But how do we know that the experiences reported by other people are at all the same as ours? Maybe when you say you are experiencing brown, chewy bread, you are really having the same experience I have when I experience white, soggy bread. There are two reasons for doubting that
there is sufficient variability in experience to undermine the usefulness of testimony. First, the general pattern of experiences that people usually report has a great deal of overall coherence with my pattern of experience, which makes it implausible that we differ in just one kind of experience such as brown or chewy. Second, there is much evidence from anatomy and brain scanning experiments to suggest that people's brains are very similar for sensory processing. Hence there is good reason to take the testimonial reports of other people at face value, in the absence of evidence that they are lying or demented.