Wolfgang Schwarz

The Rigidity of 'Pain'

There is a curious problem about rejecting both premise 2 and 3 in this familiar argument:

1. It is conceivable that pain is not CFF.
2. If it is conceivable that pain is not CFF then it is possible that pain is not CFF.
3. If it is possible that pain is not CFF then pain is not CFF.
4. Therefore: pain is not CFF.

I believe that premise 3 is almost certainly false: why can't 'pain' denote CFF at our world and D-fiber firing at other worlds? Or, even better, CFF in humans at our world and other states in other beings here and elsewhere? Some claim that 'pain' must rigidly denote a kind of diagonal state that all beings who are in pain share. But I've never seen a convincing argument why this should be so. Crispin Wright argues (in "The Conceivability of Naturalism") that a) the reference-fixing description for 'pain' is something like 'state of feeling painful', which is itself rigid, and b) necessarily, pain satisfies this description. But it is not at all obvious to me that the reference-fixing description for 'pain' is 'state of feeling painful', rather than, for example, the non-rigid 'state that feels painful' or something physicalistically more acceptable.