Epistemic instrumentalists face a puzzle. In brief, the puzzle is that if the reason there is to believe in accord with the evidence depends, as the instrumentalist says it does, on agents’ idiosyncratic interests, then there is no reason to expect that this reason is universal. Here, I identify and explain two strategies instrumentalists have used to try and solve this puzzle. I then argue that we should find these strategies wanting. Faced with the failure of these strategies, I articulate (...) a heretofore neglected solution on behalf of instrumentalism. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemically rational beliefs are beliefs that are produced in ways that are conducive to certain ends that one wants to attain. In “Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique,” Thomas Kelly advances various objections to epistemic instrumentalism. While I agree with the general thrust of Kelly’s objections, he does not distinguish between two forms of epistemic instrumentalism. Intellectualist forms maintain that epistemically rational beliefs are beliefs arrived at in compliance with rules that are (...) conducive to epistemic ends, such as believing true propositions and not believing false propositions. Pragmatist forms maintain that rational beliefs are those that are formed, maintained, and revised in accordance with rules that are conducive to whatever ends one wants to attain. In this paper, I argue against both forms of epistemic instrumentalism and suggest that epistemic instrumentalism grows out of a mistaken conception of what it means to say that the standards of epistemic rationality are ‘normative.’. (shrink)

Our analysis of recent survey data of US small- and medium-sized enterprises explores the question of how these entrepreneurial ventures can do well by doing good—i.e., how they can build a competitive advantage with their social and environmental practices. We focus on several firm characteristics and choices involving motivations and capabilities. We use hierarchical OLS to analyze the survey data to find that an orientation to, commitments to, and dynamic flexibility in, the firm’s CSR and green policies are significant factors (...) in a firm’s CSR- and green-based competitive advantages. So, while some tradeoffs are likely between activities aimed at financial performance and those also aimed at improving social/environmental performance, opportunities do exist for small- and medium-sized enterprises to do both well and good. We consider several implications for theory and practice that continue in this instrumentalist perspective. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalists the normativity of evidence for belief is best explained in terms of the practical utility of forming evidentially supported beliefs. Traditional arguments for instrumentalism—arguments based on naturalism and motivation—lack suasive force against opponents. A new argument for the view—the Argument from Coincidence—is presented. The argument shows that only instrumentalists can avoid positing an embarrassing coincidence between the practical value of believing in accordance with one’s evidence, and the existence of reasons so to believe. Responses are (...) considered and shown to be inadequate. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemic normativity arises from and depends on facts about our ends. On that view, a consideration C is an epistemic reason for a subject S to Φ only if Φ-ing would promote an end that S has. However, according to the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, this cannot be correct since there are cases in which, intuitively, C is an epistemic reason for S to Φ even though Φ-ing would not promote any of S’s ends. (...) After clarifying both EI and the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, I examine three major instrumentalist replies and argue that none of them is satisfactory. I end by briefly sketching a fourth possible response, which is, I suggest, more promising than the other three. (shrink)

Instrumentalism is the view that all requirements of practical reason can be derived from the instrumental principle, that is, from the claim that one ought to take the suitable means to one's ends. Rationalists, by contrast, hold that there are requirements of practical reason that concern the normative acceptability of ends. To the extent that rationalists put forward these requirements in addition to the instrumental principle, rationalism might seem to go beyond instrumentalism in its normative commitments. This is (...) why it is sometimes thought that rationalism is stronger than instrumentalism in a way that entails that instrumentalism is the default view, while rationalists carry the burden of proof. In this paper, I explore and discuss different ways of spelling out this idea. I argue that rationalism is not stronger than instrumentalism in a way that has implications for matters of justification and differences in prima facie defensibility of the two sorts of views. (shrink)

Sellars argues against Nagelian instrumentalism for his version (not Feyerabend's) of scientific realism.

Mathematical instrumentalism construes some parts of mathematics, typically the abstract ones, as an instrument for establishing statements in other parts of mathematics, typically the elementary ones. Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem seems to show that one cannot prove the consistency of all of mathematics from within elementary mathematics. It is therefore generally thought to defeat instrumentalisms that insist on a proof of the consistency of abstract mathematics from within the elementary portion. This article argues that though some versions of mathematical (...) instrumentalism are defeated by Gödel’s theorem, not all are. By considering inductive reasons in mathematics, we show that some mathematical instrumentalisms survive the theorem. (shrink)

This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the pointlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to this thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establish radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called “instrumentalist” thesis, when applied by Friedman to economics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious problems than the standard instrumentalist thesis (...) devised by some methodologists of physics. To disentangle these ambiguities concerning realism and instrumentalism applied to physics or to economics, this paper refers to Van Fraassen's “constructive empiricism”, which is helpful in reformulating, in a more satisfactory way, the essentials of Friedman's considerations about empiricism and anti-realism. (shrink)

Steve Fuller seeks to blame Kuhn for the present state of the philosophy of science. It has become ‘Kuhniferous’, he argues, both in structure and in content. I begin by taking issue with this judgement, suggesting that Kuhn wasn’t as influential as his realist and naturalist opponents. I then proceed to argue that Fuller fails to clinch one of his central charges, that Kuhn disconnected the philosophical defence of scientific progress from any substantive ends of science. Kuhn has a story (...) to tell here that should commend itself to Fuller’s ‘instrumentalist’ instincts. That Fuller doesn’t seem to recognise it, I suggest, is down to a certain sort of blindness to epistemological issues, a failure to appreciate that claims to epistemic progress on the part of science may be more than self-serving. (shrink)

I want to examine critically a certain strategy of moral justification which I shall call instrumentalism. By this I mean the view that a moral theory is rationally justified if the actions, life-plan, or set of social arrangements it prescribes can be shown to be the best means to the achievement of an agent's final ends, whatever these may be. Instrumentalism presupposes a commitment to what I shall call the Humean conception of the self. By this I mean (...) a certain way of conceiving the motivational and structural constituents of the self. Briefly, the self on this conception is motivated by its desires for states of affairs that are temporally or spatiotemporally external to the self. And it is structured by the normative requirements of instrumental rationality: The self is conceived as rationally coherent to the extent that theoretical reason calculates and schedules the satisfaction of as many of its desires as possible, with the minimum necessary costs. The motivational and structural elements of the Humean conception of the self combine to form a familiar explanatory model of human agency: We make sense of an agent's behavior by ascribing to her the desire to achieve the ends that she does in fact achieve, and the theoretically rational belief that, given the information and resources available to her, behaving as she did was the most efficient way to do so. I shall want to argue that to the extent that instrumentalism is successful in providing an objective justification of a moral theory - and I shall contend that it cannot be completely successful - it cannot provide a moral justification. But when we attempt to modify it so as to produce a specifically moral justification, we see that either it is impossible to do this, or else the Humean notion of instrumental rationality is doing no justificatory work. (shrink)

In the concluding chapter of Exceeding our Grasp Kyle Stanford outlines a positive response to the central issue raised brilliantly by his book, the problem of unconceived alternatives. This response, called " epistemic instrumentalism ", relies on a distinction between instrumental and literal belief. We examine this distinction and with it the viability of Stanford's instrumentalism, which may well be another case of exceeding our grasp.

This paper offers critical reflection on the contemporary tendency to approach health care in instrumentalist terms. Instrumentalism is means-ends rationality. In contemporary society, the instrumentalist attitude is exemplified by the relationship between individual consumer and a provider of goods and services. The problematic nature of this attitude is illustrated by Michael Oakeshott’s conceptions of enterprise association and civil association. Enterprise association is instrumental; civil association is association in terms of an ethically delineated realm of practices. The latter offers a (...) richer ethical conception of the relation between person and society than instrumentalism does. Oakeshott’s conception is further illustrated by reflection on the connection between morality and religion that he explores in an early essay concerning “religious sensibility”. Religious sensibility turns on the acknowledgement of the vulnerability of the self to the vicissitudes of life. This vulnerability cannot be bargained over instrumentally without imperilling the self. Religious sensibility is thus a valuable resource for criticising instrumentalist attitudes. It allows for the cultivation of ethical self-understanding that is essential to comprehending the conditions in virtue of which genuine civil life is possible. These conditions need to be taken into account in health care. Health care is not simply about substantive wants. It also necessarily concerns the universal and constant condition of being prey to illness that is the common lot of all citizens. (shrink)

Dewey scholar Michael Eldridge provides a thorough and well-researched interpretation of Dewey's philosophy that focuses on the role of intelligence in human ...

In a time when we as a society are in the process of deciding what our basic rights to health care are, it is critically important for us to have a full and complete understanding of what constitutes health. We argue for an analysis of health according to which certain states are healthy not in themselves but because they allow an individual to reach actual goals. Recognizing that the goals of an individual considered from the point of view of biology (...) and the goals of the same individual considered as an agent in the world might be different, we introduce a distinction between the health of an individual qua organism and the health of an individual qua person. We then argue that this distinction characterizes the evaluations made by patients and healthcare providers better than the widely discussed distinction between disease and illness. (shrink)

This paper explicates and defends a social-naturalist conception of internationality and intentions, where internationality of scientific expressions is fundamental. Meanings of expressions are a function of their place in language-systems and of the relations of systems to object-level evidence and associated community activities-including deliberation and experiment. Naturalizing internationality requires social-intellectual reconstruction exemplified by the scientific community at its best. This approach emphasizes normative elements of pragmatic conceptions of meaning and their function in orientation. It requires social conditions and intellectual practices (...) making knowledge of intentions possible. Scientific ends, methods, and meanings, together, constitute culturally evolved instruments of adaptation to, and reconstruction of, physical and cultural environments. (Reprinted in Meaning without Analyticity.) -/- . (shrink)

Scientific realists often appeal to some version of the conjunction objection to argue that scientific instrumentalism fails to do justice to the full empirical import of scientific theories. Whereas the conjunction objection provides a powerful critique of scientific instrumentalism, I will show that mathematical instnrunentalism escapes the conjunction objection unscathed.

Tom Kelly argues that instrumentalist aeeounts of epistemie rationality fail beeause what a person has reason to believe does not depend upon the eontent of his or her goals. However, his argument fails to distinguish questions about what the evidence supports from questions about what a person ought to believe. Once these are distinguished, the instrumentalist ean avoid Kelly’s objeetions. The paperconcludes by sketehing what I take to be the most defensible version of the instrumentalist view.

In the concluding chapter of Exceeding our Grasp Kyle Stanford outlines a positive response to the central issue raised brilliantly by his book, the problem of unconceived alternatives. This response, called "epistemic instrumentalism", relies on a distinction between instrumental and literal belief. We examine this distinction and with it the viability of Stanford's instrumentalism, which may well be another case of exceeding our grasp.

This paper develops a new version of instrumentalism, in light of progress in the realism debate in recent decades, and thereby defends the view that instrumentalism remains a viable philosophical position on science. The key idea is that talk of unobservable objects should be taken literally only when those objects are assigned properties (or described in terms of analogies involving things) with which we are experientially (or otherwise) acquainted. This is derivative from the instrumentalist tradition in so far (...) as the distinction between unobservable and observable is taken to have significance with respect to meaning. (shrink)

In our increasingly instrumentalist culture, debates over the privatization of schooling may be beside the point. Whether we hatch some new plan for chartering or funding schools, or retain the traditional model of government-run schools, the ongoing instrumentalization of education threatens the very possibility of public education. Indeed, in the culture of performativity, not only the public school but public life itself is hollowed out and debased. Qualities are recast as quantities, judgments replaced by rubrics, teaching and learning turned into (...) exchange values. Schools should be central to public life: key locations for the regeneration of values, the cultivation of judgment, and the creation of the conditions for positive freedom. In this article Chris Higgins, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, goes beyond typical treatments of the schools as equalizer of individual opportunity to explore three aspects of educational publicity: the school as an object of communal concern, schooling as preparation for public life, and the classroom as public space. (shrink)

Sometimes a theory is interpreted realistically--i.e., as literally true--whereas sometimes a theory is interpreted instrumentalistically--i.e., as merely a convenient device for summarizing, systematizing, deducing, etc., a given body of observable facts. This paper is part of a program aimed at determining the basis on which scientists decide on which of these interpretations to accept a theory. I proceed by examining one case: the nineteenth-century debates about the existence of atoms. I argue that there was a gradual transition from an instrumentalist (...) to a realistic acceptance of the atomic theory, because of gradual increases in its predictive power, the "testedness" of its hypotheses, the "determinateness" of its quantities, and because of resolutions of doubts about the acceptability of its basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as or. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: Once we have usefulness, truth is redundant. There is something disturbing (...) about causal structure. It's better to do what one can than to chase rainbows. (shrink)

An Essay on Mathematical Instrumentalism M. Detlefsen. THE PHILOSOPHICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF HILBERT'S PROGRAM 1. INTRODUCTION In this chapter I shall attempt to set out Hilbert's Program in a way that is more revealing than ...

: We question the claim, common since Duhem, that sixteenth century astronomy, and especially the Wittenberg interpretation of Copernicus, was instrumentalistic rather than realistic. We identify a previously unrecognized Wittenberg astronomer, Edo Hildericus (Hilderich von Varel), who presents a detailed exposition of Copernicus's cosmology that is incompatible with instrumentalism. Quotations from other sixteenth century astronomers show that knowledge of the real configuration of the heavens was unattainable practically, rather than in principle. Astronomy was limited to quia demonstrations, although demonstration (...) propter quid remained the ideal. We suggest that Osiander's notorious preface to Copernicus expresses these sixteenth century commonplaces rather than twentieth century instrumentalism, and that neither `realism', nor `instrumentalism', in their modern meanings, apply to sixteenth century astronomy. (shrink)

Akaike’s framework for thinking about model selection in terms of the goal of predictive accuracy and his criterion for model selection have important philosophical implications. Scientists often test models whose truth values they already know, and they often decline to reject models that they know full well are false. Instrumentalism helps explain this pervasive feature of scientific practice, and Akaike’s framework helps provide instrumentalism with the epistemology it needs. Akaike’s criterion for model selection also throws light on the (...) role of parsimony considerations in hypothesis evaluation. I explain the basic ideas behind Akaike’s framework and criterion; several biological examples, including the use of maximum likelihood methods in phylogenetic inference, are considered. (shrink)

The present essay offers a sketch of a philosophy of value, what I shall here refer to as ‘ethical instrumentalism.’ My primary aim is to say just what this view involves and what its commitments are. In the course of doing so, I find it necessary to distinguish this view from another with which it shares a common basis and which, in reference to its most influential proponent, I refer to as ‘Humeanism.’ A second, more general, aim is to (...) make plausible the idea that, given the common basis, ethical instrumentalism provides a more compelling picture of the philosophy of value than Humeanism does. (shrink)

The main claim of the paper is that one can be ‘realist’ (in some sense) about quantum mechanics without requiring any form of realism about the wave function. We begin by discussing various forms of realism about the wave function, namely Albert’s configuration-space realism, Dürr Zanghi and Goldstein’s nomological realism about Ψ, Esfeld’s dispositional reading of Ψ Pusey Barrett and Rudolph’s realism about the quantum state. By discussing the articulation of these four positions, and their interrelation, we conclude that (...) class='Hi'>instrumentalism about Ψ is by itself not sufficient to choose one over the other interpretations of quantum mechanics, thereby confirming in a different way the indetermination of the metaphysical interpretations of quantum mechanics. -/- Key words: . (shrink)

Elliott Sober is both an empiricist and an instrumentalist. His empiricism rests on a principle called actualism, whereas his instrumentalism violates this. This violation generates a tension in his work. We argue that Sober is committed to a conflicting methodological imperative because of this tension. Our argument illuminates the contemporary debate between realism and empiricism which is increasingly focused on the application of scientific inference to testing scientific theories. Sober’s position illustrates how the principle of actualism drives a wedge (...) between two conceptions of scientific inference and at the same time brings to the surface a deep conflict between empiricism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new defense of scientific realism, tailored for the Akaikean paradigm of statistical hypothesis testing. After proposing definitions of verisimilitude and predictive success, I use computer simulations to show how the latter depends on the former, even in the kind of case featured in a recent argument for instrumentalism.

The choice between realism and instrumentalism is at the core of concerns about how our scientific models relate to reality: Do our models aim to be literally true descriptions of reality, or is their role only as useful instruments for generating predictions? Realism about X, roughly speaking, is the claim that X exists and has its nature independent of our interests, attitudes, and beliefs. An instrumentalist about X denies this. She claims that talk of X should be understood as (...) no more than a useful locution for generating predictions, such talk should not be understood as taking on a commitment to the existence of X. According to an instrumentalist, we should either flatly not believe that X is out there, or else suspend judgement about the existence of X. The most we need acknowledge is that talk of X is useful in making predictions. The question of realism vs. instrumentalism can be asked about almost any theoretical entity in science. It is likely, and seems reasonable, that different answers will be given in different cases. Someone may wish to be a realist about certain theoretical entities (e.g. electrons), but an instrumentalist about others (e.g. centres of gravity). Not every noun-phrase in a scientific theory should be taken as expressing an ontological commitment. Psychological theories are no exception. Almost every theoretical posit in psychology has been questioned as to whether it is really out there or just a useful theoretical fiction. In this entry, I will focus on two major theoretical posits in psychology: (a) propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs, desires) and (b) conscious states (qualia). (shrink)

Surprisingly enough, modified versions of the confirmation theory of Carnap and Hempel and the truth approximation theory of Popper turn out to be smoothly synthesizable. The glue between confirmation and truth approximation appears to be the instrumentalist methodology, rather than the falsificationist one.By evaluating theories separately and comparatively in terms of their successes and problems (hence even if they are already falsified), the instrumentalist methodology provides – both in theory and in practice – the straight route for short-term empirical progress (...) in science in the spirit of Laudan. However, it is argued that such progress is also functional for all kinds of truth approximation: observational, referential, and theoretical. This sheds new light on the long-term dynamic of science and hence on the relation between the main epistemological positions, viz., instrumentalism (Toulmin, Laudan), constructive empiricism (van Fraassen), referential realism (Hacking and Cartwright), and theory realism of a non-essentialist nature (Popper), here called constructive realism.In From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (2000) the above story is presented in great detail. The present synopsis highlights the main ways of theory evaluation presented in that book, viz. evaluation in terms of confirmation (or falsification), empirical progress and truth approximation. (shrink)

Tom Kelly argues that instrumentalist aeeounts of epistemie rationality fail beeause what a person has reason to believe does not depend upon the eontent of his or her goals. However, his argument fails to distinguish questions about what the evidence supports from questions about what a person ought to believe. Once these are distinguished, the instrumentalist ean avoid Kelly’s objeetions. The paperconcludes by sketehing what I take to be the most defensible version of the instrumentalist view.

David Lewis presented Convention as an alternative to the conventionalism characteristic of early-twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Rudolf Carnap is well known for suggesting the arbitrariness of any particular linguistic convention for engaging in scientific inquiry. Analytic truths are self-consistent, and are not checked against empirical facts to ascertain their veracity. In keeping with the logical positivists before him, Lewis concludes that linguistic communication is conventional. However, despite his firm allegiance to conventions underlying not just languages but also social customs, he pioneered (...) the view that convening need not require any active agreement to participate. Lewis proposed that conventions arise from “an exchange of manifestations of a propensity to conform to a regularity” .In reasserting the conventional quality of languages and other practices resting on mutual expectations, Lewis comfortably works within the analytic tradition. Yet he also deviates from his predecessors because his conventionalist approach is comprehensively grounded in instrumentalism. Lewis adopts an extension of David Hume's desire-belief psychology articulated in rational choice theory. He develops his philosophy of convention relying on the highly formal mid-twentieth-century expected utility and game theories. This attempt to account for language and social customs wholly in terms of instrumental rationality has the implication of reducing normativity to preference satisfaction. Lewis’ approach continues in the trend of undermining normative political philosophy because institutions and practices arise spontaneously, without the deliberate involvement of agents. Perhaps Lewis’ Convention is best seen as a resurgent form of analytic philosophy, characterized by “a style of argument, hostility to [ambitious] metaphysics, focus on language, and the dominance of logic and formalization” that solves the dilemma of “combining the analytic inheritance…with normative concerns” by reducing normativity to individuals’ preference fulfillment consistent with the axioms of rational choice. (shrink)

Alon Harel wants to show that punishment is a kind of symbolic expression that, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, can only be performed by governmental agents. Contrary to Harel, I argue private agents can in fact realize those features he argues only public agents can realize. I also argue that, even if he were right that only public guards and wardens can punish, it’s unclear why we would have an all-things-considered rather than merely a pro tanto/prima facie duty to (...) punish. An instrumentalist can grant Harel that only state employees can punish, but still decide, on instrumental grounds, to reject public punishment in favor of private “schpunishment.”. (shrink)

In this paper we devise some technical tools for dealing with problems connected with the philosophical view usually called mathematical instrumentalism. These tools are interesting in their own right, independently of their philosophical consequences. For example, we show that even though the fragment of Peano's Arithmetic known as IΣ₁ is a conservative extension of the equational theory of Primitive Recursive Arithmetic (PRA). IΣ₁ has a super-exponential speed-up over PRA. On the other hand, theories studied in the Program of Reverse (...) Mathematics that formalize powerful mathematical principles have only polynomial speed-up over IΣ₁. (shrink)

In order to rescue human intentionality and mental causation from determinism and reductionism, it is necessary to clarify what we mean by intentionality, which is often coloured by a problematic, one-sided instrumentalism in both current theory and the wider culture. Rethinking this narrow instrumentalism requires distinguishing clearly between what has been termed 'means-end'and 'constituent- end'human practices and appreciating the primacy of the latter in human affairs. It also requires appreciation of the fact that social enquiry itself is a (...) form of practice that is shaped by at its core, and shapes in turn, the aims and practices of the human community. (shrink)

Akaike’s framework for thinking about model selection in terms of the goal of predictive accuracy and his criterion for model selection have important philosophical implications. Scientists often test models whose truth values they already know, and they often decline to reject models that they know full well are false. Instrumentalism helps explain this pervasive feature of scientific practice, and Akaike’s framework helps provide instrumentalism with the epistemology it needs. Akaike’s criterion for model selection also throws light on the (...) role of parsimony considerations in hypothesis evaluation. I explain the basic ideas behind Akaike’s framework and criterion; several biological examples, including the use of maximum likelihood methods in phylogenetic inference, are considered. (shrink)

Arthur Fine and André Kukla have argued that realism and instrumentalism are indifferent with respect to scientific practice. I argue that this claim is ambiguous. One interpretation is that for any practice, the fact that that practice yields predictively successful theories is evidentially indifferent between scientific realism and instrumentalism. On the second construal, the claim is that for any practice, adoption of that practice by a scientist is indifferent between their being a realist or instrumentalist. I argue that (...) there are no good arguments for the indifference claim under the second interpretation, and good reasons to think that it is false. (shrink)

Instrumentalism is usually understood as a semantic thesis: scientific theories are neither true nor false, but are merely instruments for making predictions. Scientific realists are on firm ground when they reject this semantic claim. This paper focuses on epistemological rather than semantic instrumentalism. This form of instrumentalism claims that theories are to be judged by their ability to make accurate predictions, and that predictive accuracy is the only consideration that matters in the end. I consider how (...) class='Hi'>instrumentalism is related to a quite different proposal concerning how theories should be evaluated—scientific realism. Instrumentalism allows for the fact that a false model can get one closer to the truth than a true one. (shrink)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and John Dewey were both pragmatists who recognized the need to restructure the environment to bring about social progress. Gilman was even more of a pragmatist than Dewey, however, because she addressed problems he did not identify-much less confront. Her philosophy is in accord with the spirit of Dewey's work but in important ways, it is more consistent, more comprehensive and more radical than his instrumentalism.

In his important paper "1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences" (1984), Philip Kitcher defends biological antireductionism, arguing that the division of biology into subfields such as classical and molecular genetics is "not simply... a temporary feature of our science stemming from our cognitive imperfections but [is] the reflection of levels of organization in nature" (p. 371). In a recent discussion of Kitcher's views, Alexander Rosenberg has argued, first, that Kitcher has shown that the reduction of classical to (...) molecular genetics is impossible only because of our intellectual limitations and, second, that this kind of antireductionism supports an instrumentalist approach to biological theory. I argue that both of Rosenberg's claims should be rejected despite the fact that Kitcher misdiagnoses the central reason for the failure of reduction. (shrink)

This paper primarily deals with the conceptual prospects for generalizing the aim of abduction from the standard one of explaining surprising or anomalous observations to that of empirical progress or even truth approximation. It turns out that the main abduction task then becomes the instrumentalist task of theory revision aiming at an empirically more successful theory, relative to the available data, but not necessarily compatible with them. The rest, that is, genuine empirical progress as well as observational, referential and theoretical (...) truth approximation, is a matter of evaluation and selection, and possibly new generation tasks for further improvement. The paper concludes with a survey of possible points of departure, in AI and logic, for computational treatment of the instrumentalist task guided by the ‘comparative evaluation matrix’. (shrink)

When we defend aesthetic education in instrumental terms or rely on clichés of creativity and imagination, we win at best a pyrrhic victory. To make a lasting place for the arts in education, we must critique the transmission model of education and the instrumentalist view of life that undergirds it. To help us perceive anew the nature and value of the aesthetic, I explore John Dewey's distinction between recognition and perception. Through a series of examples drawn from painting and poetry, (...) I embody Dewey's theory and describe a number of artistic strategies for interrupting recognition and cultivating perception. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that, Contrary to general belief, George berkeley did in fact express a coherent philosophy of mathematics in his major published works. He treated arithmetic and geometry separately and differently, And this paper focuses on his philosophy of arithmetic, Which is shown to be strikingly similar to the 19th and 20th century philosophies of mathematics known as 'formalism' and 'instrumentalism'. A major portion of the paper is devoted to showing how this philosophy of (...) mathematics follows directly from berkeley 's theory of signs and his philosophy of language, And from his discovery of an alternative to the correspondence theory of truth used by most of his predecessors. (shrink)