As to the use of the word
“imagine” ‒ ‒ ‒ one might say:
“Surely there is quite a definite act of imagining the
other person to have pain”. Of course we
don't deny this, or any other statement about
facts. But let us see: If we make an image
of the other person's pain, do we apply it in the same way
in which we apply the image, say, of a black eye, when we imagine
the other person having one? Let us again replace
imagining, in the ordinary sense, by making a painted image,
(This could quite well be
the way certain beings
did their imagining.) Then let a man imagine in this
way that A has a black eye. A very important
application of this picture will be comparing it with the real eye
to see if the picture is correct. When we vividly
imagine that someone suffers pain, there often enters in our image
what one might call a shadow of a pain felt in the locality
corresponding to that in which we say his pain is felt.
But the sense in which an image is an image is determined by the
way in which it is compared with reality. This we might
call the method of projection. Now think of comparing
an image of A's toothache with his
89.
toothache. How
would you compare them? If you say, you compare them
“indirectly” via his bodily behaviour, I answer
that this means you
don't compare them as you
compare the picture of his behaviour with his behaviour.