A personal and a subpersonal level are distinguished for the description and explanation of pain, Three explanatory projects are sketched, two of them within a single level of conception and the third across two levels, It is shown that even after the satisfactory completion of these projects there would remain a fundamental puzzle about the experience of pain, From a specific viewpoint of consciousness, the relation between conscious pain at the personal level and the corresponding neural processes at the subpersonal level remains conceptually hard to grasp. Considered in terms of causation, the relation creates the danger of an inacceptable epiphenomenalism. Conceived of as identity, the relation becomes unintelligible, When discussed in terms of supervenience or emergence, the relation in effect remains unexplained, and the danger of epiphenomenalism tends to recur, The discussion ends with warnings of false conclusions.
