But what you say always sounds as though you wished
to deny the existence of pain as opposed to that of pain behaviour. But what could it mean to deny the existence of pain except to deny that people have ever felt pain; or to deny that it makes sense to say that someone has pain? What I do deny is that we can construe the grammar of ‘having pain’ by hypostasising a private object. Or: The private object functions all right only as long as its grammar is
13
entirely constructed to suit the grammar of the common objects in question. & it becomes an absurdity if its nature is supposed to explain that grammar.