism. I. INTRODUCTION Pain is often thought to be a thorn in the side of the representationalist the- ory of phenomenal consciousness, the attractive thesis that the phenomenal character of every experience is fully determined by its representational con- tent. 1 Some opponents of representationalism maintain that pain constitutes a counterexample to representationalism on the grounds that pain lacks rep- resentational content altogether. 2 Others concede that the experience of pain has representational content—in particular, that it represents the presence of a bodily disturbance of a certain physiological type at a certain bodily location— but maintain that this content is not rich enough to account for the most salient aspect of the phenomenology of pain: its negative affective quality, or what 1 This at least is one fairly common way of formulating the thesis of representationalism. For the purposes of this paper, we will ignore alternative versions of representationalism, such as Tye’s ‘property representationalism’. See Tye (2013). 2 See, e.g., McGinn (1982: 8). C The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] The Philosophical Quarterly Advance Access published May 15, 2014 at Northeastern University Libraries on June 3, 2014 http://pq.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from

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Page 1: PAINS AND REASONS: WHY IT IS RATIONAL TO KILL THE MESSENGER

The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 00, No. 0ISSN 0031-8094 doi: 10.1093/pq/pqu025

PAINS AND REASONS: WHY IT IS RATIONALTO KILL THE MESSENGER

By Brian Cutter and Michael Tye

In this paper, we defend the representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness against a recentobjection due to Hilla Jacobson, who charges representationalism with a failure to explain the role of painin rationalizing certain forms of behaviour. In rough outline, her objection is that the representationalistis unable to account for the rationality of certain acts, such as the act of taking pain killers, which areaimed at getting rid of the experience of pain rather than its intentional object. If representationalismwere true, then the act of taking pain killers would be just as irrational as the act of a ruler who respondsto bad tidings by killing the messenger. This paper aims to show that these charges are mistaken.

Keywords: pain, representationalism, reasons, bodily sensations, consciousness,Humeanism.

I. INTRODUCTION

Pain is often thought to be a thorn in the side of the representationalist the-ory of phenomenal consciousness, the attractive thesis that the phenomenalcharacter of every experience is fully determined by its representational con-tent.1 Some opponents of representationalism maintain that pain constitutesa counterexample to representationalism on the grounds that pain lacks rep-resentational content altogether.2 Others concede that the experience of painhas representational content—in particular, that it represents the presence of abodily disturbance of a certain physiological type at a certain bodily location—but maintain that this content is not rich enough to account for the most salientaspect of the phenomenology of pain: its negative affective quality, or what

1 This at least is one fairly common way of formulating the thesis of representationalism. Forthe purposes of this paper, we will ignore alternative versions of representationalism, such asTye’s ‘property representationalism’. See Tye (2013).

2 See, e.g., McGinn (1982: 8).

C© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the Universityof St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

The Philosophical Quarterly Advance Access published May 15, 2014 at N

ortheastern University L

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we might call its ‘painfulness’.3 This is the aspect of pain’s phenomenologywhich is communicated when one says, of some felt disturbance, ‘that hurts!’Granting that one’s experience represents a bodily disturbance as havinga certain location and physiological character, why should the disturbancefeel bad?4

To the charge that the content of pain experience is not rich enough toaccount for its painfulness, representationalists commonly respond that itscontent is richer than their opponents suppose.5 The experience of pain doesindeed represent bodily disturbances—these may be regarded as the objectsof pain experience, as ducks, daggers, and other visibilia are the objects ofvisual experience—and attributes to them certain physiological properties andbodily locations. But in addition to these broadly ‘descriptive’ properties, painexperience also attributes to its object a negative valuational property, such asbadness or harmfulness.6 That is, the experience of pain not only describesbut evaluates its object. And it is the evaluative component of its content thataccounts for its negative affective quality. The bodily trauma one feels, inundergoing an experience of pain, feels bad precisely because one’s experiencerepresents it as bad. We have recently developed this account of pain in detailand have defended it against a range of objections.7 However, Hilla Jacobsonhas recently advanced a novel argument against representationalism whichpurports to show that even our enriched-content account of pain cannotovercome all of representationalism’s difficulties concerning the painfulnessof pain.8 In rough outline, her objection is that the representationalist, evenif he accepts our enriched-content account of pain, is unable to account forthe rationality of certain acts, such as the act of taking pain killers, which areaimed at getting rid of the experience of pain rather than its intentional object.If representationalism were true, then the act of taking pain killers would bejust as irrational as the act of a ruler who responds to bad tidings by killing

3 Two qualifications are in order: first, in its most proper sense, the English predicate ‘painful’applies to felt disturbances, as when we speak of a painful burn or a painful cut. However, wemay also use the predicate in a derivative sense to apply to experiences, i.e., experiences of painfuldisturbances. In this paper, we primarily use the predicate ‘painful’ and the property nominal‘painfulness’ in the latter, derivative sense. Secondly, even in this derivative sense, painfulnessis best understood as a species of negative affect. For there are experiences, such as an olfactoryexperience of vomit, which are not naturally described as ‘painful’ but which have a negativeaffective quality. Because this paper is concerned only with the negative affective quality ofnociceptive experience, however, we will not be fastidious about distinguishing painfulness fromnegative affect more generally.

4 See Block (1996) and Aydede (2006).5 See, e.g., Tye (2006) in Aydede (2006), Cutter and Tye (2011) and Bain (2013).6 In our view, the relevant valuational property is actually somewhat more complex, in that it

is subject-indexed and gradable. That is, the experience of pain attributes to its object somethingmore like the property of being bad (or harmful) for me to degree d. We will (harmlessly) ignore thesecomplications in what follows.

7 See Cutter and Tye (2011).8 See Jacobson (2013).

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the messenger. In what follows, we summarize her objection and argue that itfails.

II. THE RATIONALITY OF ELIMINATING PAIN

It is sometimes rational for a subject to get rid of her pain even without gettingrid of its intentional object. This happens in some cases because the intentionalobject of one’s pain experience is an intentional inexistent, as in the case of non-veridical pains. An amputee may experience ‘phantom pains’ in the locationof his missing limb, though there is no actual bodily trauma where the painsare felt. It would be rational for such a person to seek treatment aimed not ateliminating the bodily disturbance represented by his pain experience (whichin this case does not exist) but merely at eliminating the experience of painitself. But actions of this kind can also be rational in cases of veridical pain.Whenever you take pain killers, you are acting so as to get rid of your painwithout treating the bodily condition it represents. And surely there are casesin which it is rational to take pain killers, even when the pain one aims to kill isveridical. Jacobson takes these cases to support the following claim, the centralpremise in her argument against representationalism:

R1: ‘A subject’s being in pain gives her a reason to get rid of her pain evenwithout getting rid of the intentional object of her pain’ (Jacobson 2013:516).

Jacobson’s main contention is that the representationalist is unable to explainthe truth of R1. (Jacobson seems to assume that the representationalist cando no better than to adopt our enriched-content account of pain. For thisreason, we will assume hereafter that ‘representationalism’ is committed tosomething in the ballpark of this account.) The representationalist maintainsthat the experience of pain represents its object as bad and, indeed, that it hasits characteristic painful quality in virtue of this fact. Jacobson remarks thatthis account of pain’s content

may certainly explain why the subject has a reason to change the bodily conditionrepresented by her pain [. . . ] But it cannot explain why the subject has a reason tochange the condition of her being in pain, even if she will not thereby get rid of thebodily condition it represents. For one has no reason to object to being in a state whichmerely represents that another state is bad. (Jacobson 2013: 518)

Given representationalism, it is unclear what it is about the experience of painwhich could give one a reason to get rid of it. What, after all, is objectionableabout being in a state which merely informs us that something else is bad?

In order to assess Jacobson’s argument, let us return to its central premise,R1. Jacobson supports this premise by appeal to cases in which it is rational

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for an agent to get rid of her pain even without getting rid of its intentionalobject. If we assume that it is rational to do something only if one has a reasonto do it, then these cases support the following:

R2: (At least in many cases) a subject who is in pain has a reason to get rid ofher pain, even without getting rid of the intentional object of her pain.

If Jacobson intends R1 to express something equivalent to R2, then we haveno objections to the former. However, many of Jacobson’s remarks suggest thatshe intends R1 to express something stronger than R2, something which entails(as R2 does not) that in the relevant cases, the subject’s reason to get rid of herpain derives entirely from the phenomenal properties of her pain sensation—inparticular its painfulness. If so, then we respond that her supporting examplesare not fit to do the work for which she employs them. They support R2, butfurther argument is required to bridge the logical gap between R2 and R1.Later we will provide positive reasons to think that this stronger reading of R1is false. Before doing so, however, we would like to show that it is not at alldifficult for the representationalist to explain R2 and therefore to account forwhy it is often rational, for example, to take pain killers.

Here is one perfectly adequate explanation for R2 which is available toeveryone: pain has bad consequences. Some of these are obvious and imme-diate. For example, pain is distracting; it diverts our attentional resources andthereby hinders us in those of our pursuits which require focus. Other badeffects of pain are less obvious and immediate. For example, chronic pain canresult in fatigue, depression, and a wide range of other maladies. We thereforehave an instrumental reason to get rid of our pain.

Here is another perfectly adequate explanation for the truth of R2: we—normal humans—have an aversion to the experience of pain. When we arein pain, we typically desire not to be.9 Sometimes our desire not to be in painis an instrumental desire, as when one desires to get rid of one’s toothache inorder that one may better focus on one’s work. But typically, we (also) havea non-instrumental desire to get rid of our pain; we desire not to be in painfor its own sake. Quite plausibly, this familiar fact by itself provides us withan adequate non-instrumental reason (that is, adequate given the absence ofcountervailing reasons) to get rid of our pain. More generally, it is plausiblethat if one desires something to be the case, then this fact provides one with a(defeasible) reason to act so as to make it the case. Suppose that a man, whilelooking in the mirror, finds himself with a strong aversion to his moustache.He desires to shave it off and is aware of no good reason not to do so, so he acts

9 Arguably there is a subtle difference between having an aversion to one’s experience ofpain and being in pain while desiring not to be. But we do not think these differences arephilosophically significant to the points we are making. For convenience, therefore, we will use‘aversion’ talk and ‘desire’ talk more or less interchangeably.

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on his desire. Will anyone convict him of irrationality? And if a man’s desireto get rid of his moustache provides him with a good enough reason to do so,why should his desire to get rid of his pain be any different?10

The latter explanation cites the fact that people generally have an aversion tothe experience of pain. The representationalist needn’t deny this familiar fact,so she can avail herself of this explanation. However, Jacobson suggests that thisfamiliar fact itself raises a new explanatory difficulty for representationalism.If the representationalist account of pain were correct, she argues,

[. . . ] the existence of the (second-order) con-attitude [i.e. desire or aversion] directedtowards the pain itself would be wholly inexplicable. It would be a mystery why thesubject objects—indeed, why it is reasonable for her to object—to the very fact of herbeing in pain, even if she cannot affect the intentional object of her pain. (Jacobson 2013:518)

Two putative facts are supposed to be mysterious, given representationalism:

M1: When we experience pain, we (typically) desire to get rid of thisexperience.

M2: When we experience pain, it is rational to desire to get rid of this experience.

We find neither mysterious. Let us start with M1. Clearly there is nothingmysterious about the fact that we, having observed pain’s bad consequences,sometimes have an instrumental desire to get rid of pain in order to avoid theseconsequences. Likewise, though less obviously, there is nothing mysteriousabout the fact that we typically have a non-instrumental desire to get rid ofpain. According to the representationalist, the experience of pain consists inthe representation of some bodily disturbance as bad or harmful. Now, stateswhich represent the presence of a harmful bodily condition are precisely thosestates which tend to covary with, and be caused by, the presence of harmfulbodily conditions.11 It is not difficult to imagine an evolutionary explanationfor our natural aversion to such representational states. Organisms with aninstinctive aversion to the experience of pain will be motivated to get rid of thisexperience, or at least diminish its severity. In the absence of pain killers andanaesthetics (luxuries not available to our distant ancestors), the easiest way todo so is to treat, and take care not to aggravate, the bodily condition one’s painexperience represents. Actions of the latter sort have obvious survival value,so it is unsurprising that natural selection has endowed us with dispositions,

10 The above remarks should be agreeable to proponents of a ‘Humean’ theory of reasons,according to which all reasons for action are grounded in motivational states of agents, such asdesires and aversions. But nothing we’ve said commits us to such a theory of reasons. One mayendorse the plausible thesis that motivational states are generally reason-giving without holdingthat motivational states are the only source of reasons for action.

11 See Cutter and Tye (2011) for a much more detailed account of the psychosemantics ofpain along these lines.

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such as an instinctive aversion to the experience of pain, which produce suchactions.12 We do not claim that this constitutes the complete explanation forM1, or even that it is definitely correct as a partial explanation for M1 (thoughwe would be surprised if it turned out to be entirely off-base). We claimmerely that it is a fairly plausible explanation for M1 which is available to therepresentationalist. This suffices to show that M1 is not at all mysterious, givenrepresentationalism.

Let us now consider M2. In order for a desire to ϕ to be rational, it ispresumably not sufficient that it would be rational for one to ϕ. One’s desireto ϕ may, in the absence of good reason not to ϕ, make ϕ-ing rational. Butpresumably this desire does not make itself rational. In order for the desire toϕ to be rational, the agent must have some reason to ϕ which is independent ofher desire to ϕ, a reason which she does not have merely in virtue of having thisdesire. But as we’ve seen, one often has reasons to get rid of one’s experienceof pain which are, in this sense, independent of one’s desire to do so—namely,those deriving from the bad consequences of pain. So the representationalistfaces no difficulties in accounting for the truth of M2.

More carefully, we may take these instrumental reasons to rationalize one’sinstrumental desire to get rid of one’s pain. As will emerge in the followingsection, we do not think that there are non-instrumental reasons to get rid ofone’s pain which are independent of one’s desire to get rid of one’s pain, i.e.,reasons which would continue to be reasons in the absence of one’s desireto get rid of one’s pain. For as we’ll argue, subjects who utterly lack thedesire to get rid of their pain have no non-instrumental reasons to do so.Our non-instrumental desire to get rid of our pain is therefore perhaps bestdescribed as arational. There is, we acknowledge, a temptation to think thateven our non-instrumental desire to get rid of pain is rational, not merelyarational. For the absence of a non-instrumental desire to get rid of one’spain seems to entail a defect in the agent, and it is a typical mark of rationaldesires, as opposed to arational desires, that their absence indicates such adefect. Consider a paradigmatic rational desire, such as the desire for healthor happiness, and a paradigmatic arational desire, such as an idiosyncraticpreference for chocolate over vanilla. There seems to be something defective

12 Nothing we’ve said here suggests that our natural and spontaneous desire to get rid of painis merely an instrumental desire. Given that the evolutionary explanation for our desire to do X isthat it leads us to do Y, it would be fallacious to infer that our desire to do X is an instrumentaldesire—that we desire to do X as a means of doing Y. This is a familiar point. Plausibly, theevolutionary explanation for our desire to engage in sexual intercourse is that this desire leads usto reproduce. But of course, one may desire to engage in sexual intercourse without desiring todo so as a means of reproduction, and indeed while having no desire at all to reproduce. In thepresent case, the fallacious inference in question should be even less tempting. We have suggestedthat the evolutionary explanation for our natural and spontaneous desire to get rid of pain is thatthis desire leads us to treat (and take care not to aggravate) our wounds. But of course, we do notdesire to get rid of our pain as a means of treating our wounds.

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in a person who lacks a desire for health or happiness, whereas there is nothingdefective in the person who lacks a preference for chocolate over vanilla. Inthis respect, the (non-instrumental) desire to get rid of one’s pain resemblesparadigmatic rational desires and differs from paradigmatic arational desires.But we needn’t suppose that we have a non-instrumental reason to avoid painwhich is independent of our desire to do so in order to account for the fact thatthere is something defective in a person who lacks a (non-instrumental) desireto get rid of her pain. As we suggested above, the nearly universal desire to getrid of pain serves an important biological function and forms naturally andspontaneously in any properly functioning mind in response to pain. We cantherefore accommodate the intuition that there is something defective about aperson who lacks this desire—her cognitive faculties are failing to perform oneof their natural functions—without holding that she has a non-instrumentalreason, independent of her desire, to get rid of her pain.

III. REASONS ROOTED IN PHENOMENOLOGY?

We have offered representationalist-friendly explanations for three facts. (i) (Atleast in many cases) a subject who is in pain has a reason to get rid of her pain,even without getting rid of the intentional object of her pain. (ii) When weexperience pain, we (typically) desire to get rid of this experience. (iii) Whenwe experience pain, it is rational to desire to get rid of this experience. Whatmore could Jacobson want?

As mentioned earlier, it seems that Jacobson intends R1 to express somethingstronger than R2, something more or less equivalent to

R3: The experience of pain, simply in virtue of its phenomenal character — inparticular, that aspect of its phenomenal character which we have called its‘painfulness’—provides its subject with a reason to get rid of it.

Why should R3 be mysterious on representationalism? The idea seems to besomething like this: roughly speaking, the representationalist identifies painful-ness with a certain representational property, which we’ll call R: the property of(phenomenally13) representing some bodily condition as bad. But this analysisof painfulness does not seem to explain why a state’s instantiating painfulnesswould give the subject a reason to get rid of that state. We might have a reasonto get rid of those states of ours which instantiate R because they have badconsequences or because we have an aversion to them. But how could themere fact that a state instantiates R provide us with such a reason?

13 Not all representation is phenomenal representation, for not all representational states arephenomenally conscious. In our view, in order for a content to be phenomenally represented,the content vehicle must meet certain conditions, such as being poised to influence one’s beliefsand desires in certain ways. For further discussion, see Tye (1995).

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It is indeed difficult for the representationalist to explain R3. But this is onlya problem if R3 is true.14 Is it? We see no reason to think so. As mentionedearlier, R3 is not actually supported by the cases Jacobson employs for its sup-port. The rationality of taking pain killers, for example, can be accounted forwithout assuming R3, as we’ve seen. Moreover, there is a strong intuitive caseagainst R3. Prefrontal lobotomy patients will often report feeling a sensationwhich they identify as pain, yet report not being bothered by this sensation.15

Consider a subject of this sort who feels a sensation of pain in his arm andhas not the least aversion to it. Imagine that he regards his pain sensation withthe same indifference and detachment with which we might regard a visualsensation of redness. Let us stipulate, furthermore, that this pain sensation willhave no undesirable consequences and that he is aware of this fact. It seems tous that there is nothing about this man’s pain sensation that provides him witha reason to get rid of it (though of course he may have a reason to eliminateor treat the bodily condition which produces the pain sensation).

Our opponent might respond that this man has no reason to get rid of hispain sensation precisely because we have described a case in which pain lacksthe phenomenal property of painfulness. It is this property, after all, which wassupposed to be the source of our reason to get rid of our pain in normal cases.But this response is mistaken. We have described a case in which the subjectlacks an aversion to his experience of pain; we have not described a case in whichthe subject’s experience of pain lacks the property of painfulness, nor do wethink that documented medical cases involving prefrontal lobotomy patientsare best interpreted in this way.16 But we needn’t bother with the difficultquestion of how best to interpret these bizarre medical conditions. For either,the painfulness of a pain experience is something distinct from the subject’saversion to the experience or it is not. If the painfulness of a pain experience isnot distinct from the subject’s aversion to the experience, then it is easy enough

14 It may not be a problem even if it is true. For as far as we can see, no other remotelyplausible analysis of the phenomenal property of painfulness is in a better position to explainR3. Here is a menu of standard analyses (or analysis types) of the property of painfulness. (i)Painfulness is a neural property, e.g., the property that a state possesses just in case it consistsin the firing of C-fibres. (ii) Painfulness is a functional property, which a (token) state has justin case it is of a type whose tokens typically play such-and-such causal role. (iii) Painfulness isthe property possessed by a state just in case it consists in a subject’s being directly aware ofa pain-ish sense datum. (iv) Painfulness is a primitive quale. Just as it is unclear how a state’shaving representational property R could provide one with a reason to get rid of that state, itis equally unclear how a state’s having the relevant neural, functional, sense-data-theoretic, orqualia-theoretic properties could provide one with a reason to get rid of that state. R3, if true,would present a puzzle. But it would be a puzzle for everyone, not just the representationalist.

15 See Freeman and Watts (1950).16 See Grahek (2007) for a detailed and fascinating discussion of the condition of prefrontal

lobotomy patients and the ways in which their condition differs from related conditions, such aspain asymbolia. Grahek argues that pain asymbolia provides the only clear case of pain sensationin the absence of painfulness.

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for the representationalist to say why the painfulness of a pain experienceprovides the subject with a reason to get rid of the experience. This is just aninstance of the more general principle that having an aversion to somethingprovides one with a (defeasible) reason to get rid of it. On the other hand, if—aswe think, and as we will hereafter assume—the two are distinct, then a case likethe one we’ve described, in which a state instantiates painfulness in the absenceof aversion, ought to be possible (no necessary connections between distinctexistences!), even if cases involving prefrontal lobotomy patients are not casesof this sort. And if the case we’ve described is possible, and we are correct thatthe subject in this case has no reason to get rid of his pain sensation despiteits painfulness, then it would appear that R3 is false. The mere painfulness ofa pain sensation, absent any aversion to it, does not provide the subject witha reason to get rid of the sensation. In other words, the experience of paindoes not provide its subject with a reason to get rid of it simply in virtue of itspainfulness; the subject must also have an aversion to it.

At this point, it will be helpful to introduce a more precise theoreticalframework for our talk about reasons. We take it that reasons for action arefacts or states of affairs, things denoted by expressions like ‘the fact that Janeis happy’ or ‘the happiness of Jane’. Now, the conclusion reached above—thatthe mere painfulness of a pain sensation, absent any aversion to it, does notprovide the subject with a reason to get rid of the sensation—is compatiblewith two interpretations of the ordinary case, between which we shall remainneutral. According to the first, it is the subject’s aversion to his pain, not thepainfulness of the pain, which is the subject’s reason to get rid of his pain.According to the second, the painfulness of the pain is the subject’s reason, butit is the subject’s aversion to the pain’s painfulness which enables the latter to bea reason for the subject to get rid of the pain. (Our earlier claim that a subject’saversion to his pain ‘provides him with’ a reason to get rid of it is intended to beneutral between these interpretations.) For our purposes, however, it does notmatter which of these interpretations is correct. For, if the first interpretationis correct, there is no mystery about how the painfulness of a pain could be areason for the subject to get rid of it, for the simple reason that the painfulnessof a pain is not a reason for the subject to get rid of it. On the other hand, if thesecond interpretation is correct, then there is still no mystery about how thepainfulness of a pain could be a reason for the subject to get rid of it. Rather,in those cases in which the painfulness of pain is a reason for the subject to getrid of the pain, this fact is explained by the subject’s aversion to the painfulnessof pain.

Consider an analogy: Martha and Mary each have prints of the samepainting above their desks. The painting has an asymmetrical composition,and Martha, unlike Mary, has an aversion to the painting’s asymmetry.Supposing there are no further relevant differences between Martha’s and

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Mary’s situations, the intuitive verdict seems to be that Martha has a reasonto take down her painting, but Mary does not. From this, we may concludethat the asymmetry of the painting, absent any aversion to it, does not provideone with a reason to take it down. But this conclusion is compatible with twointerpretations of Mary’s case. According to the first, it is her aversion to theasymmetry of the painting, not the asymmetry of the painting itself, which isher reason to take down the painting. According to the second, the asymmetryof the painting is her reason, but it is her aversion to the painting’s asymmetrywhich enables the latter to be a reason for her to take down the painting. Soeither the asymmetry of the painting is not a reason for Mary to take down thepainting or, if it is, there is nothing mysterious about this fact: it is explainedby her aversion to the asymmetry of the painting.

IV. KILLING THE MESSENGER

Jacobson’s objection to representationalism is driven by an analogy to theirrational act of ‘killing the messenger’. If we accept representationalism, shewrites,

we are committed to a picture according to which each time we take a pain killer, webehave like the ruler who killed the messenger who brought him bad news. Under thissuggestion, our behaviour—as well as the con-attitude which leads to it—is as irrationalas the ruler’s erratic act of rage. This implausible picture is bluntly inconsistent with theassumption that subjects do have reasons to get rid of their pains even without gettingrid of the conditions they represent. (Jacobson 2013: 519)

We are now in a position to see why the analogy is inapt. There are no undesir-able consequences associated with sparing the messenger’s life. Moreover, themessenger, unlike the experience of pain, is a person, a being worthy of moralconsideration. This fact gives the ruler an overriding reason not to kill him. Itis these facts together which make the ruler’s act irrational. But it is preciselyon these points that the analogy breaks down. As we’ve seen, the experience ofpain does have bad consequences, and at least in those cases in which it seemsrational to get rid of one’s pain without getting rid of its intentional object,there are no overriding reasons against doing so.

A more exact analogy will clarify matters: a ruler receives bad tidings on apiece of parchment. The great stone wall that marks the northern border ofthe kingdom has suffered structural damage, putting the kingdom at greaterrisk of invasion by neighbouring kingdoms. Upset by the news, the ruler hasa strong desire to tear up the message. Moreover, he is aware of at least onegood reason, independent of this desire, to do so: failure to destroy the messagecould have undesirable consequences; news of the damaged wall might reachhis subjects, resulting in widespread civil unrest. Seeing no reason to refrain

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from acting on his desire, the king proceeds to tear up the parchment. Theact of this second ruler is clearly not irrational. And given representationalism,it is his act, not the murderous act of the first ruler, which is the more exactanalogue of taking pain killers.17

REFERENCES

Aydede, M. (2006) ‘The Main Difficulty with Pain: Commentary on Tye’, in M. Aydede (ed.)Pain: New Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology of Its Study. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bain, D. (2013) ‘What Makes Pains Unpleasant?’, Philosophical Studies, 166/1: 69–89.Block, N. (1996) ‘Mental Paint and Mental Latex’, Philosophical Issues, 7: 19–49 .Cutter, B. and Tye, M. (2011) ‘Tracking Representationalism and the Painfulness of Pain’,

Philosophical Issues, 21: 90–109.Freeman, W. and Watts, J. W. (1950) Psychosurgery in the Treatment of Mental Disorders and Intractable

Pain. Springfield, MA: C.C. Thomas.Grahek, N. (2007) Feeling Pain and Being in Pain, 2nd edn, ch. 7. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.Jacobson, H. (2013) ‘Killing the Messenger: Representationalism and the Painfulness of Pain’,

Philosophical Quarterly, 63: 509–19.McGinn, C. (1982) The Character of Mind. Oxford: OUP.Tye, M. (1995) Ten Problems of Consciousness, ch. 5. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.—— (2006) ‘Another Look at Representationalism about Pain’, in M. Aydede (ed.) Pain: New

Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology of Its Study, 99–120. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.—— (2013) ‘Transparency, Qualia Realism, and Representationalism’, Philosophical Studies, doi:

10.1007/s11098-013-0177-8.

University of Texas at Austin, USA

17 Many thanks to Jonathan Drake and Richard Davis for helpful discussion and to twoanonymous referees for their careful and insightful comments.

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