Martin Dimitrov

Proponents of evolutionary debunking arguments claim the belief that pain is bad is among the easiest to debunk. I argue it is unclear why the tendency to have this belief would have been selected for. Pain evolved to signal and motivate us to deal with harmful extramental events (e.g., tissue damage). It also brings about evaluative judgments about its external intentional content and causes (e.g., we judge something bad is happening to our leg). I argue that such beliefs are more efficient and more reliable at getting us to deal with harm than ones about the badness of the pain itself. Thus, evaluative beliefs about extramental states of affairs are much more likely to have evolved for this purpose. Belief in the badness of pain might even have been maladaptive given it would have redirected cognitive resources away from dealing with adverse bodily conditions and onto our own mental states. These considerations make it unlikely evolutionary pressures pushed us to also think pain, the mere messenger of harm, is bad. Therefore, we lack a straightforward debunking story for these beliefs. I conclude with a vindicating explanation.

First, I argue that some phenomenological theory of pleasure and displeasure must be true because purely attitudinal theories cannot explain cases of hedonic change. Specifically, when we introspect a pleasant sensation becoming unpleasant, there is a radical change in what it is like to be us. Since this change cannot be explained in terms of changes in any nonhedonic phenomenal character, (dis)pleasures have a particular phenomenal character. I then argue for a version of the distinctive feeling theory I call the evaluative qualia view. It says (dis)pleasures are experiences that instantiate evaluative phenomenal properties. I support this view in two ways. First, I argue on the basis of introspective considerations that (dis)pleasures are unified in that they have an evaluative phenomenal character; they feel good or bad. Then, I argue this evaluative character should be understood in terms of determinate phenomenal properties rather than “aspects” of such properties or determinables. Finally, I answer some objections against the view, including the heterogeneity objection and the implausibility of having (dis)pleasure while being indifferent to them.

Upon introspection, we judge that suffering feels bad. I argue there is no appearance-reality gap when it comes to introspective judgments about simple, intrinsic, nonrepresentational phenomenal states like itches, tingling, and suffering's feeling bad. On constitutivism about phenomenal introspection, there is no appearance-reality gap here because these judgments are literally constituted by the phenomenal states they are about. As a result, we are directly acquainted with the intrinsic properties of experience in having these judgments. Reflecting on our direct acquaintance with intrinsic badness, we can know that our suffering instantiates this judgment-independent evaluative property.