1 Sensation Terms Peter Pagin Are sensation ascriptions descriptive, even in the first person present tense? Do sensation terms refer to, denote, sensations, so that truth and falsity of sensation ascriptions depend on the properties of the denoted sensations? That is, do sensation terms have a denotational semantics? As I understand it, this is denied by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein rejects the idea of a denotational semantics for public language sensation terms, such as ‘pain’. He also rejects the idea that speakers can recognize sensations. I think these views are mistaken. In this paper I shall present the following: first, my own basic views on how public language sensation terms relate to sensations (section 1); second, to what extent these views are inconsistent with some of Wittgenstein’s main tenets about sensations and sensation language, as set out in Philosophical Investigations ## 243-315, and what I take to be Wittgenstein’s main arguments, in the same text, for those tenets (sections 2 and 3); third, why I think that those arguments are inconclusive (sections 4 and 5); and fourth, what I see as the best arguments for my own views (section 6). Sections 3 and 5 are concerned with the bearing of the private language argument on these matters. 1. Pain as a functional kind of sensation I shall give a very brief presentation of an account of public language sensation terms which is denotational in the following sense: the meaning of a sensation term is given by way of specifying under what conditions an entity (object, individual) 1 belongs to the extension of the term. As is common, I shall use the concept of pain as my example. On my view, the concept of pain is a concept of a property of individual pain sensations. It is expressed by the predicate “… is a pain“. This is a monadic first order predicate, to speak in logical terms. It is true of an entity just in case that entity is a pain sensation. Further, my view is that, almost invariably, a speaker who knows the concept of pain can 1 Even though I shall write as if I assumed sensations to be individuals I do not exclude the possibility that sensation terms are mass terms, and "sensations" actually quantities of sensation. The difference between these views is of no consequence for the present discussion.