PRAGMATICS, PAIN AND FORMS OF LIFE. PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS ON CHRONIC PAIN (original) (raw)

This paper is an outline of a research on communication and chronic pain. I achieved it thanks to the cooperation between ISAL foundation against pain and the Centre of Ethnosemiotics at Bologna University (CUBE). I will particularly focus on some epistemological and semiotic problems I solved thanks to the pages Wittgenstein dedicated to the relationship between language and pain, both in his Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1958) as well as in his Notes for Lectures On Private Experience and Sense Data (Wittgenstein 1968). The link between language and pain is well documented in anthropology, starting from the seminal work by Lévi-Strauss (1958), without forgetting to mention the studies carried out by Byron Good (1994) and Le Breton (1995). Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s point of view is useful to make our ideas clearer: in particular, he states that the word «pain» is not the sign of an object, considered as a private sensation. As an «object», pain should be independent from the subject who feels pain – but it is not: pain cannot be shown or proved. At the same time, as a private sensation, it would be not understandable by other people; but indeed it is. So expressions like «private object», «experience», and so on, lead to a paradox of sort. Wittgenstein suggests that the verbal expression of pain is better described as behaviour: this behaviour is part of pain. Wittgenstein’s argument on pain should be considered in the general context of his criticism toward psychology. Nevertheless, he describes some real problems, which people face when they must cope with chronic pain.