As malloryerik said in another comment, that seems to be confusing the cause of the pain with the pain itself. The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

> The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

That's exactly the point of the sentence.

No, the sentence talks about imaginary pain, not real pain with imaginary causes.

> the sentence talks about imaginary pain

It does. But read what the sentence says about "imaginary pain"—that it still hurts. That feeling of hurt is pain. So the sentence is saying that "imaginary pain" is just "pain". So pain that you might think is imaginary, is actually real.

Or, equally, pain that you might think is real is actually imaginary. (If the two terms are equivalent, substitution should work in either direction.) Seems obviously false to me.

> No, the sentence talks about imaginary pain, not real pain with imaginary causes.

That's exactly what you're getting wrong. "Imaginary pain" does not mean "imagining a situation where imaginary-you is in pain". It means pain with imaginary causes that applies to the real you.

That's not a possible meaning of "imaginary pain" in my dialect of English.

Seems like the sentence might just be a poor translation from Swedish.

But pain is subjective by definition. What does "imaginary pain" mean? The answer can only include some notion of "cause."

Imaginary pain is pain in your imagination, just like an imaginary car is a car in your imagination. If you stub your toe, you are really in pain and not just imagining it. If you imagine stubbing your toe, you are only in imaginary pain (assuming that you imagine it to be painful).

Precisely. You brought up cause (stubbing your toe). You're agreeing with me.

I didn't downvote any of your comments, but I didn't understand your gripe until this post, and I agree with you that the question is not worded well. Imaginary's primary definition is only existing in your imagination, so it's technically correct on one level, but if you look at synonyms for imaginary, and the way that people commonly use it, you get words like nonexistent, made-up, fictional, unreal, etc..

So nonexistent pain hurts as much as real pain? Doesn't that make even less sense?

I think the disconnect here is on what imaginary means in this sentence.

Most people in this thread see it as real physical pain conjured up by one's imagination - so things like psychosomatic pain, pain caused by mental illness, pain caused by fears, etc. So think of someone getting dizzy from their fear of heights, or a hoarder doubled over retching because someone is throwing away parts of their hoard.

Whereas you in essence think that it's an oxymoron - if it's real pain, it by definition can't be imaginary. So it's just a thought exercise or a theatrical performance.

So maybe the sentence would be less bullshitty if it read "irrational pain" or something like that.

But as most people read "imaginary pain" as "real pain felt, without reason" instead of "fake pain you're just imagining about", I think your reading of "imaginary" is too parsimonious.

>Whereas you in essence think that [imaginary pain] is an oxymoron

No, I think that there is such a thing as imaginary pain, just as there is such a thing as an imaginary elephant. You can imagine being in pain. You can imagine an elephant. But if someone said "imaginary elephants weigh just as much as real elephants", I would be confused (unless they just meant that the imagined weight of the imagined elephant was equal to the weight of the real elephant).

A true sign of a troll is when they write 100 words about the one word in your comment they disagree with instead of the 99% they agree with.

Sorry, I could have been more clear, and kthejoker explained it better (I think). If you use the primary definition, the question makes sense. If you use definitions like 'nonexistent,' the question doesn't make sense. The question basically asks you to infer that it means only existing in your imagination. It's too ambiguous for my taste - for no good reason.