Is there a volume control that only affects the volume that I hear, but not the audio itself?

The people that wouldn't be confused by it would be the ones that left it alone, and set to 0dB... But that's not the only reason it isn't there. Any control like that would only work with a sound device that was built into the OS. Most professional users use external devices, and there's no way you could include anything that could control them all - if that facility is available on an external device, it would inevitably use a protocol that no other device used. 

Back in the days of Cool Edit, there was actually a control that would do this with an internal Windows-based sound device but that was all it would do, for the reasons I've explained. It was unceremoniously dropped, possibly even before Adobe bought out Syntrillium.