 But perhaps a functional role semantics might work better for cashing out what it means for pain experiences to represent tissue damage as bad. The idea is that pain experiences play a certain functional/causal role in the behavioral and mental economy of their owners. In particular, given that they normally signal injury, such experiences are typically causally associated with a certain battery of cognitive and behavioral effects. It might be claimed that this causal or functional profile as a whole (rather than a mere informational link) is what makes pain experiences represent tissue damage as bad.