Why We Should Be Experientialists about Suffering

Increased interest in suffering has given rise to different accounts of what suffering is. This paper focuses the debate between experientialists and non-experientialists about suffering. The former hold that suffering is necessarily experiential-for instance, because it is necessarily unpleasant or painful; the latter deny this-for instance, because one can suffer when and because one's objective properties are damaged, even if one does not experience this. After surveying how the two accounts fare on a range of issues, the paper presents a decisive argument in favor of experientialism. The central claim is that non-experientialist accounts cannot accommodate cases of suffering that are virtuous and that directly contribute to some objective good.