As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. Instead, they (...) may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

You should be specific, but also explain the context and relevance of the term. (Each ID is worth 5 points).

Abstract This article seeks to determine if Buddhism can best be understood as primarily a functionalist tradition. In pursuing this, some analogies arise with various Western strands?particularly James? ?pragmatism?, Dewey's ?instrumentalism?, Braithwaite's ?empiricism?, Wittgenstein's ?language games?, and process thinkers like Hartshorne and Jacobson. Within the Buddhist setting, the traditional Therav?da framework of sila (ethics/precepts), sam?dhi (meditation) and pañña (wisdom) are examined, together with Therav?da rituals. Despite some ?correspondence? approaches with regard to truth claim statements, e.g. vipassan? ?insight? and Abhidharma analysis, (...) a more profound functionalism seems present. This is even more clear with the Mah?y?na. Apart from the basic and explicit Mah?y?na underpinning of up?ya, the M?dhyamika, Tantras and Ch'an (Zen) schools are clearly functionalist. Moreover, despite initially seeming more ?absolutist? in their positions, other strands like the Pure Land and Nichiren faith traditions, and Dharmakirti's Vijñ?nav?da epistemology can also be tied into this functionalist setting. (shrink)

A. M. MacIver; I—The Presidential Address: The Instrumentality of Language, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 1–20.

This paper argues that instrumental rationality is more permissive than expected utility theory. The most compelling instrumentalist argument in favour of separability, its core requirement, is that agents with non-separable preferences end up badly off by their own lights in some dynamic choice problems. I argue that once we focus on the question of whether agents’ attitudes to uncertain prospects help define their ends in their own right, or instead only assign instrumental value in virtue of the outcomes they may (...) lead to, we see that the argument must fail. Either attitudes to prospects assign non-instrumental value in their own right, in which case we cannot establish the irrationality of the dynamic choice behaviour of agents with non-separable preferences. Or they don’t, in which case agents with non-separable preferences can avoid the problematic choice behaviour without adopting separable preferences. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists think that epistemic normativity is just a special kind of instrumental normativity. According to them, you have epistemic reason to believe a proposition insofar as doing so is conducive to certain epistemic goals or aims—say, to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false. Perhaps the most prominent challenge for instrumentalists in recent years has been to explain, or explain away, why one’s epistemic reasons often do not seem to depend on one’s aims. This challenge can (...) arguably be met. But a different challenge looms: instrumental reasons in the practical domain have various properties that epistemic reasons do not seem to share. In this chapter, we offer a way for epistemic instrumentalists to overcome this challenge. Our main thesis takes the form of a conditional: if we accept an independently plausible transmission principle of instrumental normativity, we can maintain that epistemic reasons in fact do share the relevant properties of practical instrumental reasons. In addition, we can explain why epistemic reasons seem to lack these properties in the first place: some properties of epistemic reasons are elusive, or easy to overlook, because we tend to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an ‘elliptical’ manner. (shrink)

Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that “scientific instruments are perspectival” has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analyzed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory-ladeness. The novel content of this article consists in articulating and developing these strategies (...) by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: “broad perspectives” and “narrow perspectives.”. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine (...) the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

Some theodicists, skeptical theists, and friendly atheists agree that God-justifying reasons for permitting evils would have to have an instrumental structure: that is, the evils would have to be necessary to secure a great enough good or necessary to prevent some equally bad or worse evil. D.Z. Phillips contends that instrumental reasons could never justify anyone for causing or permitting horrendous evils and concludes that the God of Restricted Standard Theism does not exist—indeed, is a conceptual mistake. After considering Phillips’ (...) and other objections in the neighborhood, I argue that the Expanded Theism of Christian theology does forward a God who ‘digs in’ and eternally answers for horrors. (shrink)

Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

Robert John Ackermann deals decisively with the problem of relativism that has plagued post-empiricist philosophy of science. Recognizing that theory and data are mediated by data domains (bordered data sets produced by scientific instruments), he argues that the use of instruments breaks the dependency of observation on theory and thus creates a reasoned basis for scientific objectivity. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist (...) of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. -/- In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with (...) more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. -/- There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. -/- Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Often our reason for doing something is an "instrumental reason": that doing that is a means to doing something else that we have reason to do. What principles govern this "instrumental transmission" of reasons from ends to means? Negatively, I argue against principles often invoked in the literature, which focus on necessary or sufficient means. Positively, I propose a principle, "General Transmission," which answers to two intuitive desiderata: that reason transmits to means that are "probabilizing" and "nonsuperfluous" with respect to (...) the relevant end. I then apply General Transmission to the debate over "detachment": whether "wide-scope" reason for a material conditional or disjunction implies "narrow-scope" reason for the consequent or disjuncts. (shrink)

Instrumental rationality prohibits one from being in the following state: intending to pass a test, not intending to study, and believing one must intend to study if one is to pass. One could escape from this incoherent state in three ways: by intending to study, by not intending to pass, or by giving up one’s instrumental belief. However, not all of these ways of proceeding seem equally rational: giving up one’s instrumental belief seems less rational than giving up an end, (...) which itself seems less rational than intending the means. I consider whether, as some philosophers allege, these “asymmetries” pose a problem for the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality. I argue that they do not. I also present an argument in favor of the wide-scope formulation. The arguments employed here in defense of the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality can also be employed in defense of the wide-scope formulations of other rational requirements. (shrink)

This article examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can serve as an external source of rents for governments that depend on foreign financing for state-building and development. The strategic, instrumental use of CSR has been overlooked in previous research on governments and CSR, especially in the Global South. To understand how CSR can serve as a lever for rents, the concept of “extraversion” is introduced to describe the way in which rent-seeking African governments instrumentalize their asymmetric external relations for political (...) and private benefit. The connection between CSR and rent-seeking is analyzed through a case study of large gas investments in Tanzania. The article finds that the government has set up regulation that enables local and central government authorities to appropriate, mediate, reclaim, or possibly trick CSR practices to gain rents. Based on the study, two contributions are made to the literature on CSR and governments. First, the instrumental use of CSR in the Global South is added to the variety of perspectives that can be taken when studying government agency. Second, CSR is conceptualized as a potential stream of rents for governments to exploit. The article ends with discussing that the outcome of CSR in a rent-seeking environment depends on whether the leveraged resources are managed well to support peaceful and locally beneficial economic development or whether they serve private accumulation through corruption. (shrink)

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe (...) the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business. (shrink)

The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-realism Revitalised, by RowbottomDarrell P.. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 216.

This article illustrates instrumental variable (IV) estimation by examining an unexpected finding of the research on career adaptability and job satisfaction. Theoretical and empirical arguments suggest that in the general population, people’s abilities to adapt their careers are beneficial to their job satisfaction. However, a recent meta-analysis unexpectedly found no effect when personality traits are controlled for. We argue that a reverse effect of job satisfaction on career adaptability, originating from affective tendencies tied to personality, might explain this null effect. (...) Our argument implies that the estimates obtained with traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are biased by endogeneity, a correlation between an explanatory variable and the error term in a regression model. When experimental manipulations are impossible, IV estimations, such as two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions, are one possible solution to the endogeneity problem. Analyzing three waves of data from a sample of 836 adults, the concurrent and time-lagged effect of job satisfaction on career adaptability was revealed to be more consistent than the reverse. Our results provide an explanation, rooted in affective dispositions, as to why recent meta-analytical estimates unexpectedly found that career adaptability does not predict job satisfaction at the interindividual level. We also discuss IV estimation in terms of its limits, weight the interpretation of its estimates against the temporality criterion for causal inference, and consider its possible extension to analyses of change. (shrink)

Scientific instruments are not neutral artefacts; the perception of their value is greatly determined not only by the objects themselves and the function they perform, but also by the context of their use. In the 16th and 17th centuries, scientific instruments – not only nautical ones – acquired a prominent place in European societies that greatly transcended the specific narrow professional circles that used them. This has already been noted as being an important feature in the development of science in (...) early modern Europe. But exactly how did this happen? Following other recent studies, I argue in this paper that in order to understand this phenomenon one has to look carefully at artisanal practices of the period. (shrink)

Rationality requires that we intend the means that we believe are necessary for achieving our ends. Instrumental Rationality explores the formulation and status of this requirement of means-ends coherence. In particular, it is concerned with understanding what means-ends coherence requires of us as believers and agents, and why.

Nowadays, science is treated an instrument of policy, serving the material interests of government and commerce. Traditionally, however, it also has important non-instrumental social functions, such as the creation of critical scenarios and world pictures, the stimulation of rational attitudes, and the production of enlightened practitioners and independent experts. The transition from academic to ‘post-academic’ science threatens the performance of these functions, which are inconsistent with strictly instrumental modes of knowledge production. In particular, expert objectivity is negated by entanglement with (...) political and commercial interests. We cannot go back to the old academic model for science, but need to consider how to maintain its vital non-instrumental roles. (shrink)

Advances in artificial intelligence research allow us to build fairly sophisticated agents: robots and computer programs capable of acting and deciding on their own. These systems raise questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong—when such systems harm or kill humans. In a recent paper, Sven Nyholm has suggested that, because current AI will likely possess what we might call “supervised agency”, the theory of responsibility for individual agency is the wrong place to look for an answer to the (...) question of responsibility. Instead, or so argues Nyholm, because supervised agency is a form of collaborative agency—of acting together—the right place to look is the theory of collaborative responsibility—responsibility in cases of acting together. This paper concedes that current AI will possess supervised agency, but argues that it is nevertheless wrong to think of the relevant human-AI interactions as a form of collaborative agency and, hence, that responsibility in cases of collaborative agency is not the right place to look for the responsibility-grounding relation in human-AI interactions. It also suggests that the right place to look for this responsibility-grounding relation in human-AI interactions is the use of certain sorts of agents as instruments. (shrink)

Deep learning (DL) has become increasingly central to science, primarily due to its capacity to quickly, efficiently, and accurately predict and classify phenomena of scientific interest. This paper seeks to understand the principles that underwrite scientists’ epistemic entitlement to rely on DL in the first place and argues that these principles are philosophically novel. The question of this paper is not whether scientists can be justified in trusting in the reliability of DL. While today’s artificial intelligence exhibits characteristics common to (...) both scientific instruments and scientific experts, this paper argues that the familiar epistemic categories that justify belief in the reliability of instruments and experts are distinct, and that belief in the reliability of DL cannot be reduced to either. Understanding what can justify belief in AI reliability represents an occasion and opportunity for exciting, new philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of America’s most powerful statutes, not only in American domestic environmental law, but in American domestic law in general. The first part of the ESA gives us the ‘Findings, Purposes, and Policy’ that underlie the Act. In this prefratory language, it is explicit that the ESA is referring to instrumental aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific values. But J. Baird Callicott and Andrew Wetzler argued that the ESA is also implicitly committed (...) to endangered species having intrinsic value. I argue that the best explanation of the seeming tacit intrinsic value in the ESA is not that such value really is implicit in the ESA; rather, the best explanation is that the ESA is committed to instrumental value with a certain feature that has not been carefully considered in the environmental ethics/philosophy literature before, that of incalculable instrumental value, in this case held by endangered species. (shrink)

One important concern regarding implantable Brain Computer Interfaces is the fear that the intervention will negatively change a patient’s sense of identity or agency. In particular, there is concern that the user will be psychologically worse-off following treatment despite postoperative functional improvements. Clinical observations from similar implantable brain technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, show a small but significant proportion of patients report feelings of strangeness or difficulty adjusting to a new concept of themselves characterized by a maladaptive je ne (...) sais quoi despite clear motor improvement. Despite the growing number of cases in the DBS literature, there is currently no accepted or standardized tool in neuroethics specifically designed to capture the phenomenological postoperative experience of patients implanted with DBS or BCI devices. Given potential risks of postoperative maladaptation, it is important for the field of neuroethics to develop a qualitative instrument that can serve as a shared method for capturing postoperative variations in patient experience of identity and agency. The goal of this article is to introduce an instrument we have developed for this purpose and call for further neuroethical efforts to assess the phenomenology of implantable brain device use. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Democracy as a Way of Life The Values of a Democratic Way of Life Intrinsic and Instrumental Values of Democracy References.

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that these experiments (...) appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

Rational Powers in Action presents a conception of instrumental rationality as governing actions that are extended in time with indeterminate ends. Tenenbaum argues that previous philosophical theories in this area, in focusing on momentary snapshots of the mind of idealized agents, miss central aspects of human rationality.

In two recent papers, I criticized Ronald N. Giere's and Larry Laudan's arguments for 'naturalizing' the philosophy of science. Both Giere and Laudan replied to my criticisms. The key issue arising in both interchanges is these naturalists' embrace of instrumental conceptions of rationality, and their concomitant rejection of non-instrumental conceptions of that key normative notion. In this reply I argue that their accounts of science's rationality as exclusively instrumental fail, and consequently that their cases for 'normatively naturalizing' the philosophy of (...) science fail as well. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between instrumental reasons and instrumental rationality. It argues that instrumental reasons are not reasons to take the means to our ends. It further argues that there is no distinct form of instrumental reasoning or of instrumental rationality. In part the argument proceeds through a sympathetic examination of suggestions made by M. Bratman, J. Broome, and J. Wallace, though the accounts of instrumental rationality offered by the last two are criticised.

Do the sciences aim to uncover the structure of nature, or are they ultimately a practical means of controlling our environment? In Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science, Alexander Rosenberg argues that while physics and chemistry can develop laws that reveal the structure of natural phenomena, biology is fated to be a practical, instrumental discipline. Because of the complexity produced by natural selection, and because of the limits on human cognition, scientists are prevented from uncovering the basic structure of (...) biological phenomena. Consequently, biology and all of the disciplines that rest upon it--psychology and the other human sciences--must aim at most to provide practical tools for coping with the natural world rather than a complete theoretical understanding of it. (shrink)

Is prostitution immoral? Various philosophers have put forward arguments for thinking so, one of the most notable being that, by engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute instrumentalizes himself or herself. In this paper, I identify two meanings of "instrumentalize" and, with them, two versions of the instrumentalization argument for the immorality of prostitution. I then critique each version of the argument.

The thesis of instrumental convergence holds that a wide range of ends have common means: for instance, self preservation, desire preservation, self improvement, and resource acquisition. Bostrom contends that instrumental convergence gives us reason to think that "the default outcome of the creation of machine superintelligence is existential catastrophe". I use the tools of decision theory to investigate whether this thesis is true. I find that, even if intrinsic desires are randomly selected, instrumental rationality induces biases towards certain kinds of (...) choices. Firstly, a bias towards choices which leave less up to chance. Secondly, a bias towards desire preservation, in line with Bostrom's conjecture. And thirdly, a bias towards choices which afford more choices later on. I do not find biases towards any other of the convergent instrumental means on Bostrom's list. I conclude that the biases induced by instrumental rationality at best weakly support Bostrom's conclusion that machine superintelligence is likely to lead to existential catastrophe. (shrink)

Many healthcare goods, such as surgical instruments, textiles and gloves, are manufactured in unregulated factories and sweatshops where, amongst other labour rights violations, workers are subject to considerable occupational health risks. In this paper we undertake an ethical analysis of the supply of sweatshop-produced surgical goods to healthcare providers, with a specific focus on the National Health Service of the United Kingdom. We contend that while labour abuses and occupational health deficiencies are morally unacceptable in the production of any commodity, (...) an additional wrong is incurred when the health of certain populations is secured in ways that endanger the health and well-being of people working and living elsewhere. While some measures have been taken to better regulate the supply chain to healthcare providers in the UK, further action is needed to ensure that surgical goods are sourced from suppliers who protect the labour and occupational health rights of their workers. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

The medieval notion of instrumental cause is not limited to what we call today “instruments” or “tools.” It extends way beyond the realm of technology and includes natural entities, for instance, the accidents by which a substance acts on another substance, sensible species in the air acting on a visual faculty, sacraments, bodily organs, and sometimes creatures with respect to God’s action. In all these cases, instrumental causes, like secondary causes in general, are subordinated to a principal cause and contribute (...) to its action and effects. However, the manner in which they do so makes them different from regular secondary causes, and the specifics are not easy to pinpoint. At the occasion of discussions about creation ex nihilo and sacraments, John Duns Scotus challenges Thomas Aquinas’s theory of instrumental causality. Whereas Aquinas does not strongly distinguish between artifacts and natural agents, and postulates a complex superposition of layers of causation, Scotus offers a novel view that clearly separates artificial instrumentality and natural instrumentality, and in both cases explains causation with great economy. Scotus’s in-depth discussion has far-reaching implications. It completely transforms the understanding of instrumental causality in general. (shrink)

The requirements of instrumental rationality are often thought to be normative conditions on choice or intention, but this is a mistake. Instrumental rationality is best understood as a requirement of coherence on an agent's non-instrumental desires and means-end beliefs. Since only a subset of an agent's means-end beliefs concern possible actions, the connection with intention is thus more oblique. This requirement of coherence can be satisfied either locally or more globally, it may be only one among a number of such (...) requirements on an agent's total set of desires and beliefs, and it has no special connection with reasoning. An appreciation of these facts leads to a better understanding of both the nature and the significance of instrumental rationality. (shrink)