ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on accounts of the nature of pain currently dominating analytic philosophy. The starting point for such theories is a view dubbed the orthodoxy of simplicity. According to this orthodoxy, pains are mental episodes which are pains in virtue of their distinctive qualitative character, i.e. in virtue of what it is like for one to undergo the mental episode (when that episode is conscious). I dub this qualitative character the pain quality. The chapter offers general considerations against the orthodoxy of simplicity. This includes argument that the orthodoxy is unmotivated; no arguments are offered for it, and the revisions of everyday theory that its acceptance would require are of dubious benefit. Second, it is argued to be inconsistent with the naturalist, intentionalist theories of qualitative character currently dominating analytic philosophy. Drawing on pain reports from everyday life and clinical observations, arguments against the pain quality as being explained by any intentionalist theory, i.e. representationalist or imperativist. Finally, as also argued directly in other chapters of this work, the orthodoxy is apparently at odds with the componential accounts of pain accepted by everyday theory, our best science, and clinical practice.
