Can we ever deny someone’s pain?

Whether we should deny anyone’s pain is clearly an important question. But can we? Is it possible in principle?

This blog post tries to unravel a paradox baked into the official definition of pain. This is “the trap” as Drs. Cohen and Quintner summarize it: if “pain is what the person says it is” … “How, then, is it ever possible to deny an assertion of pain?”

I will also highlight this key phrase in the conclusion:

We have argued here that there is a way to “open the box” and resolve the paradox while both maintaining respect for the experiencer’s point of view and adhering to the definitional connection between pain and nociception.

This is not light reading! 🙂 And I am not endorsing (or criticizing) this challenging piece at this time, just sharing it: grist for the mill, food for thought, content for the nerdiest of pain nerds to chew on.