Engineering the Concept of Pain for Clinical Practice

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(under review)

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Abstract Conceptual engineering is often understood as the practice of assessing and improving our representational tools with specific aims in mind. In this paper, I contribute to the engineering of the concept of pain, with a particular focus on clinical utility. My engineering efforts center on the International Association for the Study of Pain’s (IASP) “official” definition of pain. I discuss the general process of conceptual engineering and the original IASP definition of pain, outline the desiderata for a definition of pain suitable for clinical practice, evaluate the 2020 revision of the IASP definition against these desiderata, and argue that more engineering work is needed. I then consider alternative definitions of pain, including one that I propose.