ABSTRACT
This chapter argues to the effect that the pain/suffering distinction is a distinction without a difference. Ordinary language distinguishes between having pain, feeling pain, suffering pain, and still other attitudes or psychological episodes one may entertain towards pain. Pains are not the only negative sensations than have bodily location: itches, hunger pangs, nauseas, general bodily feeling such as fatigue or being cold are also felt as located in the body. Instead of defining pain in terms of suffering, one might attempt to define suffering in terms of pain. Suffering is an emotion which, like other emotions, is intentional, can be expressed, with which one can sympathise, and which is liable of justification. The chapter argues that pain and suffering are distinct, that neither is subsumed under the other or under a common kind, that a pain is not a suffered bodily sensation, and that suffering is not experiencing the badness of pains.
