You are here: pain and its location

Simone Gozzano

Università degli Studi dell'Aquila

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When we consider bodily pain, it seems we are uniquely in the realm of the first person only, with no space for a second person. In this paper, I shall argue that it is in the interplay between the first and second persons, the social dimension of language, that our use of locative spatial terms inherits its rules and constraints. This interplay, in a form of triangulation proposed by Davidson, could provide us with a viable solution to the problem of the location of bodily pain. The solution lies in adopting representationalism while recognizing the limits of the representational system.

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Keywords: pain, location of pain; representationalism; experientialism; triangulation, second person.