Engineering the Concept of Pain for Clinical Practice

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(Work in progress)

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Abstract Conceptual engineering involves assessing and improving our concepts (Cappelen 2018). The ongoing efforts of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) to provide a useful definition of pain serve as a paradigmatic example of this process: the IASP states on its website that its definition has been carefully reviewed and its utility in both clinical and basic science contexts assessed. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the conceptual engineering of pain, with a particular focus on the challenges pertaining to clinical practice. I discuss the general process of conceptual engineering, outline the desiderata for a definition of pain in clinical practice, evaluate the recent revision of the IASP definition (from 2020) against these desiderata, and propose that further engineering work is needed.