This conception of an idea is the basis for Descartes of what has been called the transparency of mind: I cannot be mistaken that I am thinking about what I am thinking about.
If I feel hungry or see my friend, I cannot be mistaken about who the subject of that experience is, even if I can be mistaken about it being hunger (perhaps it's really thirst), or about it being my friend (perhaps it's his twin), or even about whether I am actually seeing him (I may be hallucinating).
If there is no appearance/reality distinction applicable to pain, then it seems that one cannot be mistaken about one's beliefs about one's pain formed on the basis of feeling pain in the way one can be mistaken about the existence and properties of the apple one sees.
It is true that the female Bandaloopers cannot be mistaken for ballerinas; they have the bulging muscles and upper body strength that would disqualify them from a role in "Swan Lake".
In giving even that minimal characterization, it is important to emphasize that skeptics and nonskeptics alike accept the same definition of knowledge, one that implies two things: (1) if A knows that p, then p is true, and (2) if A knows that p, then A cannot be mistaken (i.e., it is logically impossible that A is wrong.
This last option fits with the traditional idea that seemings have a special epistemic status; it fits with the idea that we cannot be mistaken about how things seem to us and that, in that context, misrepresentation is not possible.
To ensure that you cannot be mistaken for a lesser being, you can now buy gold-and-diamond saucepans from Harrods.
In this chapter, Kennedy argues that intimate theatre cannot be mistaken for television, but that it nonetheless benefits from an audience's experience of filmic acting conventions and the close-up shot.
It seems we are either wrong to think that people cannot be mistaken about being in pain (wrong about infallibility), or pain needn't be inherently awful (wrong about intrinsic awfulness).
