Refute my objection?

[Explicit]

I need help coming up with a refute to the objection.  In case you're wondering, it's for my essay in philosophy.  I'm to write an argument, object to one of the premises, and then refute the objection.  The problem is that I can't seem to find anything flawed or erroneous about it, so hopefully that's where you guys come in.

Someone objecting to never truly knowing if you were awake or dreaming would contend that on the contrary, you can truly know if you are awake or dreaming.  The reason being that we experience pain only when we are awake, and that as much as we perceive a dream to be reality, pain will never be something that a dream is capable of bringing into reality.

[rabbit]

But then if you are in such a weird place (like...Mars) and feel pain, does that mean that you are really on Mars?

[Explicit]

But then if you are in such a weird place (like...Mars) and feel pain, does that mean that you are really on Mars?

Can you elaborate for me?

[Chavo]

You claim the premise that we cannot experience pain in dreams.  A premise with no grounds in this argument.  By the way, your wording in the first sentence is not very easy to read. 

[CrAz3D]

Could it be something along the lines of...

You currently know that there are 2 states, awake & asleep.  You've woken up from asleep & remember doing it.  You've never woken up from awake that you know of.

[Explicit]

You claim the premise that we cannot experience pain in dreams. A premise with no grounds in this argument. By the way, your wording in the first sentence is not very easy to read.

The premise is actually that we cannot truly know if we are awake or dreaming.

The whole thing about pain and not being able to experience it in dreams is the objection, and I'm trying to find a point that refutes it that still maintains the above premise.

And I apologize about the wording.  I did change that last night in my paper... rather, earlier this morning because I pulled an all-nighter, but I forgot to update it here.  You still get what I mean though, right?  :P

[Explicit]

Could it be something along the lines of...

You currently know that there are 2 states, awake & asleep. You've woken up from asleep & remember doing it. You've never woken up from awake that you know of.

From the way I'm interpreting that, it still doesn't address how pain is experienced only when you're awake and never when you're dreaming.

What I have of it so far:
I wake up from dreaming -- pain does not exist.
I have never woke up from awake -- I can't be certain if pain exists.

Unless, forgive my misinterpretation if it's erroneous, you are getting at the point that the pain we perceive to experience in the reality of being awake doesn't exist, like how it doesn't exist when we are dreaming.  In other words, you're implying that there is another state of awakening above what we believe to be awake where the realm of pain actually exists?

Am I getting that right?

Edit: If that were the case, then how is it that we are able to distinguish between pain from no pain (awake vs dreaming)?  Wouldn't we still believe that pain exists as an actual thing in being awake?  Put another way, how do we know that in dreams, we feel no pain, but in being awake, we do feel pain?

[rabbit]

How do we know pain exists only when awake?  Maybe it's completely opposite?

[Explicit]

How do we know pain exists only when awake? Maybe it's completely opposite?

Well, I don't see any in-between for when you're awake or dreaming.  It's either you're awake, you're dreaming, or you just are, the last one being that you exist but don't think or perceive anything at all.  But if that were the case, the argument would branch off into how you could exist without being a thinking thing (something external to the mind), which is still what philosophers are still trying to figure out today.  That would not be possible since we are all (us people that is) thinking things (referring to the cogito).

By opposite, do you mean that we experience pain when we're dreaming and we don't experience it when we're awake?  How would that logically follow?

[rabbit]

Maybe we think we're awake when we're dreaming?  There's an episode of Stargate SG-1 (season 9, IIRC) where one of the characters gets his brain screwed with.  He always thinks he's awake because when he goes to sleep in one state he wakes up in the other.  Both seem completely real to him.  It was a fun episode :)

[Explicit]

Maybe we think we're awake when we're dreaming? There's an episode of Stargate SG-1 (season 9, IIRC) where one of the characters gets his brain screwed with. He always thinks he's awake because when he goes to sleep in one state he wakes up in the other. Both seem completely real to him. It was a fun episode :)

Can you find a link to the episode for me?  It sounds really trippy.  :P

[Explicit]

Okay, thus far, I've come up with this refute to the objection:

My response to this is that pain is a conception of the mind whether it is in a dream, or when you are awake.  Whenever we talk about pain as an experience, we talk about them as if they are an object of some sort of inner perception, the implication being introspection.  If that be the case, it would suggest that pain is a purely subjective experience rather than an objective one.  After all, the experiences we perceive are all in the mind.

Does anyone see anything invalid or unsound about this?

[rabbit]

'The Changeling'
EPISODE NUMBER - 619
ORIGINAL U.S. AIR DATE - 02.28.03
SYNDICATION AIR DATE - 04.26.04
WRITTEN BY - Christopher Judge, Brad Wright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changeling_(Stargate_SG-1)