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.

I also believe that premise 2 is probably false. It presupposes that the conceivable world from premise 1 really satisfies 'pain is not CFF', rather than being a world where something other than pain satisfies the conditions that determine the reference of 'pain'. That is, it presupposes that the A-intension of 'pain' coincides with its C-intension. This would perhaps be true if the A-intension of 'pain' were (expressible by) something like 'state that feels painful', or Wright's 'state of feeling painful'. For it really sounds strange to say that at some world, something other than pain could be the state that feels painful at that world. But I believe that materialism is probably true, and that if materialism is true then reductive (type-A) materialism is true. And if reductive materialism is true, the A-intension of 'pain' must be expressible in physical terms. Let's say 'the P-state' is such a physical analysis of 'pain'. So it is a priori that pain is the P-state. But I'd rather avoid saying that pain is necessarily the P-state: it is far more credible to hold that, analytically, pain is whatever state people exhibiting pain behaviour actually are in, than to hold that necessarily, somebody is in pain iff he exhibits pain behaviour. Thus the most attractive position for a materialist seems to be that 'pain' and 'the P-state' do not corefer at all worlds, because 'pain' rigidly denotes the actual P-state.

Now the curious problem emerges. In the last paragraph I flatly contradicted the claim that 'pain' isn't rigid which I made to reject premise (3) in the paragraph before.

I think the solution is to use some more counterpart theory. First of all, for permise (3) to be true, 'pain' and 'CFF' must not only be rigid, but strongly rigid, and there is very little reason to believe they are. That's why I said I'm almost certain that premise (3) is false. But there remains the question of whether 'pain' is weakly rigid. The best answer might be to say that 'pain' invokes a counterpart relation that is somewhere in between clear cases of rigidity and non-rigidity, but I have to think more about what that relation looks like.

By the way, I think it is quite unfortunate that the cited argument is often considered to be a major argument against materialism. This might create the impression that one can easily save materialism just by rejecting Kripke's hyper-essentialist account of rigidity. But that's wrong: the Mary and Zombie arguments do not mention rigidity at all.