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ABSTRACT This paper investigates the status of the purported explanatory gap between pain phenomena and natural science, when the "gap" is thought to exist due to the special properties of experience designated by "qualia" or "the pain quale" in the case of pain experiences. The paper questions the existence of such a property in the case of pain by: (1) looking at the history of the conception of pain; (2) raising questions from empirical research and theory in the psychology of pain; (3) considering evidence from the neurophysiological systems of pain; (4) investigating the possible biological role or roles of pain; and (5) considering methodological questions of the comparable status of the results of the sciences of pain in contrast to certain intuitions underpinning "the explanatory gap" in the case of pain. Skepticism concerning the crucial underlying intuitions seems justified by these considerations.
Introduction
Qualiaphiles are theorists who believe that consciousness or experience has some special features whose presence make it impossible for any current physical science or close descendants thereof to yield an explanation of experience. Not every theorist who writes of qualia is a qualiaphile, by my definition [1]. Qualiaphiles insists on an explanatory gap, of the widest possible dimensions, between experience and a scientific account of experience. In the arguments for such a gap, there are some big ideas indeed. There is a certain conception of consciousness, of experience, an implicit view of the structure and scope of science, some account of the ideas of explanation and reduction, and a theory of what is and what is not possible in principle, and other big ideas seemingly at play in the qualiaphiles' skepticism about what natural sciences could accomplish. I will certainly not try to smooth my way over each of these large hurdles. My aim is quite modest, really. I want to focus just on the so-called special features or properties of conscious experience, and pain in particular, for these are the properties whose presence is said to create the necessary gap qualiaphiles believe they have found (Nagel, 1974; Levine, 1983; Chalmers, 1996). These features are, of course, the qualia which give defenders of the gap their name here.
I wish to introduce some grounds for skepticism about these features...