Response to problem of consciousness

PLEASE RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING IN 50 WORDS OR MORE:

No, I don’t believe that we can ever really understand what an experience is for someone else.  For example, pain.  How one person experiences physical pain is subjective. We can’t really know if the pain is felt more intensely by one person versus another.  Even if the same amount of stimulus is given to different people, they experience that pain differently.  Another example is childbirth.  This is a universal experience, yet when women report their pain, it varies widely.  Specifically, their response to their pain threshold. 

I often think about conscientiousness when it comes to animals.  Many people often “read” into their pet’s feelings.  For example, my pet is feeling sad or my pet is angry with me.  I am not sure that we are able to understand what our pets are thinking.  It seems to me that people are projecting their perceived feelings about the animal onto the pet.  How can we possibly know what it is like to be a cat?  And how do we know that a cat “feels” things like we do?  However, there are writers and artists that are able to capture a universal feeling about an experience and portray that “feeling” onto their canvas or through the written word.  These people are able to channel a universal experience in a way that everyone recognizes the truth in it.