Philosophy paper - Part II

I don't understand the subject matter for this assignment. Allow me to present you with an exerp from our textbook. Here, you will get a glimpse into the realm of philosophy and all that intails (pain, suffering and eventual failure in the classroom).

"This formula: a mental state is a state of the person apt for producing certain ranges of behavior, I believe to be a very illuminating way of looking at the concept of mental states."

Yes, well that's fantastic, David Armstrong, except that no one knows what you're talking about. I hate how philosophers just leave random, vague and unexplainable statements out there for us to hopelessly translate and interpret. There is a section in our textbook where philosopher David Lewis, who disagrees with some of Armstrong's points, proves that philosophers have lost touch with the rest of the human population. That section reads:

"I don't object to the strategy of claiming ambiguity. As you'll see, I shall defend a version of it. But it's not plausible to cook up an ambiguity ad hoc to account for the compossibility of mad pain and Martian pain. It would be better to find a wide-spead sort of ambiguity, a sort we would believe in no matter what we thought about pain, and show that it willsolve our problem. That is my plan."

After scrutinzing and deeply perusing surrounding text, I concluded that David Lewis has lost his mind. As if that isn't bad enough, he conclusively proves my point that philosophers have lost touch with the rest of human civilization just three paragraphs later:

"This is not to say, of course, that it might have been that pain was not pain and nonpain was pain; that is, that it might have been the the occupant of the role did not occupy it and some nonoccupant did. Compare: "The winner might have lost" (true) versus "It might have been that the winner lost" (false). No wording is entirely unambiguous, but I trust my meaning is clear."

You trust that your meaning is clear? Wow. David Lewis, you are sad man. Now you can see why this philosophy paper will no doubt take a while for me to finish, or at least comprehend. It's simply just a matter of how much 'BS' I can type before I fall asleep.