Abstract

This essay considers the idea of ‘representation’ and pain in neuroscience, continental philosophy, and analytic philosophy. To do so, it considers two forms of representation: _linguistic representation_ refers to how words stand in for experiences or things, while _mental representation_ involves the mind's internal depiction of external reality. First, I consider how the question of pain may be conveyed as a question of representation through the McGill Pain Quotient. I then turn to phenomenology to consider how pain cuts straight through representation. Pain is simultaneously an extra-mental experience and an introspective phenomenal experience involving the affect of pain and the social expression of that affect. But to illustrate how pain lacks intention, I consider how the term ‘representation’ in the neuroscience on cognitive empathy for pain obfuscates the affective ontology of pain experiences. Linguistic expression of pain may suggest belief and representational data, while the phenomenological experience centers around the affective and embodied. Ultimately, the response to pain plays out in social acknowledgement, and both linguistic and mental representation offer necessary but insufficient understandings of ethical acknowledgement. To that end, neuroethics can offer naturalist, physicalist grounds to affirm both the analytic and continental theses about pain and language.