Knowing It Hurts

Fred Dretske

Duke University

Even if one regards pain as something one is necessarily aware of (if you don't feel it, it doesn't hurt), there is still a question about how you know you are in pain. Feeling x, awareness of x, doesn't imply knowledge of x. Yet, for those who know what pain is, for those who have the concept of pain, it seems that (unlike cancer or poison ivy) they enjoy a kind of infallibility about whether or not they have it. Where does this authority come from? I look at one possible answer, an answer I think most plausible, and conclude that it doesn't take us very far. We still have an epistemological problem about pain.