Translating Pain
Seamus Barker philosphising on pain. Another take worth considering!
From this starting point, I put forward the idea that “pain is always already a translation”. Ever since the “linguistic turn” in 20th Century Philosophy, most philosophers have accepted the idea that our access to reality is structured by language. When I see a tree, a chair, or a table, I cannot help but recognize the tree as a tree, the chair as a chair, the table as a table, even when no words enter my mind. I cannot help but see the world as divided up into units, units which, even when they are very practical, still require some underlying concept. We perceive the world always already as divided into different things, a differentiating effect which emerges through the structuring properties of language.