Why Does Another Person’s Report of Pain Deserve Initial Trust?

A colleague says a migraine has begun, yet there is no visible wound and no instrument reading in front of us. Why not reply, “Prove it first”? Pain is a first-person experience. Other people can observe expression, behaviour and bodily indicators, but they cannot experience it externally in the same way.

Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge call the ordinary standing of such reports first-person authority. Someone saying “I am in pain” does not normally need to gather evidence as if reporting the weather; the listener begins from that person's statement. This does not mean people can never misunderstand, exaggerate or feign their condition. It means doubt requires a particular reason and cannot rest merely on “I cannot see it”.

Miranda Fricker's account of testimonial injustice adds a further warning. When prejudice causes some speakers to receive less credibility in advance, they suffer more than discourtesy: their standing as reporters of experience is diminished. The issue is not that every statement must be accepted uncritically, but whether credibility is distributed according to relevant evidence.

My view is that initial trust is a revisable epistemic position. High-stakes decisions may properly require further information, professional assessment or consistency checks. Yet verification should begin by recognising the speaker's special position in relation to their own experience. First-person authority is neither infallibility nor immunity from discussion. It places the burden of doubt appropriately: the fact that pain is not visible is not itself evidence that the pain is absent.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge/
https://iep.utm.edu/epistemic-injustice/