ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that pains are real, despite the fact that the scientific utility of reference to pain is undermined by their complex idiosyncrasy. The naturalistically inclined might think this problematic; we might think that anything not usefully referenced within scientific inquiry simply doesn’t exist at all. It might be held that scientific inquiry is not merely a specialised purpose among others, but the method by which we can and should definitively settle questions of existence. If we cannot have successful scientific generalisations about pains, then there must not be any pains. Against this, this chapter argues that the references to pain in everyday life are sometimes successful and useful and should accordingly be retained. Contrary to the traditional eliminativists about pain offered by Daniel Dennett and Valerie Hardcastle considered in this chapter, our everyday notion of pain is neither irresolvably contradictory nor problematically simplistic. The idiosyncratic complexity of pain, which subverts the utility of scientific generalisations, does not disrupt utile reference in everyday life. Neither does idiosyncrasy entail non-existence nor any non-physical substances. Pain thus here serves as a case study of a real and robust kind posted by our everyday theory, which is nonetheless not a natural kind.
