The Importance of Consciousness in Pain

Knowing that another person experiencing blue tells us very little about the contents of that experience. Are they seeing the sky, the blue mosque in Turkey, a policeman shirt? Far more information than blue is perceived would be required to give us an idea of what that experience might be like. And so it is with pain really. Even if we can describe the objective physical goings on in the nervous system, this tells us nothing about the subjective experience of pain.