Abstract

There is a large amount of evidence of placebo and nocebo effects showing that one’s expectation of a forthcoming pain can influence the subsequent experience of pain. Here I shall not discuss the implications of these findings for the nature of pain, but focus instead on the nature of pain anticipation itself. This notion indeed remains poorly analysed and it is unclear what type of anticipatory state it involves. I shall argue that there is more to pain anticipation than a mere combination of anticipatory beliefs and fears. When the impending damage is imminent, pain anticipation involves a distinctive sui generis mental state, which I call nociceptive prediction. One then anticipates the forthcoming event under the pain mode. After analysing its points of similarities and differences with pain, I shall argue that nociceptive prediction is best understood in imperative defensive terms.